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This is the second in what will be an extended series of posts that will run over the summer. I will do one post covering the top 5 Yankees by WAR (Wins Above Replacement) at each position, plus a second profile piece on one player at each position. At the end of the summer, I’ll put together a post ranking the top 60 Yankees of all time. I will be using the career WAR found at baseballprojection.com, with only WAR garnered as a Yankee being included in the calculations.
1. Lou Gehrig (118.3 WAR as Yankee)
In a way, I think Gehrig has been a bit underrated over the years, always being mentioned second in a conversation about great players due to his sharing a field with Babe Ruth. Furthermore, his consecutive games streak of 2,130 games tends to overshadow his incredible on-field performance. Lou’s total career value places him at 13th all-time among position players, and he compiled a whopping 4 seasons of at least 10 WAR, and another 3 that exceeded 9 WAR. His best year was for the legendary 1927 Yankees, for whom he posted an OPS+ of 221 and notched 47 homers and 175 RBI. He won the MVP that year, and added another MVP in 1936, while finishing second in 1931 and 1932. His consecutive game streak ended in 1939 when he was diagnosed with ALS, the disease that would eventually bear his name. While most players at that time tended to decline early, Gehrig was still providing plenty of value when he was stricken by disease, posting a 132 OPS+ in the seasons prior to his retirement. There is no telling how much more value Gehrig could have tacked on to his career total had he not been afflicted with ALS.
Mattingly presents a classic case of a player with a short but fantastic peak that leads some to believe that he belongs in the Hall of Fame. From 1984-1987 he was an offensive force, leading the league in OPS+ twice, snaring an MVP and a second place finish, and notching at least 5.7 WAR each time. At just 26 and just entering his prime, he looked headed to the Hall of Fame. He was fairly solid in 1988 and 1989 as well, but back ailments began to tug at him and he never exceeded 2.3 WAR again. He certainly would have had a better chance to build his HoF case if he had never been afflicted by injury, as a normal career progression from 26 on would have allowed him to build a fairly strong case. He was a highly regarded fielder, finishing with 9 Gold Gloves, and made 6 All-Star teams as well. Beloved by fans and media alike as the Yankee Captain, he was a Yankee star in the rarest of eras, missing out on a championship and only making the playoffs in his final year of 1995. He is not a Hall of Fame player, but he will rightfully be remembered as a player who dominated the American League for a number of years, an unforgettable flash across the historical landscape of the franchise.
Pipp has become a bit of a punchline, as he lost his everyday job to Lou Gehrig after being removed for the lineup in what seemed to be a one day decision and never recovered his first base job. While he was never a transcendent player, he was a consistent player who was great with the glove. As a Yankee, he was +4 or greater in TotalZone (Rally’s defensive rating system) in every season but one, and had at least 2.3 WAR in 9 of his 10 full seasons as a Yankee. He helped the Yankees to one championship in 1923 after having lost in the Series in the two previous seasons. He finished his career in Cincinnati after being replaced by Gehrig. A more complete profile of Pipp is forthcoming.
Bill “Moose” Skowron was a vital cog on the Mantle-Maris-Ford Yankees of the late 50′s and early 60′s, and was traded to the Dodgers just in time to avoid the collapse that occurred in the mid-1960′s. He was a solid glove and had a strong bat, but was finished as a strong middle of the order hitter by the time he hit 30. His best year was likely 1956, which was his first full year and saw him put up a .308/.382/.528 as the Yankees recaptured the World Series trophy from the Dodgers. He made the All-Star team for five consecutive seasons starting in 1957, and contributed to 4 Yankee champions before being sent to the Dodgers prior to the 1963 season. The Yankees lost in the World Series to those very same Dodgers in 1963, and Skowron recovered from a poor regular season to hit .385/.429/.615 to help the Dodgers pull off the sweep. He spent the remainder of his career bouncing around the American League, and retired after the 1967 season.
