It got late early in this round’s balloting, as Yogi Berra ran away with the voting. Yogi becomes the 56th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats.
More than 10% of all World Series home runs that have been hit by catchers have been hit by Yogi Berra. To be precise, there have been 89 home runs hit in the World Series by hitters who were in the game as catcher. Of those, nine were hit by Yogi. He actually hit twelve Series homers altogether, but two were in games Berra played as the left fielder and one he slugged as a pinch hitter — the first pinch-hit homer in Series history, and still one of only 15 such homers.
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Most Career Wins Above Replacement By a Catcher, 1876-1976
Yogi Berra 59.3
Bill Dickey 55.8
Johnny Bench 54.4
Gabby Hartnett 53.4
Mickey Cochrane 42.1
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Baseball-reference has a batting split for seasons from 1940 on that divides a hitter’s plate appearances into low leverage, medium leverage and high leverage, with high leverage being the more game-critical plate appearances based on the inning, score, men on base and outs situation. In general, OPS numbers don’t change much based on the leverage category. Since 1940, the overall major league OPS has been .716 in low leverage situations, .727 in medium leverage situations and .729 in high leverage situations. Yogi Berra was different.
Yogi Berra as a hitter in low leverage situations: .802 OPS
Yogi Berra as a hitter in medium leverage situations: .800 OPS
Yogi Berra as a hitter in high leverage situations: .895 OPS
Such a dramatic increase in OPS when a hitter faces high leverage situations, sustained over a long career, is very unusual, especially among guys who hit a lot of home runs. The guys who tend to increase their hitting performance the most in high leverage situations have been higher contact guys with lower home run totals, in the Nellie Fox or Tony Gwynn modes. I’m not sure a clutch-hitting “skill” exists, but the fact is, Yogi Berra really did hit better in what can reasonably be defined as “the clutch”, to a greater degree than any other power hitter going back as far as we can measure. Whether that was luck or skill or some combination of both, it did make Berra’ performance more valuable than it might otherwise seem. B-ref has a stat called “Clutch” which measures the degree to which a hitter’s batting stats tended to improve as the leverage of the situation he faced increased. Among the 287 hitters whose careers began in 1940 or later and hit at least 200 career homers, the top 5 career Clutch numbers are held by:
1. Yogi Berra 7.9
2. Billy Williams 7.4
3. Dave Parker 7.2
4. Ted Simmons 6.9
5. Vic Wertz 6.6
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Yogi is not the oldest living Yankee catcher. For that guy, you’ll have to wait a little longer, until the 1924 COG voting round. Meanwhile, Yogi’s 89th birthday is next week. He was married to his late wife, Carmen, for 65 years.
Berra is one of five men who played for the Yankees and Mets and no other franchise. The other four guys were Hal Reniff, Roy Staiger, Phil Lombardi and Brandon Knight. But Yogi is the only man who managed the Yankees, the Mets and no other franchise — and in the process he managed both the Yankees and the Mets to the World Series.
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Notes on the 1925, Part 1 round of voting:
— Yogi appeared on 75% of the ballots, the highest for anyone since Mays and Mantle headlined the 1931 voting.
— For the holdover list, the voting provided almost complete stability. All 13 of the holdovers appeared on at least 10% of the ballots, and the only holdover to appear on 25% or more of the ballots was Duke Snider, who came in at about 30%. And only Yogi received more than token support among the born-in-1925 contingent.
— So next round’s holdover list will look exactly like this round’s did, except Snider will move from two rounds of accumulated eligibility to three.
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The full spreadsheet showing this round’s vote tally is here: COG 1925 Part 1 Vote Tally.
The vote summary for recent Circle of Greats voting rounds is here: COG Vote Summary 2 . An archive with fuller details of the 1968 through 1939 rounds is here: COG 1968-1939 Vote Summary . In both cases, raw vote totals for each past round appears on Sheet 1 and the percentage totals for each past round appears on Sheet 2.
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A spreadsheet listing the full membership to date of the Circle of Greats is here: Circle of Greats Membership . You can also now find that same link any time by clicking on “Circle of Greats” at the top of the High Heats Stats home page.
