By Win Shares and Loss Shares the Most Valuable Player appears to be Bob Allison (25—4), a player for whom I have a particular fondness because he played for Kansas University. Allison hit .271 in 1963 but with 35 homers and 90 walks giving a league-leading .911 OPS. He led the league in runs scored with 99; the fact that it was one of the few leagues in history in which no player scored 100 runs is indicative of our problem.
Allison led the league in runs scored, was third in home runs, fifth in total bases, fourth in RBI, third in walks, second in runs created, first in runs created per 27 outs, fourth in on base percentage, and second in slugging percentage. He was a good defensive right fielder, played some in center, and was the most feared base runner of his time, in that he was big, fast, and liked to run into people. He seems to have finished higher in everything else than he did in the MVP voting (15th).
However, while we might safely conclude that Allison should have done better than he did in MVP voting, it might be a stretch to conclude that he actually should have won it. The Win Shares and Loss Shares system is based on runs, but makes no adjustment for the under-performance or over-performance of the team. The Twins, based on their runs scored (767) and runs allowed (602) should have won about 100 games. In fact, they won only 91 games, finishing third.
Allison has a very thin lead anyway. If we discount Twins’ runs for the fact that they did not turn them into wins, as we probably should, Allison would drop back to perhaps fifth place in the voting, or even lower; perhaps tenth. His candidacy appears to depend on issues that are too fine for our sifter.
Setting Allison aside, that moves Camilo Pascual into the top spot. I loved Camilo Pascual; he was a little Cuban with the best curve ball of his time. Kind of imagine Tommy Gordon as a 20-game winner. Pascual was 21-9 in 1963, led the league in strikeouts and had a 2.46 ERA. I didn’t realize he was such a good hitter; he also hit .250 that year and drove in 12 runs—which is a lot of RBI for a pitcher, but the previous year he had hit .268 and driven in 19. I credit him with a won-lost contribution of 26-8.
But Pascual was a teammate of Allison’s, and if we discount Allison’s numbers for the underperformance of the team, perhaps we should also discount Pascual’s by the same percentage. Not necessarily; we could check to see whether the team under-performed in Camilo’s starts.
They did, actually; the Twins outscored their opponents in Pascual’s starts exactly 2 to 1, 164 to 82, which would mean they should have won 80% of those games, or 25-6. They were actually 22-9, an underperformance of three games.
OK, so we have to discount Pascual’s performance somewhat, as well. That pushes Gary Peters into the top spot at 24-5. Peters was the Rookie of The Year in 1963, 19-8 actual won-lost log with a league-leading 2.33 ERA, and I mentioned that I didn’t realize that Pascual was such a good hitter, but everybody knew that Peters was a good hitter; he was famous for it. He hit .259 with 3 homers, 12 RBI that year.
Peters had been in the minors a long time, with curiously consistent won-lost records in the minor leagues—10-6, 10-5, 13-9, 13-11, 12-9, 13-10. Finally he had a losing record in the minors (8-10 at Indianapolis, 1962), then shot up to the majors the next two years and went 19-8 and 20-8 his first two seasons. Go figure.
Anyway, Peters was certainly an impressive rookie and an MVP candidate, but he has the same problem; the White Sox also underperformed. They scored 683 runs and allowed 544, so they also should have won about 99 games, but didn’t; they won 94. If we knock Peters’ back about 5%, that kind of puts him back on an equal footing with Allison and Pascual, not to mention a dozen other guys who aren’t very far behind him.
If we move Peters down, that leaves Albie Pearson in the top spot at 24-7. Pearson is a really interesting candidate. He was a tiny, tiny man—listed at 5-5, 140—the smallest player of his day. He used his size to his advantage, drawing 92 walks that season. In 1958 he had been the American League’s Rookie of the Year, hitting .275 for Washington, but then he got hurt in ’59 and Bob Allison took over the position and won the same award, pushing Pearson aside. Pearson was traded to Baltimore and let go to the Angels in the 1961 expansion draft.
Pearson was a fan favorite, as a small player often is, but announcers of the generation talked about him in very patronizing ways, as if he were a child. We would hear often that "Little Albie", whenever he hit a home run, would muscle up for the next week and over-swing, trying to hit more home runs. His outstanding strikeout to walk ratios (37 to 92 in 1963) rather belie this tale, but that was the image of him that prevailed at the time, that he was a little guy who would rather have been a big guy.
Sportswriters in that generation had absolutely no concept of the value of a .402 on base percentage, and absolutely no awareness that the Angels’ were playing in the worst hitter’s park in the American League, with a Park Run Index of .82. The Angels had a disappointing season, losing 91 games. Considering these factors, it is perhaps not surprising that Albie finished 14th in the MVP voting.
The Angels, however, once more underperformed their run ratio; with 597 runs scored and 660 allowed they should have won 73 games, which isn’t many, but they only won 70. That’s only a 4% discount, but then, Albie doesn’t have much of a margin to work with. (The teams that over-achieved their run production, if you’re curious, were Baltimore and Cleveland). I think Albie was as deserving of an MVP vote as any of these other guys, but it’s hard to argue that he was more deserving or uniquely deserving among the competitors. He was, like Allison, Peters and Pascual, another guy who had a good year, but maybe not an MVP year.