Giambi is a polarizing figure among Yankees fans, as some consider him a huge flop while others point to his offensive numbers and recognize that he provided plenty of value for the Yankees in his 7 years with the team. The reality is somewhere in between, as Giambi provided plenty of value in some of his seasons but did not live up to his sizable contract and was poor enough defensively to merit being moved to DH. His best year as a Yankee was clearly 2002, putting up a ridiculous .314/.435/.598 line with 41 homers and 122 RBI, and finished 5th in MVP voting. Giambi was solid in 2003, but his batting average dropped to .250 and he was never again the complete hitter that he had been in the previous 4 seasons. Jason was terrible in 2004, as a benign tumor hampered his season and he did not recover until the middle of 2005. He was also exposed as a steroid user during this time period, and Yankee fans were prepared to discard him prior to the 2005 season. However, 2005 and 2006 were good years for Jason, as he received MVP votes in both seasons and was the Comeback Player of the Year in 2005. Injuries made for a poor 2007, but Jason bounced back in 2008 to end his career as a Yankee in a positive note. Giambi’s Yankees never did win a championship, and he unfairly became a symbol of a period of payroll excess and playoff ineptitude.
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17 Responses to Great Yankees By WAR: First Base
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TIQ IQ
Actually what you wrote about Wally Pipp is the Legend and not the truth.Pipp had been hit by a pitch in the head the day before.It’s often said that he stayed out of the game because of a headache and further often said that the headache was a hangover from too much drinking.Real truth is, Pipp was beaned and actually ended up in the hospital the next day or day after with not only a bad concussion but I believe a fractured skull.
Doesn’t make as good a “Lesson” though if you tell the truth about it.
To amplify the Pipp story.I looked it up again after many years and he was hit in batting practice, right in the temple and nearly died.He was in the hospital for 2 weeks and when he got back Gehrig was entrenched.Once interviewed about it Pipp said in good humor, that yes indeed, he had a concussion and fractured skull but he was 32 and beginning to fade and Gehrig was 22 and much more talented and Gehrig would have replaced him anyway but no, he didn’t ask out of the game, he was unconscious.
I heard the real story about 30 years ago but you can find it many places now on the internet.Pipp was a real good player who had MVP votes 2-3 times with the Yankees and again with Cincy the next year after Gehrig took his job.
I’ve always found that story among the most annoying of all of the baseball fabrications. Anyone willing to spend five minutes researching just what the Yankee brass (and manager, one presumes) must have thought about the relative value of the two players realizes Gehrig was going to be in there before much more time had passed no matter what Pipp did. While Gehrig didn’t arrive with Ruth’s fanfare, he was a bit of a legend before he ever signed with the Yankees.
I did my research on this: the beaning happened a month later. He lost the job because Huggins wanted to shake the team up because they were not hitting. It was not intended to be a long-term thing, more to give the team a spark, but Pip got injured and then Gehrig started to heat up, and that was it.
I guess it depends who you believe. Pipp himself, told the story the way I suggested it.A 90 year old Ernie Harwell told it differently but 30 years after Pipp was dead.
http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/pipp.asp
Incidentally, Pipp lived into the mid 1960′s
That snopes article you linked to doesn’t really leave the reader with any reasonable conclusion here other than that Moshe is right about this. It’s not Pipp vs Harwell, it’s Pipp vs. reality. Pipp said he got beaned and that was why Gehrig was in the lineup, but he didn’t get beaned until a month after Gehrig took over at first and news accounts from that time state that Pipp and other veterans were benched because the team was slumping badly to start that season so Huggins was shaking up the lineup. Just read the article you linked to.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/wally-pipp-put-me-back-in-coachpretty-please/
That article doesn’t really say anything, does it? He doesn’t cite any sources to substantiate the “heahache” claim, he just recites it as if it’s fact. The guy who wrote the Snopes article actually did the research and disproved this story.
Maybe this story is true, but you’ve provided two articles so far, and only one of them provides substantiation for any of these stories, and it’s not the story you seem to think is true. I mean, I’m just going on the information you’ve provided here, but, to borrow your language, what you’ve provided makes it seem like your story is legend and not the truth.
