NY Yankees: No Meusel or Chesbro (in addition to Winfield, who you discussed)? Interesting that Pipp beats out Skowron. I do realize that the Yankees are quite a competitive team in the WAR ratings.
No question about it: It’s TOUGH to make the Yankees! In fact, the Yankees Outfield alone was one of the reasons that I originally wanted to break up the Teams into pre- and post- 1950’s versions. If you took only the HOF’ers (with at least 5 seasons) plus Roger Maris, you could have a 9-man Outfield of: Keeler, Ruth, Combs, DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, Jackson, Winfield and Henderson. And that's putting Berra back in the Catcher’s slot: believe it or not, he’s in an OF slot at the moment! So that not only excludes Meusel, Henrich, Keller, Bauer, Murcer, White, Williams and O’Neill, (and some others) from the OF, but Posada or Munson at C as well, not mention Elston Howard!
Now, as for...
Chesbro: My first thought was that he's a guy who we wouldn’t even be talking about were he not in the Hall of Fame. And he’s IN the Hall largely on the bases of his one great season – the one with 40 wins. That’s really cool, yes, but there were other 40- and even 50-game Winners (Guy Hecker, for Pittsburgh, for example) who are not only not in the Hall, but didn’t make thieir respective teams either. (And Chesbro wasn’t even the LAST 40-Game winner!) However, while he might be another one of those guys who always comes up in the “Who shouldn’t be in the HoF” discussions, he was VERY CLOSE to making it. Not accouting for starters dropped to make room for the 'pen, Chesbro's WAR of 20.6 ranked him 17th - one place shy of making the team, at least before Ray Caldwell (23.5) and Ed Lopat (21.5) were dropped to make room for Goose Gossage and Sparky Lyle.
I was a bit surprised about Skowron not making it as well. He was very close though: the 4th ranked 1st baseman, trailing Pipp 27.9 to 24.2. VERY close, to be sure. But as close as they are, it's worth mentioning that Pipp really should be famous for more than just "taking the most expensive asprin in history." He WAS a two-time Home Run Champion, even if that was in the dead-ball era. Moose still looks like the better overall hitter: 129 *OPS+ in 1087 Games vs. 106 in 1488. But I'm guessing that Pipp's offense just counted for more, having been in the dead-ball era. Both were fine fielders as well, but here Pipp beats out Moose, with a dWAR of 7.3 to 3.8. (Which accounts for ALMOST all of the difference between the two.) So if you don't buy into how WAR accounts for defense, you could certainly make a strong argument for Skowron over Pipp.
Now Bob Meusel was another guy that I had on my All-Time, Pre-1950's (Classic) Yankees. And ironically, at 24.4 WAR, he ranks just ahead of Moose Skowron on the Yankees all-time rankings. But the guy he's training (Tommy Henrich, 37.6) ranks a bit higher than Pipp. And just to show how stacked the Yanks are, between Henrich and Meusel are: Rickey Henderson (30.1), Elston Howard (28.7), Roger Maris (27.9), Hank Bauer (27.2), Bobby Murcer (27.1), Ben Chapman & Dave Winfield (25.6) and Paul O'Neill (24.8). (All of whom were included, BTW, back when there were two seperate teams.) (And as I touched on earlier, Berra is counted as an Outfielder. So Howard is included because he'd prevent Berra from being moved back to a Catcher slot before anyone ranked below him could make the Outfield.)
from Hockeydad55:
ReplyDeleteNY Yankees: No Meusel or Chesbro (in addition to Winfield, who you discussed)? Interesting that Pipp beats out Skowron. I do realize that the Yankees are quite a competitive team in the WAR ratings.
No question about it: It’s TOUGH to make the Yankees! In fact, the Yankees Outfield alone was one of the reasons that I originally wanted to break up the Teams into pre- and post- 1950’s versions. If you took only the HOF’ers (with at least 5 seasons) plus Roger Maris, you could have a 9-man Outfield of: Keeler, Ruth, Combs, DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, Jackson, Winfield and Henderson. And that's putting Berra back in the Catcher’s slot: believe it or not, he’s in an OF slot at the moment! So that not only excludes Meusel, Henrich, Keller, Bauer, Murcer, White, Williams and O’Neill, (and some others) from the OF, but Posada or Munson at C as well, not mention Elston Howard!
ReplyDeleteNow, as for...
Chesbro: My first thought was that he's a guy who we wouldn’t even be talking about were he not in the Hall of Fame. And he’s IN the Hall largely on the bases of his one great season – the one with 40 wins. That’s really cool, yes, but there were other 40- and even 50-game Winners (Guy Hecker, for Pittsburgh, for example) who are not only not in the Hall, but didn’t make thieir respective teams either. (And Chesbro wasn’t even the LAST 40-Game winner!) However, while he might be another one of those guys who always comes up in the “Who shouldn’t be in the HoF” discussions, he was VERY CLOSE to making it. Not accouting for starters dropped to make room for the 'pen, Chesbro's WAR of 20.6 ranked him 17th - one place shy of making the team, at least before Ray Caldwell (23.5) and Ed Lopat (21.5) were dropped to make room for Goose Gossage and Sparky Lyle.
I was a bit surprised about Skowron not making it as well. He was very close though: the 4th ranked 1st baseman, trailing Pipp 27.9 to 24.2. VERY close, to be sure. But as close as they are, it's worth mentioning that Pipp really should be famous for more than just "taking the most expensive asprin in history." He WAS a two-time Home Run Champion, even if that was in the dead-ball era. Moose still looks like the better overall hitter: 129 *OPS+ in 1087 Games vs. 106 in 1488. But I'm guessing that Pipp's offense just counted for more, having been in the dead-ball era. Both were fine fielders as well, but here Pipp beats out Moose, with a dWAR of 7.3 to 3.8. (Which accounts for ALMOST all of the difference between the two.) So if you don't buy into how WAR accounts for defense, you could certainly make a strong argument for Skowron over Pipp.
Now Bob Meusel was another guy that I had on my All-Time, Pre-1950's (Classic) Yankees. And ironically, at 24.4 WAR, he ranks just ahead of Moose Skowron on the Yankees all-time rankings. But the guy he's training (Tommy Henrich, 37.6) ranks a bit higher than Pipp. And just to show how stacked the Yanks are, between Henrich and Meusel are: Rickey Henderson (30.1), Elston Howard (28.7), Roger Maris (27.9), Hank Bauer (27.2), Bobby Murcer (27.1), Ben Chapman & Dave Winfield (25.6) and Paul O'Neill (24.8). (All of whom were included, BTW, back when there were two seperate teams.) (And as I touched on earlier, Berra is counted as an Outfielder. So Howard is included because he'd prevent Berra from being moved back to a Catcher slot before anyone ranked below him could make the Outfield.)
Yeah... It's tough to make the Yankees!