That knocks us down to Tom Tresh. The Yankees had four MVP candidates—not counting Bobby Richardson, who actually finished 10th in the MVP voting, ahead of Allison, Pearson and Pascual, but who I did not include in this study because of his .294 on base percentage. The four legitimate MVP candidates on the Yankees were Tresh, Howard, Whitey Ford and Jim Bouton.
The Yankees over-performed a little; they should have won 101 games, but found a way to win 104. Tresh also deserves some credit, in my book, for his ability to do whatever the Yankees needed done. In 1962 Tony Kubek had military service commitments; Tresh stepped in, drove in 93 runs and won the American League Rookie of the Year Award, and the Yankees won the pennant. In 1963 Kubek was back but Mantle was injured. Tresh moved to center field, and the Yankees won the pennant.
Tresh, however, has MVP issues of his own. He drove in only 71 runs, hitting just .240 with runners in scoring position; the Win Shares/Loss Shares system doesn’t pay attention to that, either, but perhaps we should. He hit .158 on the season with two out and runners in scoring position, and hit just .149 against the Yankees’ closest competitor, the White Sox. These may be niggling issues, but again, it’s not like he has a commanding lead to work with.
Next up is Dick Radatz, Da Monstah. The first great power reliever, Radatz in 1963 pitched 132 innings, striking out 162 batters, which is the third-most ever for a reliever, the record being held by Radatz himself in 1964. He saved 25 games, won 15 more, and had a 1.97 ERA in a hitter’s park.
Radatz was a sensation, and he did finish fifth in the MVP voting, which is the highest finish we’ve seen so far. Radatz could be the MVP, but to say that he is depends on a close and careful calculation of the extent to which his 132 innings were leveraged innings. The Win Shares System relies on an estimate of this based on his Saves, a fairly crude tool for that purpose. I don’t think that we can say, based on what we actually know, that he should have won the MVP award—any more than we can say this about Allison, Pascual, Peters, Pearson or Tresh.
Next man up is Whitey Ford (24-11), actual won-lost record of 24-7, and then Elston Howard (22-6). To me, it is ultimately impossible to say, since somebody had to win the Award, that Elston Howard is not the most deserving candidate. Howard hit worse with runners in scoring position than Tresh did (.227), although his overall clutch numbers are OK. He hit .327 and .351 against the Yankees two closest competitors, and hit a third of his home runs (9) against those two teams.
The people who were on the scene knew many things about these players that we do not know, strive as we might to increase our understanding. Their judgment at the time was that Howard was the best player in the league, and, since it is not clear that they were wrong about this, I think we have to assume that they were right.
A few notes about the rest of the list. Earl Battey had almost exactly the same triple crown stats as the MVP, Elston Howard; Howard hit .287 with 28 homers, 85 RBI; Battey hit .284 with 26 and 84. Both strong defensive players, both catchers. Win Shares fails to make the distinction between them, listing both of them at 22-6.
Al Kaline finished 2nd in the MVP voting despite finishing 12th in our ranking method. But again, given the unusual circumstances of the competition—everybody really is about the same—it is hard to say for sure that he didn’t deserve to win the award. Kaline was a Gold Glove right fielder, and hit .398 that season with runners in scoring position.
The guy who really seems to have been over-voted was Harmon Killebrew. Killebrew led the league in homers, as he always did, with 45. But he hit only .258, drove in only 96 runs, hit 60% of his homers with the bases empty, and hit just .233 with runners in scoring position. He was not a defensive asset, and he hit .189 with 1 homer and 6 RBI in 15 games against the Yankees. His team, as noted, under-achieved. I really don’t get why Killebrew should be 4th in the MVP voting in this competition, or why he should be ahead of his teammates Allison, Pascual, Earl Battey and Jimmie Hall.
Dick Stuart of the Red Sox led the American League in 1962 in home runs and RBI (42 and 118), and was 13th in the MVP voting. My evaluation shows him to have been less than a .500 player (16-18). His on base percentage was .312. The Park Run Index for Fenway was 115, second-highest in the league. Stuart was a notorious defensive liability, nicknamed "Dr. Strangeglove", and made 29 errors that year at first base. He led the league in grounding into double plays, with 24. I think if you add up the positives and negatives for him, it’s a wash.
One of the sources I used to pick the players to be included here was the All-Star team chosen by my group at STATS Inc. (myself, John Dewan, Don Zminda, Neil Munro and Jim Callis) when we published the All-Time Sourcebook about fifteen years ago. We chose Dick Stuart as the best first baseman in the league, and Jerry Lumpe as the best second baseman. I have both of them as sub-.500 players (16-18 and 16-17).
On a kind of whim, I included Norm Cash here. Compare Cash and Stuart. Stuart had more hits, more doubles, more triples, more homers, more runs scored, more RBI. Stuart won about as many games for his team as Cash did, but he lost a lot more. He made a hundred more outs, 478 to 377. Cash drew twice as many walks (89 to 44), struck out half as often (76 to 144), grounded into less than half as many double plays (9 to 24), hit for a little better average, had an on base percentage 74 points higher (.386 to .312) and an OPS 23 points higher (.856 to .833), while playing in a slightly tougher park for a hitter. He was a better fielder, although he was not really a good fielder, but he was much better than Stuart. I have Cash’s defensive contribution at 3-3, Stuart at 1-6. Taking all phases of their play, I would much prefer Cash (19-7) to Stuart (16-18), and I would rate Cash as nearly even with Harmon Killebrew, who finished 4th in the actual voting.