Surprises
25 Players who Turned out to be far better than it looked like they could be as rookies
As opposed to the list of 25 rookies who disappointed, this is more of a curated list. The list of disappointing rookies (yesterday) was pretty much a computer-generated list, defined by the distance between expected and actual Win Shares. If you do that on the other end, you get a list of Hall of Famers who had moderately successful rookie seasons, several of them winning the Rookie of the Year Award, but were projected for only 250 or 300 Win Shares, but went on to 500 or 700. That’s not really what we’re looking for, I don’t think, so I imposed some other conditions on the list.
25. Bobby Bonilla, 1986
Drafted by the White Sox from the Pirates in the 1985 Rule 5 draft, Bonilla was traded back to the Pirates after hitting just 2 home runs in 234 at bats. He was a big, big man; he is listed at 210 to 240 pounds, and he was all of that and it was mostly muscle. The White Sox weren’t looking for one home run every two months. For the Pirates he hit 1 more home run in 192 at bats, finished with three bombs in 426 at bats. Took him a couple of years for his power to show up, but it eventually did. Projected for 102 Win Shares off of his rookie season, he finished with 272.
What I loved about Bonilla was that he was the kind of player who was not defeated by his failings. You could put him at third base; he couldn’t play third base at all, but it didn’t beat him. He kept trying to play third base, and he kept on hitting. That’s a rare thing. That was like Greenberg in the outfield in 1940 (which I wrote about in the last segment of this series); Greenberg couldn’t play the outfield at all, but he just kept playing.
24. Paul Konerko, 1997
Physically similar to Bobby Bonilla but even slower, Konerko reached the majors after hitting .323 with 37 homers, 127 RBI at Albuquerque in 1996. The Dodgers had a first baseman already so the Dodgers attempted to play Konerko at third base, where he was sharing time, oddly enough, with Bobby Bonilla. After hitting .215 with 4 homers in 49 games with the Dodgers he was traded to Cincinnati. Konerko, still trying to play third base, hit .219 for Cincinnati, completing a thoroughly miserable rookie season (.217 with 7 homers in 75 games), and the Reds traded him to the White Sox.
The White Sox made him a first baseman/designated hitter, and he started to hit immediately, although he didn’t reach the 40-homer level for several years. Projected for 79 Win Shares off of his rookie season, he finished with 257.
For much of his career, Konerko had almost exactly the same career statistics as David Ortiz in many categories. The two players were the same age, and David’s career also, you will remember, started slowly.
Through the 2006 season Konerko had hit .283 with 245 homers, 805 RBI; Ortiz had hit .283 with 231 homers, 763 RBI.
Through the 2008 season Konerko was at .277 with 298 homers, 957 RBI; Ortiz was at .287 with 289 homers, 969 RBI.
Through 2011 Konerko was hitting .282 with 396 homers, 1261 RBI; Ortiz was at .283 with 378 homers, 1,266 RBI.
Through 2013 Konerko had hit .281 with 434 homers, 1,390 RBI; Ortiz had hit .287 with 431 homers, 1,429 RBI. Ortiz just outlasted him by a couple of years and pulled ahead at the end. Konerko was also the MVP of the 2005 American League Championship Series, driving in 7 runs in a five-game series.
23. Roy White, 1966 Yankees
As a rookie he hit just .225 and drove in only 20 runs in 115 games, 356 plate appearances. His second season (1967) was even worse, dropping to .224 with a 76-point drop in OPS. He went on to a fine career, of course. I always think of him as the Yankees’ version of Amos Otis. Those guys are underrated because they do everything pretty well, rather than doing one thing extremely well. The human mind just doesn’t process complex combinations as well as it does simple combinations. If he you hit .300 with 25 homers, everybody understands. If you hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases, everybody understands. If you hit .295 with 18 homers, 25 stolen bases, 80 walks and good defense, you may have equal or greater value but it takes longer for people to pick it up.
Projected for 79 Win Shares, he finished with 263.
22. Steve Garvey, 1971
As a rookie Garvey had almost the same numbers as Roy White, .227 with 7 homers. His second year was better but not much better; his third season was a little better but he still wasn’t a regular. In the spring of 1974 I was student teaching, and car-pooled with a guy who was a baseball fan, and he named his "jerk of the year" candidates as a sort of parody of the MVP candidates. He picked Garvey as the nothing player of the year. Garvey won the MVP Award that year, 1974.
From 1969 to 1972 Garvey was mostly a third baseman or, in keeping with the theme of this article, attempting to be one. He did not have a third baseman’s arm, lost confidence in his ability to make throws and developed a phobia about throwing that was with him the rest of his career, and diminished his value. Although he did win some Gold Gloves, if there was a runner on first and a ground ball was hit right at him he would just take the out at first, because he lacked confidence in his ability to make the throw to second.
Anyway, from 69-72 he was a bad third baseman; in 1973 he was a part-time first baseman, fighting for playing time with Bill Buckner and playing some in the outfield. He broke through in 1974.
21. Michael Young, 2001
Hit just .249 as a rookie and just .262 in his second season, playing regularly both seasons. That put him 42 and a half hits below a .300 career average, but he managed to finish his career as a .300 hitter. He also started his career as a second baseman, converted to shortstop.
20. Ken Caminiti, 1987
Hit just .246 with 3 homers in 63 games as a rookie, then hit just .181 his second season. Both Michael Young and Ken Caminiti Gritty would be projected for 52 Win Shares off of their rookie seasons, but finished with 242, same data in both cases.
19. Gil Hodges, 1948
A minor league catcher, Hodges made the majors as a catching prospect in 1947, was moved to first base with the emergence of Roy Campanella as a star catcher. His rookie season was poor; he hit just .249 with 11 homers in 134 games. With an OPS of .687 he was the only first baseman in the league with an OPS under .700, and it was not a strong league for first basemen. He was not young, either; he was 24. He started hitting in 1949.