Everyone blames the back injury for Mattingly’s decline, but when he stopped hitting in the middle of those great offensive teams his numbers plummeted. Those mid 80s teams had some seriously stacked lineups, and that’s where his best years came. But then from about 1990-1992 he was 3 horrendous teams and his (rate) numbers were the worst of his career. The Yanks started getting better in 93, and his numbers came up again, but never to the prior levels. It’s similar to what was going on the last year with David Wright. He’s the one bat that scares you, so you’d be crazy to give him anything decent to hit. Very good offensive player, but not so good that he can produce in any lineup. Mattingly was such a good guy that everyone wanted to blame the back, but going all the way back to his days in the minors he was thought of good, but not great player. Nobody thought he would ever hit for much power, but he developed a Yankee stadium swing. Some thought that’s what led to his back issues.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mattido01.shtml
I may make this a blog post, now that I’ve brought this up. Unless you want to investigate this further yourself as a follow up piece. The one bad team he was on where he still produced was 1989, but I’ll guess it took some time for the league to pitch him differently.
I think you’re falling prey to a correlation argument while dismissing the clearly superior causation arguments because it looks like a fun new way to counter the excepted narrative of Mattingly’s career, but I think your argument is an unsubstantiated narrative fails to withstand scrutiny.
Those mid 80s teams did have good lineups and the quality of the Yanks’ lineups did decline in the early 90s, and that probably didn’t help matters much, but Mattingly DID suffer a relatively crippling back injury that PERFECTLY coincides with the rapid decline in his numbers. At this point in the discussion we have two narratives that we can choose to either believe or not believe, so we’ll have to look a little deeper into the numbers, but… I would strenuously argue that a serious back injury like Mattingly’s would have a significantly bigger effect on a player’s output than who happens to hit before or after him in the lineup. The relative effects of lineup construction on a player’s performance are arguable at best and probably, assuming they do exist, relatively minimal. Injuries on the other hand – especially serious and lingering back injuries like Mattingly’s – CLEARLY, INARGUABLY and SIGNIFICANTLY affect performance. You also don’t allow for the fact that those teams performed so much worse than their predecessors and successors BECAUSE of Mattingly’s steep and rapid decline. In all likelihood, as I think we’ll see in this comment, those teams were much more affected by Mattingly than he was by them.
All that aside, on to your arguments.
MINOR LEAGUE PERFORMANCE/POWER:
I was very young when he was in the minors and don’t really know much about how he was perceived other than the stories about how he wasn’t considered a top prospect when he was drafted, but you’re wrong about his power potential. Look at his minor league stats. In ’80 and ’81 he may not have been hitting a lot of homers but he hit 30+ doubles each of those seasons. Then in ’82 when he first hit AAA his HR numbers rose a bit – from 1 every 68 ABs to 1 every 54 ABs. Then in ’83 in his second go-around in AAA they rose again to 1 every 24 ABs. Also note that he crushed the minors at every level, finishing with a .332/.378/.471 line. I don’t care if some people didn’t think he was a top prospect (although I’m not sure if that’s true – there’s a difference between the perception of a player when he was drafted and the perception after he has performed in the minors), he was clearly not only a top performer in the minors but he was also a player whose performance – and power – IMPROVED as he climbed the ladder. Also keep in mind that all the numbers I just cited took place between his age 19 and age 22 seasons, which is exactly when a player would be expected to develop their power. He may not have been a big kid who was projected to be a slugger when he was drafted, but if you look at his development as a young player in the minors he has a pretty clear trajectory, and that trajectory pretty clearly reveals the development of serious power potential and does not show us anything that is out of line with his future MLB performance in his mid 20s.
POWER IN MLB/WAS HE JUST A PRODUCT OF YANKEE STADIUM:
This seems easy enough… Let’s just look at his home/away splits to see if his performance/power were so aided by his home park that we can use that as a filter through which to view his career.
’84, Age 23
Home: .319/.357/.514, 12 HR, 31 XBH
Away: .364/.401/.558, 11 HR, 38 XBH
’85, Age 24
Home: .336/.374/.616, 22 HR, 44 XBH
Away: .311/.368/.521, 13 HR, 42 XBH
’86, Age 25
Home: .334/.383/.566, 17 HR, 40 XBH
Away: .367/.404/.580, 14 HR, 46 XBH
’87, Age 26
Home: .336/.384/.572, 17 HR, 32 XBH
Away: .318/.373/.545, 13 HR, 38 XBH
’88, Age 27
Home: .294/.334/.453, 11 HR, 25 XBH
Away: .327/.372/.472, 7 HR, 30 XBH
’89, Age 28
Home: .334/.378/.577, 19 HR, 39 XBH
Away: .271/.323/.376, 4 HR, 21 XBH
If you think there’s something there that would lead us to believe he developed his power thanks to his “Yankee Stadium swing,” please point it out, because I definitely don’t see it. Did he hit a few more homers at YS2 than he did on the road during those seasons? Sure. But that doesn’t mean what you consider to be his unexpected power was a result of his YS swing. Of course we expect left-handed hitters to hit a few more homers at YS than on the road, but there’s certainly not a pronounced enough split here to substantiate your narrative. In fact, if you look past the HR numbers, he actually probably hit for more power on the road than at home during 3 of these 6 prime years, and he started out, right out of the gates, hitting for more power on the road than at home. If he developed power thanks to his YS swing we would expect his numbers to look significantly different than they actually do.
