Starting IX Newsletter: The wildest baseball injuries, Stengelese, and a Pacific Northwest hero
For those unfamiliar with the set-up — welcome! Here’s the scoop. Otherwise, let’s dive right in.
“One Final Imagination of the Baseball Hall of Fame” Pre-excerpts: Hutch, Stengelese, and FIP-ERA
This space has been filled with themed excerpts the past couple months but let’s get back to what the heart of this book is: random thoughts about random players.
Fred Hutchinson
Hutchinson completed only six full seasons on the mound, made only one All-Star appearance, and tallied fewer career innings than a handful of famous relief pitchers (Hutchinson was a starter his whole career), but he had an outsize impact on the sport, nonetheless.
His playing career began with great expectations, as he was named Sporting News’ minor league player of the league, and he drew patently absurd comparisons to players such as Christy Mathewson and Babe Ruth (!) before he even made his MLB debut. The Tigers won the bidding war over Hutch, and he was set to make his debut with the team in 1939. After a two-week delay to his debut, he finally got out there on the day that Lou Gehrig first went to the bench, breaking his famous streak. The Yankees were on one that day, routing the Tigers 22–2, with Hutch giving up eight runs in just two-thirds of an inning. He was exiled to the minors for 11 weeks after that. When he came back, he was far better, but midway through the next season he began a six-year absence from the game due to WWII. When he returned, Hutch put up his six-year peak (1946–1951) in which he had a 3.52 ERA (118 ERA+) in over 1,000.0 IP.
In 1952, however, he set off on successful managerial career, despite being just 33 years old. This managerial career came at all levels, first at the MLB level, but with plenty of stops in the Pacific Northwest, as the Seattle native always carried strong ties to his home state.
These strong ties binded the amateur legend to Washington — and Seattle specifically — so strongly that when he passed at the tragically young age of 45 (he smoked three to four packs a day), the city created a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. It was not just in Seattle that he had this effect on people, however, as he was Sport Magazine’s 1965 “Man of the Year.” A Hutch Award was created to honor the man. The award is still handed out yearly and rewards the MLB player who “best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire” of Hutch.
But Seattle was his true home, and it is fitting that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer named him the city’s Athlete of the Century at the turn of the millennium.
Many shouts to Clay Eals’ SABR Bio for providing yet another of so many excellent submissions on that website.
Casey Stengel: Come on. You know where we’re going with this: top floor Stengel quotes. The man had a language (Stengelese) named after him for goodness sake. So here we go:
** “The secret of managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”
** “The trick is growing up without growing old.”
** “Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.”
** “I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks during batting practice.”
** “Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.”
** “All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.”
** “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”
Stengel was basically Yogi Berra with a third-floor playing career instead of a fifth-floor one.
Johnny Cueto
I’ll always have a spot in my heart for Cueto. He is among the very few pitchers left who are able to prove that stats haven’t solved the sport. Stats clearly haven’t solved the sport, but it does, at times, feel that way in the moment, so it’s good to have guys like Cueto who so blatantly go against the stats. For instance, FIP, or Fielder Independent Pitching, is a metric set on the same scale as ERA that has been proven to be consistently more predictive for future performance than ERA. So, if a pitcher has a higher FIP than he does ERA, any baseball stathead worth her/his salt will point to that pitcher as a strong regression candidate. And as a whole, that bears out to be true. But on a case-to-case basis, there are still a few gems out there like Cueto, who posted a higher FIP than ERA in a borderline impossible nine straight seasons to start his career (only in 2017, when his ERA was 0.02 points higher than his FIP, did the reverse happen) and has a career FIP-ERA of 0.43, good for 19th among pitchers with at least 1500 innings since integration.
OOTP Year-by-Year Re-Simulation: 1914
We continue our trek through re-simulating each season in baseball history using Out of the Park Baseball 21, the most realistic baseball simulation game on the market.
MVP: Zack Wheat and Tris Speaker
Cy Young: Pete Alexander and Dutch H. Leonard
Three Hall of Famers and one borderline case for the Hall, it was quite the crop of award winners in this year’s re-sim. The reader is likely familiar with most of these names, so let’s focus instead of the chase for a record-breaking sixth straight title for our OOTP re-sim Philadelphia Athletics.
