Dave Fleming’s most recent article is an interesting look at Joe Mauer and the Twins’ endeavors to resign him. I agree with Dave that the Twins will (and potentially already have committed to) sign him to a long-term contract, one that almost guarantees he will finish the useful part of his career with them. However, during the discussion of this expected event, Dave posits that, “As a rule, teams lucky enough to have a Great Player don’t let those players go.”
Dave came to this conclusion through a simple thought experiment: choosing ten great players and then examining if they were ever let go from their teams. The ten players Dave came up with were Ruth, Gehrig, Ted Williams, Koufax, Aaron, Clemente, Mays, Hornsby, Yastrzemski, and Schmidt, with six lifers, two (Mays and Aaron) making late-life switches, and only two playing peak or near-peak years with different organizations. From this, Dave extrapolated a loose rule.
I, of course, objected in the comments, and most likely came out sounding like a buttbag.[1] Still, I chafed at the manner of selecting those players, as there were clear differences between most of their careers and the modern day playing environment, including free agency, multi-million dollar endorsement deals and the designated hitter. The first gives players an out they never had before, the second gives them reasons to seek larger markets than where they might have previously played, and the last gives players an extended life in one of the leagues. Obviously, the first is most important, and there exist many other differences, to boot.
So I decided to take a (somewhat) scientific look at the claim in the era of free agency. I gathered the largest list of what people might consider great players whose careers at least straddled the 1975 benchmark. To create the list, I took every player inducted to the Hall of Fame from the Palmer/Morgan class forward (each played 7-8 years in the free agency period), and then added any player not yet eligible for the Hall who stands clearly above the threshold for HOF induction (using some combination of Win Shares, Hall of Fame Monitor, common sense, etc.). I think the list is over-inclusive when we’re talking about really great players like Dave seems to be, but may be under-inclusive in that it leaves out a small group of players who are probably equal to the bottom 25% of the list.[2] You can discuss this in the comments, but I’m pretty sure it won’t greatly change the findings.
The list is made up of 33 Hall of Famers, 27 players who are as talented/accomplished as Hall of Famers,[3] and considers 6-7 current players who have a decent shot at joining the second group. So, 60 established players, plus 6-7 younger players. The results surprised me, in a few ways. First, the results:
33 Hall of Famers
Morgan – 5 teams on 6 occasions, moved in prime (age 27)
Palmer – one team
G. Perry – 9 (?) teams, end of career a mess
Jenkins – 4 teams on 6 occasions
Carew – 2 teams
Seaver – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Fingers – 3 teams
Jackson – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Carlton – 6 teams, but 4 in the last two years of career
Schmidt – 1 team
Niekro – 5 teams on 6 occasions
Sutton – 5 teams on 6 occasions
Yount – 1 team
Ryan – 4 teams
Brett – 1 team
Perez – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Fisk – 2 teams
Winfield – 6 teams
Puckett – 1 team
Smith – 2 teams
Murray – 5 teams on 7 occasions
Carter – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Molitor – 3 teams
Eckersley – 5 teams on 6 occasions
Sandberg – technically 2, but for all intents and purposes, 1 team
Boggs – 3 teams
Sutter – 3 teams
Ripken – 1 team
Gwynn – 1 team
Gossage – 9 teams on 10 occasions
Rice – 1 team
Henderson – 8 teams on infinity occasions
Dawson – 4 teams
27 Modern Day HOFs
A-Rod – 3 teams
Bonds – 2 teams
Jeter – 1 team
Griffey – 3 teams on 4 occasions
Pujols – 1 team
Pudge – 6 teams on 7 occasions
Manny – 3 teams
Piazza – 5 teams
Ichiro – 1 team
Frank Thomas – 3 teams
Sosa – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Palmeiro – 3 teams on 5 occasions
Biggio – 1 team
Chipper Jones – 1 team
Helton – 1 team
Sheffield – 8 teams
Bagwell – 1 team
Clemens – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Randy – 6 teams on 7 occasions
Maddux – 4 teams on 5 occasions
Rivera – 1 team
Pedro – 5 teams
Glavine – 2 teams on 3 occasions
Schilling – 7 teams
Smoltz – 3 teams, but 2 teams in last year
Mussina – 2 teams
Halladay – 2 teams
6 Young Studs
Mauer – 1 team
Cabrera – 2 teams
Utley – 1 team
Hanley – 2 teams
Johan – 2 teams
Sabathia – 3 teams
Breakdown:
HOF – 9 lifers, including Sandberg; Ozzie makes 10 if you’re being generous
Modern Day HOFs – 8 lifers, Smoltz, Glavine and Frank Thomas are reverse Ozzies
Young Studs – 2 lifers so far; Hanley’s a cheating “2 teams” for now, so call it 3.
So, 60 nearly full-career players, at most 21 lifers. And the proportion remains roughly the same if you only take the top 10, or top 15, or top 30 of these players, to fight against the fact that some of these players aren’t truly great.[4] I’m surprised the number is as low as it is, actually, though it broadly confirms my original thoughts.
Moreover, the list presents a clear theme, though it’s unclear where on the causation see-saw we are. Players that stayed with one team for the entire portion of their careers are also the most likely to be associated with a city. Common sense, and I have no idea whether teams are more willing to keep a guy because he’s the face of the city, or whether he becomes the face of the city because he sticks around (more likely, in my opinion), but the lifers in this list are also basically a list of baseball’s favorite sons. Ripken, Gwynn, Pujols, Schmidt, Yount, Brett, Puckett, Jeter[5] and Ichiro each define the teams they played for, even if they mostly reside in the middle of the pack when it comes to the 60 greatest players of the past 40 years.
There are a few follow-up questions I might consider, including: How do these rates compare to “average” players? To what extent is this a form of survivor bias, with abilities giving players a longer career, and thus a greater chance to switch teams? What percentage of their value does each player give to their primary team? To the secondary, tertiary, etc., teams?
However, I wanted to put this out there ahead of all that, because no one knows how actively interested in those follow-up questions I’ll be after lunch.
[1] That’s a bag of butts, in the event that you did not know.
[2] Players that are eligible for the Hall but not yet inducted are the largest group of the forgotten. Almost every single one of these players (from Raines to Blyleven to Alomar to McGriff) played for more than one team. Only Barry Larkin jumps out at me as a player left off the list who was also a lifer. I didn’t include these players because, simply, they weren’t considered great enough to be HOFs when they were first considered. Obviously this is a mistake in some cases, but it does suggest something about how these players were thought about when they played.
[3] The list includes players like Sosa, Palmeiro, Clemens and Bonds who may have difficulty getting into the actual Hall of Fame, but whose performance during their careers matched what would be necessary to get in.
[4] Of course, that is taking as fact that Joe Mauer is, in fact, great in this way. He may be, but as I wrote in The Firefly Fallacy (bam, I just referenced myself), it’s a little premature. And no, that’s NOT what she said.
[5] And to a lesser extent, Rivera