Harrah Thrashes Knight, 88-54

Friday, September 17

            Number 3 seed Toby Harrah used big advantages in power and speed to race to an early lead of 26-7, and coasted to an easy first-round victory over Ray Knight. 

            Harrah—who is the third-best power/speed player in the tournament, behind HoJo and Chipper—built on the early lead with Plate Discipline and Career Length, negating his weaknesses in the later categories.   Harlond Clift and Doug Rader will meet on September 20 (Monday), and Harrah will play the winner on September 24.

            Ray Knight came to the majors with the Big Red Machine, the 1974 Reds, and because of that struggled to get playing time for several years.    He never batted more than 100 times in a season until 1979, when a player named P. Edward Rose left as a free agent.    Knight was 26 by then, and had perhaps his best season his first year as a regular, posting a career-high .814 OPS.  He hit .318 with 37 doubles, and was named the Reds’ Most Valuable Player—no mean feat when you look at who the other regulars on that team were.

            He had one more season as a .300 hitter, hitting .304 with Houston in 1983, but in that season he scored only 43 runs.   There are 3,282 players in baseball history who have had 500 plate appearances in a season and hit .300 for the season, of whom only one other (Hank Severeid in 1924) scored as few as 43 runs (Severeid scored 37).  The stat highlights a problem for Knight:  although he was a better player than Ken Reitz, he had Ken Reitz’ Disease.  He was extremely slow, didn’t walk much, and never hit more than 14 homers in a season.   His career OPS, .711, was the 12^th-lowest in the tournament.

            Knight was like one-quarter Cherokee Indian or something; I find numerous references to the Indian blood, but can’t find the percentage.   Anyway, on a trip to Japan in 1978 (with the Reds) Knight made the acquaintance of the biggest star female athlete in America at that time:   Nancy Lopez.   Lopez was a phenom, a very pretty young woman who was carrying women’s golf on her back.   In her rookie year on the LPGA (1978), she won five straight tournaments, and eight more the next year; she truly was the Tiger Woods of women’s golf.

            Nancy Lopez single-handedly made women’s golf hotter than it has ever been.  This put pressures on her that she was ill-equipped to handle.   Lopez was married to a sportscaster named Tim Melton, who worked for a Cincinnati radio station and became good friends with Knight.    Melton took a job in Houston, and, by coincidence, Knight was traded to Houston shortly after that (1982).    Knight, Lopez and Melton became friendly, but Lopez’ marriage was crumbling; under the stress of the unhappy marriage she had put on a lot of weight, which didn’t help either her marriage or her golf game.   By the end of 1982 Lopez had divorced Melton and married Knight.   Although there are periodic reports that the marriage is on the rocks, I believe that Knight and Melton remain married to this day; in any case they were still married a year ago.  (Incidentally, Knight from a previous marriage had a son named Brooks—I believe in honor of Brooks Robinson.)

            Knight played for the Astros (1982-1984) and played well the first two of those seasons, having won-lost contributions of 20-15 and 18-10.   In early 1984 he began experiencing problems with vertigo (dizziness and loss of balance), lost his job, and was traded to the Mets.  With the Mets he rallied, hitting .298 in 1986.

            I remember being in an arbitration case in 1987 for a player who had led the team in Game-Winning RBI, which was a very badly designed stat that I would ordinarily never use, but. ..our guy had a good number, so of course we mentioned it.    The arbitrator expressed the opinion that it was a meaningless stat “unless, you know, it was like Ray Knight.”   In the playoff against Houston, although Knight had not driven in a run in the first five games, in the sixth and deciding game he drove in a run with a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning, tying the score and putting the game in extra innings, then drove in the go-ahead run in the 16^th inning.

            Knight hit .391 in the 1986 World Series.   In the sixth game of the World Series, the Mets trailing 3 games to 2, the Red Sox scored two runs in the top of the tenth inning, seemingly sealing the victory, but the Mets rallied on two-out singles by Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell, and Ray Knight.   Knight then scored the game-winning run on the Bill Buckner play.

