The Futility Infielder
A Baseball Journal by Jay Jaffe I'm a baseball fan living in New York City. In between long tirades about the New York Yankees and the national pastime in general, I'm a graphic designer.Sunday, December 26, 2004
The All-Xmas Team
The following is a belated and revised version of my annual December 25 piece.
December 25 marks a holiday for most of this country and probably, for most of my readership -- if so, my sincere wishes for a happy holiday to you. For me the day is somewhat more paradoxical: I'm Jewish and thus don't celebrate Christmas, which is fine by me because I'm none too fond of that red and green color scheme. It also happens to be my birthday, number 35 to be exact.
I'll spare you the tales about how this combination of circumstances influenced my psyche while growing up (long story short: people forgetting birthday bad, never having to work or go to school on birthday good) and, as usual, move onto the baseball angle in all of this. Baseball-Reference lists 67 players as being born on December 25, including Hall-of-Famers Pud Galvin and Nellie Fox, and future Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson, and two Xmas babes who made their major-league debuts in 2004, Ruben Gotay and Willy Taveras.
Henderson is undoubtedly the best major-leaguer born on this day, but then again, he'd be the best major-leaguer born on any one of over three hundred other days, too. To quote the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, "If you could split [Rickey] in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers." Given that there are 258 members of the Hall of Fame (including executives), having two or three HOFers born on any single date is an above-average representation. Still, having spent some time looking over the resumes of the 67 ballplayers with December 25 birthdays, I can't make any claims for the All Xmas Team I've assembled. They're exceedingly long on futility infielders and backup catchers, short on outfielders, first basemen, and power hitters in general. Their pitching is pretty solid -- a front three of Pud, Ned, and Ted -- though they don't really have a closer.
Thanks to Henderson and the Hall of Famers, the average for all players is 11.5 WARP, a career of roughly the same significance as -- to use a pair of recent, non-Xmas-related examples with that total, Wayne Gomes and Turner Ward -- players that may have had a few useful years as spare parts, but little more.
The numbers show that 51 of the 67 accumulated less than 10.0 WARP over the course of their careers, just over half (34) of them racking up less than 1.0 WARP for their careers, and 18 of them actually below replacement level, with one Jim Jones (-1.3) winning the Least Valuable Player award. Jones accumulated a 15.43 ERA in two short stints totaling 11.2 innings around the turn of the 20th century. At least he can't lay claim to being the most destructive Jim Jones in history, that honor belonging to the guy with the bad Kool-Aid.
The ten most valuable Xmas-born players, based on career WARP, peak WARP, and JAWS, which is an average of the two, used to measure Hall of Fame-worthiness as described in my BP articles:
• Quincy Trouppe spent twenty-two years in the Negro Leagues before receiving a 10-at-bat cup of coffee with the Cleveland Indians in 1952, at age 39. He was a fine player in his day, making All-Star teams everywhere he went and accumulating a lifetime Negro League Average of .311. He also won a Negro League championship as player-manager of the Cleveland Buckeyes. Bill James rates him the #7 catcher of the Negro Leagues in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. One more interesting note about him: during the height of World War II, he had trouble securing a passport to play in the Mexican League. The league's president intervened, and made arrangements for Trouppe's services in exchange for those of 80,000 Mexican workers. You could look it up.
• Manny Trillo played most of his career as a second baseman, and a slick-fielding (if overratedly so) one at that, winning three Gold Gloves and setting a record for consecutive errorless games. But Nellie Fox also won three Gold Gloves at 2B, so I took the liberty of moving Trillo to SS (where he had limited experience). I'm sure he and Nellie would have made a fine double-play combo. Trillo is the only Christmas-born ballplayer whose real name is Jesus.
• Jo-Jo Moore and Ben Chapman both crack Bill James' Top 100 lists by postion. Moore ranks 77th among LFs, Chapman 55th among CFs (I put him in right because he played a good portion of his career there). Chapman was, by all accounts, an aggressive ballplayer who fought a lot. He stole as many as 61 bases, and had some power as well. He later managed the Philadelphia Phillies for parts of four seasons and is most noted for baiting the rookie Jackie Robinson with racial epithets. Schmuck. We'll let Trouppe manage this squad, just to rub it in Chapman's face.
• Red Barnes -- don't you love that name? Gerry Davis did pretty well in 73 ABs for the Padres, but missed out on their glory year of 1984. Not to be confused with the MLB umpire of the same name.
• Wallace Johnson was a pretty good pinch-hitter whose claim to fame was the hit that put the Montreal Expos in their only postseason in 1981. He spent five years as the third-base coach with the Chicago White Sox but was fired after the 2002 season. At last notice, he had plans to run for a city council position in Gary, Indiana, the murder capital of the U.S. Fun. Given the paucity of updated news I could find, I don't think he succeeded.