So, in conclusion, I think your narrative is kinda hard to put too much stock into. It seems pretty clear that this was a prolific offensive player whose steep and rapid decline at the age of 29 can safely be attributed, extremely substantially, to his crippling back injury.
PS: Here’s some stuff on whether lineup protection actually exists or not: http://twitter.com/OSingh91/status/15509565814
HCM, why don’t you rework this into a guest post? Pose the title as a question, present your case and offer your conclusion. Most of what you just wrote can simply be copied and pasted with a bit of rewording.
BTW-You’re wrong about lineup effects in this situation. It’s true that lineup order doesn’t matter much, and where you put guys on a decent offensive team will tend to even out. But when you’re the one top player on a bad team (Mattingly/Wright) it’s very hard to produce for most players to produce to career norms.
Using your numbers 1984-89
98 HRs at Home
62 HRs Away
Hope you see it now. He was a low draft pick (19th Round) and that’s what I was referring to about him not being highly regarded. Also, given his smallish frame many doubted whether he could hold down 1B on a team like the Yanks, which is a power position. But he proved them all wrong, and was a borderline HOFer .
Also, I noted that his number never fully came back when the Yanks got good again. I wasn’t dismissing the back injury, just saying that the bad teams he played on took a bad situation and made it worse.
No, I still don’t see it, and I think the only way someone can see it is if they want to see it because they’re trying to prove a point.
You said:
“Nobody thought he would ever hit for much power, but he developed a Yankee stadium swing.”
And as your proof, which is supposed to outweigh all other evidence to the contrary, you point to the fact that for a 6-year stretch, during which he averaged 27 HR/season, he hit an average of 6 more homers per season at home than he did on the road (which average includes a couple of outlier seasons, I might add)? That does not substantiate your point. I don’t think those numbers show much – nor does the stat itself show much since we have no idea how many of those Yankee Stadium homers, the ones you have to assume barely made it over the fence and would not have been homers elsewhere in order to attempt to make your point, would have or would not have been homers elsewhere.
As I stipulated above, of course we expect a left-handed hitter, especially one with a compact upper-cut swing like Mattingly’s, to hit more homers in Yankee Stadium than on the road. What you’re pointing to is pretty normal, it’s not evidence that his power was some sort of mirage created by his Yankee Stadium swing. He didn’t develop power due to his Yankee Stadium swing, he just developed power, period. Were his numbers a little aided by playing his home games in Yankee Stadium? Yes – but you can say that about any left-handed power hitter who ever played for the Yankees
How do you reconcile your conclusion that Mattingly’s power was created by his Yankee Stadium swing with the fact that his slugging percentage was higher on the road in 3 of his 6 peak seasons? Or that he had more XBH on the road in 4 of those 6 peak seasons? My point is not that his HR numbers weren’t aided at all by playing in Yankee Stadium, it’s that Mattingly’s power wasn’t some mirage created by his Yankee Stadium swing.
I think you like stirring the pot and writing controversial comments/posts to spur conversation/commenting, and that’s your prerogative, but when you put theories out there and then bend over backwards trying to mold the facts to fit those theories it looks pretty cheap. It certainly doesn’t look like you thought of a topic of discussion, examined the available evidence, and then came to your conclusions.
Mondesi, I’ve always known you as someone who can make a cogent, fact-based argument without making things personal. But apparently I was wrong about that.
I didn’t make anything personal, I made an observation about the arguments you make.
Ok, guys, that’s it. Let’s stop right here with this. No reason to have two intelligent guys going at it in this manner. Please keep any additional comment on this thread dedicated to baseball arguments.