            The 7^th game of the series was tied 3-3 into the bottom of the 7^th inning.   Knight homered, giving the Mets a 4-3 lead.    He was named the Most Valuable Player of the Series.  It would be an understatement to say that that was the highlight of his career.  He was 33 years old by that time, had been battling injuries for years, and his career would be over within two years.   He later managed the Cincinnati Reds, unsuccessfully, and is now a broadcaster for the Washington Nationals.   He is remembered as a great clutch hitter, but he never drove in 80 runs in a season, and he drove in a lot more than he scored.

Ray Knight—Wins and Losses

Bob Elliott 91, Dean Palmer 49

            1947 National League MVP Bob Elliott defeated 1990s power hitter Dean Palmer, 91-49, in the most lopsided game of the tournament so far:

            Palmer hit 38 homers in 1996 and 1999, hit 275 homers in a fairly short career, and ranks third among the 66 players in the tournament in Isolated Power, behind Troy Glaus and Chipper Jones, ahead of Matt Williams.    But he was the worst defensive player in the tournament, and, as he played a couple of years in Kansas City, I can assure you that that is not some sort of statistical glitch; he really couldn’t play third base at all.   He was very muscular in the upper torso, had a scatter arm and couldn’t field a bunt.   He was an excellent run producer and an above-average hitter, but we have his fielding wins and losses calculated at 16 wins, 37 losses:

            Bob Elliott’s second-round match will be played on September 23, when he will meet the winner of tomorrow’s contest between Larry Parrish and Heinie Zimmerman.

Howard’s End; Rolen Roles

            12^th-seeded Howard Johnson, a fan favorite due to his power, speed, walks and his position with the Mets of the 1980s, was ousted from the tournament by Scott Rolen in a surprisingly easy 94-71 victory.

            Johnson was the top Power/Speed combination in the tournament:

            Power and Speed are the first two scoring elements of the competition, and this did guarantee Johnson an early lead.  Rolen also has done very well in those areas, however—he’s the fifth-best power/speed combination in the tournament—and this limited the damage for him.   Trailing just 25-16 after Power and Speed, Rolen had a big advantage in batting average (.284 to .249), and used this to pull ahead 36-29.   Johnson, although competitive in some areas, was never able to get back on his feet and get back in the game:

            Fifth-seeded Rolen will face fourth-seeded Ken Boyer in St. Louis on September 23.

            Johnson, as I mentioned earlier, is totally atypical of the Brooks Robinson-mold third baseman, and doesn’t really belong in the tournament in that sense.   He did have a very high secondary average, however (.384), and was a popular player in the sabermetric community for that reason.

            The Tigers’ first-round draft pick in 1979, Johnson made the big club out of spring training in 1982, 21 years old at the time.   He hit just .188 through May 2, and was sent out.    Returning to the major league team on August 15, Johnson hit .405 in September, 1982 (34 for 84), finishing the season at .316 in 54 games.   He seemed at that time to be on the verge of superstardom—power, speed, switch hitter, 21 years old, .316 average.   There was something about him that Sparky Anderson never liked, however; Sparky was his manager in Detroit, and preferred Tom Brookens to Johnson, and, because of that and because of some injuries, Johnson’s career hung fire for four years.    He finally kicked it in 1987 with the Mets, having three 30/30 seasons—36 homers, 32 steals in 1987, 34 and 41 in 1989, and 38 and 30 in 1991.  He also walked about 80 times a year.

            Johnson was quick enough to play third and had an OK arm, but he somehow never quite fit at third base.    His career fielding percentage at third base was just .929—actually the worst fielding percentage of any player to play 1000 games at third base since 1920.   (Butch Hobson and Dick Allen are worse, but only a tiny bit worse, and neither of them came close to a thousand games at third.)   His range numbers were not good, either.  He wasn’t the worst third baseman in the group, but he’s low on the scale, and he’s being compared here to a guy (Rolen) who has won several Gold Gloves.