• Three of the pitchers on this team made their names in the 19th century, when pitching and pitching stats were much different. Galvin had back-to-back 46-win seasons in 1883 and 1884, making over 70 starts each year. He won 20 games or more ten times, and lost 20 games or more 10 times as well. George Haddock went from 9-26 in 1890 for Buffalo of the Players League to 34-11 with Boston of the American Association the following year. Ted Lewis won 47 games over two seasons for the Boston Beaneaters in 1896-1897.
• Ned Garver was a hard-luck pitcher who managed to go 20-12 for a St. Louis Browns team that went 52-102 in 1951. This performance so impressed MVP voters in the AL that he finished second to Yogi Berra.
• Speaking of pitching for lousy teams... at 8-20 with a 4.40 ERA, Al Jackson could have easily been mistaken for the ace of the 1962 Mets (though Roger Craig had an equal claim). Jackson managed to lose 88 games in a 5-year span, four of those with the Mets. He had a long career as a pitching coach (Red Sox, Orioles, Mets), last serving as an interim one for the Mets in 2001 following Steve Phillips' purging of Bobby Valentine's staff.
• A couple of others have claims of infamy. Pitcher Jack Hamilton is best known for hitting Tony Conigliaro in the face with a pitch in 1967, one of the most severe beanings in the annals of baseball. Hamilton's only major league homer was a grand slam off of the aforementioned Al Jackson. Morrie Rath (who didn't make the cut here), a second baseman with a career .254/.342/.285 line, was hit by a pitch from Chicago Black Sox hurler Ed Cicotte to open the 1919 World Series. The message of this purpose pitch: the fix was in.
• So far as I can tell, there's at least one Jewish ballplayer with a December 25 birthday. Alta Cohen played in 29 games from 1931-1933 for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. In his first game he got two hits in a single inning when the Boston Braves failed to notice that he batted out of turn. He spent the rest of his career paying for his sins: .194/.289/.224.
• The first Christmas-born ballplayer, Nat Jewett (who I'm guessing didn't celebrate either), was a member of the 1872 Brooklyn Eckfords of the National Association, who went 3-26 for the season. Sweeeet.
• Rickey Henderson spent the entire year at Newark of the independent Atlantic League (where he hit .281/.462/.436 in 91 games), waiting for a call from a big league club that never came. He last played in the majors with the Dodgers in 2003, hitting a meager .208/.321/.306. The JAWS system places him as the fourth-best leftfielder of all time behind the guy with the "flaxseed oil" (140.6) and a couple of more upstanding citizens, Stan Musial (123.4) and Ted Williams (119.8).
• Ruben Gotay is the the son of a former minor-league infielder (also named Ruben) and the nephew of former big-league infielder Julio Gotay. As a 21-year-old, he hit .270/.315/.375 in 44 games for the Kansas City Royals and .290/.373/.441 at Double-A Wichita. He's a switch-hitting second-baseman who ought to have a regular job with the big club soon. Fellow Texas Leaguer Willy Taveras, 23, is a speedy centerfielder who spent most of the season at the Astros' Round Rock Express club (Nolan Ryan's outfit), hitting .335/.402/.386 with 55 steals in 66 attempts. In his September cup o' coffee, he got all of two plate appearances in ten big-league games, seeing time mostly as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement.
Rickey, Nellie, Manny, Quincy, Ruben, Willy, and all of my fellow December 25-born mates -- happy birthday, guys!
December 25 marks a holiday for most of this country and probably, for most of my readership -- if so, my sincere wishes for a happy holiday to you. For me the day is somewhat more paradoxical: I'm Jewish and thus don't celebrate Christmas, which is fine by me because I'm none too fond of that red and green color scheme. It also happens to be my birthday, number 35 to be exact.
I'll spare you the tales about how this combination of circumstances influenced my psyche while growing up (long story short: people forgetting birthday bad, never having to work or go to school on birthday good) and, as usual, move onto the baseball angle in all of this. Baseball-Reference lists 67 players as being born on December 25, including Hall-of-Famers Pud Galvin and Nellie Fox, and future Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson, and two Xmas babes who made their major-league debuts in 2004, Ruben Gotay and Willy Taveras.
Henderson is undoubtedly the best major-leaguer born on this day, but then again, he'd be the best major-leaguer born on any one of over three hundred other days, too. To quote the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, "If you could split [Rickey] in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers." Given that there are 258 members of the Hall of Fame (including executives), having two or three HOFers born on any single date is an above-average representation. Still, having spent some time looking over the resumes of the 67 ballplayers with December 25 birthdays, I can't make any claims for the All Xmas Team I've assembled. They're exceedingly long on futility infielders and backup catchers, short on outfielders, first basemen, and power hitters in general. Their pitching is pretty solid -- a front three of Pud, Ned, and Ted -- though they don't really have a closer.