American League pennant winners: Philadelphia Athletics
National League pennant winners: New York Giants
We get a rematch of the last three years running now, with the Giants trying one more time to break up what has become a crazy dynasty for the OOTP simulated Philadelphia A’s.
Before we get to what was an excellent World Series, let’s just note that this year’s A’s were actually the best we’ve seen yet, sporting a spicy 118–36 record that, along with our re-sim Cubs would’ve been the second team to set the all-time winning percentage record over what the modern day baseball record is (116–36). The Giants held off the late-charging Phillies and Braves to win the NL pennant by a relatively comfortable four games. Let’s see how the World Series played out. Remember, the A’s are going for something here in OOTP re-sim universe that has never happened in real life: six straight World Series titles. The 1949–53 Yankees hold the all-time record at five — let’s see what Connie Mack and the boys have to say about that.
Game One: The Giants got to play Game One at home in Brush Stadium for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, but it didn’t matter one bit. Stuffy McInnis set the tone for the A’s in the top of the first with a two-run single. The Giants slowly chipped away and tied thing up but McInnis had their number all day, with the first baseman of the “$100,000 infield” breaking the tie with a triple in the sixth and delivering the knock out blow with his fourth RBI of the night with a single in the eighth. 5–2 Athletics win.
Game Two: The second game of the series saw a pair of famed aces take the mound: Eddie Plank for the A’s and Rube Marquard for the Giants. The two traded zeroes for the first three and a half innings, but this time it was the Giants to break the seal, with Fred Merkle (he of boner fame) driving in Art Fletcher for the first run. The A’s responded with an Eddie Murphy (no, not that one) single in the fifth, with the game remaining knotted at 1–1 until the eighth. In classic 1914 fashion, both starters were still in the game at this point, and maybe it was that fourth time through the oder that doomed Marquard, as the top of the A’s lineup got to the lefty this time, putting up three runs to seal the victory. 4–1 Athletics win.
Game Three: With their backs against the wall down 2–0 and headed on the road, the Giants turned to relative unknown, Al Demaree to step up. The tall righty kept the A’s off the board long enough to allow the Giants to scrape together a few runs via errors and sac flies to take the 2–0 lead. However, Murphy leaned in and took one to drive in a run as part of a two-run fifth for the A’s to tie things back up. Things were grim again for New York.
Yet another Athletics error put the Giants back in front in the sixth, however, and they manufactured another in the seventh. With a 4–2 lead heading into the ninth, the Giants left Demaree on the mound. Things got dicey with Jack Barry cutting the lead to 4–3 with one out, but Demaree secured the last out to bring the Giants back in to the series. 4–3 Giants win.
Game Four: Another game in Shibe Park in Philly, and another Giants win! This one was a laugher, with Larry Doyle and Milt Stock leading the charge in an eight-run barrage for the Giants, while Jeff Tesreau locked it down on the mound for New York. 8–0 Giants win.
Game Five: After the Giants wrestled back home field advantage in Game Four, Game Five was of the utmost import for the A’s, needing a win to avoid heading on the road needing to win both in New York to continue their reign of terror. And they got it. Just as Game Four was a laugher for New York, Game Five was a runaway for the A’s. Led by their talisman Eddie Collins’ trio of well-timed hits, the A’s pummeled the Giants to take the series lead back. 11–2 Athletics win.
Game Six: The first elimination game of the series, with the A’s now within one game of immortality. However, it was the Giants who played with a sense of urgency, striking first in the bottom of the second on a John Meyers single, and then taking the lead back in the sixth via Fred Snodgrass after an error led to an unearned run tying things up in the fifth. Thanks to another stellar performance from Demaree we get to hear the two best words in sports: Game Seven. 3–1 Giants win.
Game Seven: Despite being a battle of relative unknowns on the mound, Rube Bressler for Philadelphia and Jeff Tesreau for New York provided an outstanding Game Seven. In fact, not to jump ahead, but, despite only one combined strikeout for the game (man, times were different), the two pitchers each threw complete games without allowing a single earned run.
So how did the game — and series — get decided?
Well, after a one-out double from Frank Baker in the top of the sixth, an error from Tesreau gave the Athletics the only run they’d need on the night. The pitching and defense took it from there, capturing a previously unthought of sixth straight World Series title. 1–0 Athletics win.