            Johnson during his years with the Mets was an awfully good player—easily the best player eliminated from this tournament thus far, although that will change with the next game.  His won-lost records from 1987 to 1991 start at 20-11 and go up from there; altogether, during those five seasons, Johnson is credited with 108 wins and 53 losses.   In 1989 and 1991 he was fifth in the voting for the National League’s MVP Award—and, in 1989, he may have deserved to rank higher than that.  Had Johnson’s career taken off in 1983, rather than 1987, he might have been able to compete with the upper-echelon players in the tournament. 

Kamm-Shafted

            Troy Glaus, the #1 power hitter in the tournament, has been sent to the sidelines by 1920s Glove Wizard Willie Kamm.   Kamm defeated Glaus 75-74 in a contest that saw almost every area of performance dominated by one player or the other.

            With a career slugging percentage of .490, batting average of .254, Glaus has an Isolated Power of .236—the highest of any player in the tournament.    Kamm, with only 29 career home runs, is near to the bottom in this area, and this enabled Glaus to jump off to a 22-2 lead.  Kamm, however, got a little of that back with speed and the rest of it back with batting average, and trailed by only one point after the first three categories (29-28).  A big advantage in defense put Kamm fifteen points ahead early in the second half, and he held on for a one-point victory:

            Glaus now replaces Howard Johnson as the best player who has been eliminated from the tournament, and it is a close call whether Kamm or Glaus should have gone.  Had Glaus had a good year either last year or this year, he would probably won the game.   If he has a comeback year next year, he will move ahead of Kamm.   Where he is right now—Kamm is ahead.

            Given a simplistic interpretation of the stats, Willie Kamm may have the best defensive statistics of any third baseman in baseball history.   A regular for twelve years (1923 to 1934), Kamm led American League third basemen in double plays in 1923, in putouts, assists, double plays and fielding percentage in 1924, in assists and fielding percentage in 1925, in putouts, assists and fielding percentage in 1926, in putouts and fielding percentage in 1927, in putouts and fielding percentage in 1928, in putouts and fielding percentage in 1929, in putouts and double plays in 1931, in putouts and assists in 1932, and in fielding percentage in 1933 and 1934.   I don’t believe that any other player dominates the fielding statistics at third base the way that Kamm does.   His career fielding percentage, .967, was the major league record at the time that he retired, and still remains one of the highest percentages ever, almost 80 years after he retired. 

            By the more sophisticated math available to us now, Kamm does not rank as the greatest fielding third baseman ever, but he doesn’t miss by a whole lot, either.   Given that he is a .281 hitter with excellent walk rates—as many as 90 walks in a season—and a player who hit a lot of doubles, it is enough to earn him some respect, and enough to get him by this stage.    Kamm will face the winner of the Ron Cey/Jeremiah Denny contest in the next round.

            Glaus, in addition to his power, also did well in Plate Discipline, Awards, and Team Success.

            In tomorrow’s games, fourth-seeded Matt Williams faces 13-seed Melvin Mora in Baltimore, Larry Parrish takes on Heinie Zimmerman in Cleveland (5 vs. 12), Don Money deals with Aramis Ramirez in St. Louis (6 v. 11), and Adrian Beltre mixes it up with Kevin Seitzer in Los Angeles (7 vs. 10).

            On Sunday, Hubie Brooks (8) will tangle with Mike Lowell (9), Harry Steinfeldt (7) goes up against Hall of Famer Freddy Lindstrom (10) in St. Louis, Travis Fryman (6) battles Frank Malzone (11) in Cleveland, and Hall of Famer Jimmy Collins (5) deals with Charlie Hayes (12) in Baltimore.

            This is how the fourteen players who have been eliminated so far would rank as hitters; not their overall rank combining offense and defense, but just how they would rank as hitters.