Pos Name (Years) AVG OBP SLG HRNot too terribly impressive, is it? This year, I decided to take a slightly different look at this motley crew using the Wins Above Replacement Player totals and JAWS (Jaffe WARP Score) system that I used on my recent Hall of Fame pieces for Baseball Prospectus.
C Quincy Trouppe (1952) .100 .182 .100 0
1B Walter Holke (1914-1925) .287 .318 .363 24
2B Nellie Fox (1947-1965) .288 .348 .363 35
3B Gene Robertson (1919-1930) .280 .344 .373 20
SS Manny Trillo (1973-1989) .263 .316 .345 61
LF Jo-Jo Moore (1930-1941) .298 .344 .408 79
CF Rickey Henderson (1979-) .279 .401 .419 297
RF Ben Chapman (1930-1946) .302 .383 .440 90
C Gene Lamont (1970-1975) .233 .278 .371 4
IF Tom O'Malley (1982-1990) .256 .329 .340 13
IF Joe Quinn (1884-1901) .261 .302 .327 29
IF Bill Akers (1929-1932) .261 .349 .404 11
OF Red Barnes (1927-1930) .269 .347 .404 8
OF Gerry Davis (1983-1985) .301 .370 .397 0
PH Wallace Johnson (1981-1990) .255 .316 .332 5
Pos Name (Years) W L S ERA
SP Pud Galvin (1875-1892) 364 310 2 2.86
SP Ned Garver (1948-1961) 129 157 12 3.73
SP Ted Lewis (1896-1901) 94 64 4 3.53
SP Charlie Lea (1980-1988) 62 48 0 3.54
SP George Haddock (1888-1894) 95 87 2 4.07
RP Al Jackson (1959-1969) 67 99 10 3.98
RP Lloyd Brown (1928-1940) 91 105 21 4.20
RP Eric Hiljus (1999-2002) 8 3 0 4.72
RP Charlie Beamon (1956-1958) 3 3 0 3.91
CL Jack Hamilton (1962-1969) 32 40 20 4.53
Thanks to Henderson and the Hall of Famers, the average for all players is 11.5 WARP, a career of roughly the same significance as -- to use a pair of recent, non-Xmas-related examples with that total, Wayne Gomes and Turner Ward -- players that may have had a few useful years as spare parts, but little more.
The numbers show that 51 of the 67 accumulated less than 10.0 WARP over the course of their careers, just over half (34) of them racking up less than 1.0 WARP for their careers, and 18 of them actually below replacement level, with one Jim Jones (-1.3) winning the Least Valuable Player award. Jones accumulated a 15.43 ERA in two short stints totaling 11.2 innings around the turn of the 20th century. At least he can't lay claim to being the most destructive Jim Jones in history, that honor belonging to the guy with the bad Kool-Aid.
The ten most valuable Xmas-born players, based on career WARP, peak WARP, and JAWS, which is an average of the two, used to measure Hall of Fame-worthiness as described in my BP articles:
Last WARP3 Last PEAK Last JAWSA few words about the All-Xmas Team, the men on the leaderboards, and the new kids on the block:
Henderson 169.4 Henderson 49.1 Henderson 109.3
Fox 86.2 Galvin 45.4 Fox 62.5
Garver 76.1 Garver 44.3 Garver 60.2
Chapman 68.9 Fox 38.7 Galvin 56.2
Galvin 67.1 Moore 32.5 Chapman 50.4
Moore 47.9 Chapman 31.9 Moore 40.2
Trillo 42.8 Jackson 22.9 Trillo 32.5
Brown 31.0 Trillo 22.2 Brown 24.4
Jackson 25.0 Brown 17.8 Jackson 24.0
Rath 20.0 Lea 16.4 Lea 17.0
Quinn 17.8 Lewis 14.6 Rath 15.5
Lea 17.6 Holke 12.9 Lewis 14.5
Holke 15.9 Haddock 12.3 Quinn 14.5
Lewis 14.4 Quinn 11.2 Holke 14.4
McCormick 13.7 Rath 10.9 McCormick 11.5
• Quincy Trouppe spent twenty-two years in the Negro Leagues before receiving a 10-at-bat cup of coffee with the Cleveland Indians in 1952, at age 39. He was a fine player in his day, making All-Star teams everywhere he went and accumulating a lifetime Negro League Average of .311. He also won a Negro League championship as player-manager of the Cleveland Buckeyes. Bill James rates him the #7 catcher of the Negro Leagues in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. One more interesting note about him: during the height of World War II, he had trouble securing a passport to play in the Mexican League. The league's president intervened, and made arrangements for Trouppe's services in exchange for those of 80,000 Mexican workers. You could look it up.