The real bummer comes now, however, as the game will reflect the fact that these same dominant A’s were broken up after the 1914 season. It’s an interesting thought experiment to wonder if the real-life team had actually collected six straight rings if owner Connie Mack would’ve still broken up the team, but given that the reason was that the upstart Federal League was offering bigger contracts that Mack refused to match because he thought his players were “prima donnas” (the more things change…), it’s likely that it wouldn’t have mattered. And honestly, good riddance. We need some fresh blood in these re-sim World Series!
“Starting IX” Excerpt: Quirky baseball injuries
Last week was a lengthy section from the book, so we’ll keep it a lot quicker this week. The most incredible injuries in baseball history thanks to Charlie Hough at the Texas Ranger’s starting pitcher slot.
SP Charlie Hough (1980–1990)
There’s not a lot of pitching depth in Rangers history, so while this knuckleballer gets the call over Kenny Rogers and Fergie Jenkins, it is due more to the lack of anyone else than incredible numbers. Hough was an innings-eater for the Rangers in their not-so-salad days of the 1980s. He recorded at least 10 wins and at least 10 losses in nine straight years with the club, a truly impressive accomplishment of mediocrity. His ERA was always good, and considering the ballpark in which he pitched, Hough could have expected a few more wins some of those seasons even though the team struggled. He did have over 30.0 rWAR (the most of any Ranger pitcher) in his 11 years with the team and is the franchise leader in wins (139), games started (313), innings pitched (2,308), strikeouts (1,452) and complete games (98).
Unrelated to his stats, Hough did manage to pull off one of the most impressive injuries of all time when he broke his pinky while pinky-shaking… Can’t make that up.
Maybe it’s the nature of the game, but baseball tends to lend itself really well to bizarre injuries like Hough’s. Time to bust out a rather silly Starting IX list and look at the most ridiculous injuries in baseball history — this will be a ranked list, not a list by position (meaning SP means top ranked, C second ranked, etc.):
SP) Glenallen Hill — Cut himself on a glass table that he smashed “while dreaming he was being attacked by spiders.”
C) Jose Cardenal — Missed a game because he couldn’t blink.
1B) John Smoltz — Burned himself trying to iron his shirt while the shirt was still on.
2B) Kevin Mitchell — Injured himself eating a cupcake.
3B) Charlie Hough
SS) Joel Zumaya — My kind of injury, Zumaya suffered arm inflammation after playing too much “Guitar Hero.”
LF) Vince Coleman — One of the most famous injuries, he missed the World Series after getting rolled up in the stadium tarp.
CF) Ryan Klesko — Pulled a muscle while picking up his lunch tray.
RF) Moises Alou — Tore his recovering ACL after running over his kid with a bike.
Finally, it is interesting to note that Hough was moved from the bullpen to the rotation as the result of one of baseball’s earlier sabermetric studies. Statistician Craig Wright did a study that showed the Hough would be much more successful in the rotation, and the club decided to go with the information presented. They ended up with the starter who now represents their hypothetical all-franchise team — not bad.
Who Is This Player?
Answer at the end of the newsletter (I’m debating formats here, so feedback on how easy/difficult this section is would be appreciated)
Pop Culture Recommendation of the Week
It only came to Hulu this Friday, so this week’s rec is finally a timely one! Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland is one of the most beautiful films I have seen in a long time. If you need a brief pitch beyond that, it is a semi-documentarian feel to it, looking at a strand of American society, those who live out of their vans and travel for work. It stars Frances McDormand first and foremost, with a supporting role for David Strathairn (whose plotline is probably the weakest part of the film). Outside of those two, it stars mostly people as themselves including incredibly moving scenes from the actresses simply known as Linda May and Swankie in the final credits. Highly recommended, especially on a legitimate screen to enjoy all its beauty.
Keep You On Your Toes
It’s remarkably depressing to have to go this route, but in case you haven’t seen this corner of the news, attacks on Asian-Americans have increased since the start of last year, with a particularly heinous batch in recent weeks. The Asian American Federation has been collecting funds to help the victims, and you can donate here. It’s depressing as hell to still have to deal with shit like this in 2021, but here we are.
Quiz Answer
Hope you remembered to blink while taking in that statline above… That’s Jose Cardenal’s career.
Remember to follow along here on Medium for the first few months before I move to the actual email newsletter format.
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