• Manny Trillo played most of his career as a second baseman, and a slick-fielding (if overratedly so) one at that, winning three Gold Gloves and setting a record for consecutive errorless games. But Nellie Fox also won three Gold Gloves at 2B, so I took the liberty of moving Trillo to SS (where he had limited experience). I'm sure he and Nellie would have made a fine double-play combo. Trillo is the only Christmas-born ballplayer whose real name is Jesus.
• Jo-Jo Moore and Ben Chapman both crack Bill James' Top 100 lists by postion. Moore ranks 77th among LFs, Chapman 55th among CFs (I put him in right because he played a good portion of his career there). Chapman was, by all accounts, an aggressive ballplayer who fought a lot. He stole as many as 61 bases, and had some power as well. He later managed the Philadelphia Phillies for parts of four seasons and is most noted for baiting the rookie Jackie Robinson with racial epithets. Schmuck. We'll let Trouppe manage this squad, just to rub it in Chapman's face.
• Red Barnes -- don't you love that name? Gerry Davis did pretty well in 73 ABs for the Padres, but missed out on their glory year of 1984. Not to be confused with the MLB umpire of the same name.
• Wallace Johnson was a pretty good pinch-hitter whose claim to fame was the hit that put the Montreal Expos in their only postseason in 1981. He spent five years as the third-base coach with the Chicago White Sox but was fired after the 2002 season. At last notice, he had plans to run for a city council position in Gary, Indiana, the murder capital of the U.S. Fun. Given the paucity of updated news I could find, I don't think he succeeded.
• Three of the pitchers on this team made their names in the 19th century, when pitching and pitching stats were much different. Galvin had back-to-back 46-win seasons in 1883 and 1884, making over 70 starts each year. He won 20 games or more ten times, and lost 20 games or more 10 times as well. George Haddock went from 9-26 in 1890 for Buffalo of the Players League to 34-11 with Boston of the American Association the following year. Ted Lewis won 47 games over two seasons for the Boston Beaneaters in 1896-1897.
• Ned Garver was a hard-luck pitcher who managed to go 20-12 for a St. Louis Browns team that went 52-102 in 1951. This performance so impressed MVP voters in the AL that he finished second to Yogi Berra.
• Speaking of pitching for lousy teams... at 8-20 with a 4.40 ERA, Al Jackson could have easily been mistaken for the ace of the 1962 Mets (though Roger Craig had an equal claim). Jackson managed to lose 88 games in a 5-year span, four of those with the Mets. He had a long career as a pitching coach (Red Sox, Orioles, Mets), last serving as an interim one for the Mets in 2001 following Steve Phillips' purging of Bobby Valentine's staff.
• A couple of others have claims of infamy. Pitcher Jack Hamilton is best known for hitting Tony Conigliaro in the face with a pitch in 1967, one of the most severe beanings in the annals of baseball. Hamilton's only major league homer was a grand slam off of the aforementioned Al Jackson. Morrie Rath (who didn't make the cut here), a second baseman with a career .254/.342/.285 line, was hit by a pitch from Chicago Black Sox hurler Ed Cicotte to open the 1919 World Series. The message of this purpose pitch: the fix was in.
• So far as I can tell, there's at least one Jewish ballplayer with a December 25 birthday. Alta Cohen played in 29 games from 1931-1933 for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. In his first game he got two hits in a single inning when the Boston Braves failed to notice that he batted out of turn. He spent the rest of his career paying for his sins: .194/.289/.224.
• The first Christmas-born ballplayer, Nat Jewett (who I'm guessing didn't celebrate either), was a member of the 1872 Brooklyn Eckfords of the National Association, who went 3-26 for the season. Sweeeet.
• Rickey Henderson spent the entire year at Newark of the independent Atlantic League (where he hit .281/.462/.436 in 91 games), waiting for a call from a big league club that never came. He last played in the majors with the Dodgers in 2003, hitting a meager .208/.321/.306. The JAWS system places him as the fourth-best leftfielder of all time behind the guy with the "flaxseed oil" (140.6) and a couple of more upstanding citizens, Stan Musial (123.4) and Ted Williams (119.8).
• Ruben Gotay is the the son of a former minor-league infielder (also named Ruben) and the nephew of former big-league infielder Julio Gotay. As a 21-year-old, he hit .270/.315/.375 in 44 games for the Kansas City Royals and .290/.373/.441 at Double-A Wichita. He's a switch-hitting second-baseman who ought to have a regular job with the big club soon. Fellow Texas Leaguer Willy Taveras, 23, is a speedy centerfielder who spent most of the season at the Astros' Round Rock Express club (Nolan Ryan's outfit), hitting .335/.402/.386 with 55 steals in 66 attempts. In his September cup o' coffee, he got all of two plate appearances in ten big-league games, seeing time mostly as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement.
Rickey, Nellie, Manny, Quincy, Ruben, Willy, and all of my fellow December 25-born mates -- happy birthday, guys!
posted by Jay # 6:56 PM 
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