Hodges was very athletic. He had those "springup" muscles in his thighs that catchers have sometimes, that make them a little bow-legged and able to hop out of a crouch, and he had a very strong throwing arm. Average speed or a tick above; much faster than Garvey, Konerko or Bonilla. Projected for 85 Win Shares, he got to 277.
18. Tony Phillips, 1983
As a rookie he hit just .248 with 4 homers, 35 RBI, and he had no defensive position. Playing in Oakland, it took him an exceptionally long time to start hitting; he really didn’t hit through 1990, by which time he was 31 years old and appeared to be about at the end of his career.
He was, however, an exceptional percentage player. He started at 48 walks and became a guy who would walk 100 times a year, 100 walks five times and 95 or more 7 times. And, without a clear defensive position, he became a player who could play anywhere on the field and be the best defensive player at any position except short or catcher; he could play short (294 games in his career), but he wasn’t the best shortstop in the league. At second, third or in the outfield, he was a tremendous defensive player. His versatility, speed, competitiveness, intelligence and adaptability made his career last until he was 40 years old. Projected for 77 Win Shares, he finished with 268.
17. Doc Cramer, 1931
As a rookie outfielder in 1931 Doc Cramer hit just .260 with a .642 OPS; adding in his few at bats in 1929 and 1930 his career average was .248, and in 1931 there were .300 hitters who couldn’t find work. He was 25 years old then, and he had absolutely no power; later in his career he would establish a major league record, which I believe still stands, for consecutive at bats without ever hitting a home run. It was not a promising premise for a career—not young, no power, .248 average in the majors, and he wasn’t really fast, either; he was kind of fast but not really. In his career he stole 62 bases but was caught stealing 73 times.
He was a regular in the major leagues until he was 39 years old, played until he was 42, and got 2,705 hits in the majors. I should use Doc Cramer to explain something about Win Shares and WAR. WAR is like profit; Win Shares is more like revenue. In business, you need to know what both of those things are, your revenue, your expected revenue, and your profit. Cramer had a lot of Win Shares, 242, but not a lot of profit in it; he is credited by Baseball Reference with just 8.5 WAR.
Do you know the famous exchange between a businessman and his accountant, and the businessman asks "What was our profit this year?" and the accountant says "What did you want it to be?" "Profit" is like that; it is a difficult concept. Revenue is a relatively simple thing to measure; profit, which relies on attribution of costs, is much trickier.
You wouldn’t want to bet a lot of money that our estimates of Doc Cramer’s WAR are accurate. He was a center fielder, supposedly a good defensive center fielder, playing a game in which defense was measured only by old, poorly defined categories. In general I accept that he was not a Hall of Fame candidate despite the 2,705 career hits, and in a general way I accept that the profit on his playing time was limited, but he may have had much more defensive value than modern analysts believe that he did. 44 expected Win Shares, 242 actual.
16, Omar Vizquel, 1989
A part of the greatest rookie class of all time with Seattle in 1989 (Vizquel, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez), he hit just .220 as a rookie, with a .534 OPS. He was close to losing his job, losing his career; he lost playing time in 1990, as the Mariners experimented with other shortstops but couldn’t find one. Vizquel didn’t really start to hit until 1992, and of course hitting was never what he did best.
Edgar Martinez would also be on this list, I think, if I had defined the candidates in such a way that he fit. To make the list, a player had to have 200 plate appearances in a rookie season, because the projections get weird if you’re working with too little playing time. Martinez had only 196 plate appearances in his last rookie-eligible season, thus isn’t on the list. Vizquel was projected for 79 career Win Shares, wound up with 282.
15. Brett Butler, 1982
Hit just .217 as a rookie, driving in only 7 runs in 89 games. Like Doc Cramer, he was 25 years old in his rookie season. He played well in 1983, becoming the Brett Butler that most of us remember, and went on to a long major league career in which he scored 100 or more runs six times.
I loved Brett Butler, as a player, and I absolutely believe that his game would work in 21st century baseball. I believe that it would work better now than it did in the 1980s, but there really is no Brett Butler left in the majors; Brett Gardner, maybe.
One thing you will notice is how many of these players were traded early in their careers. Omar Vizquel, after four seasons in the majors, was traded to Cleveland for Felix Fermin, Reggie Jefferson and cash. Doc Cramer was traded early in his career, Bonilla was, Konerko. They were traded because their teams underestimated their upside, which is our selection criteria in a sense. Butler was traded to Cleveland after his first good season in a disastrous trade that substantially undermined the Braves of the 1980s. 40 Projected Win Shares; 245 actual.
14. Miguel Tejada, 1998
Hit just .233 with 11 home runs as a rookie, but reached 30 homers two years later and would drive in 100 runs five straight times with totals including 131 and 150. 79 Projected Win Shares, 280 actual.
13. Steve Finley, 1991
Similar to Brett Butler but not as much fun, since he developed power in mid-career. Finley signed with the Orioles, had a bad rookie season for them in 1991, hitting just .249 in 81 games with a .616 OPS. He was a regular in 1992 but wasn’t much better, hitting .256 with a .632 OPS, and was traded to Houston that winter, with Curt Schilling and Pete Harnsich, in a package for Glenn Davis. Finished with 2500+ hits, 300+ homers, 289 Win Shares. As a rookie we would have projected him for 77.
12. Torii Hunter, 1989
Played 135 games as a rookie, but hit just .255 with 9 home runs. Of course he went on to a long and successful career. A positive, friendly person, he was the first person to become famous for home-run robbing catches, after we started counting those. The most famous moment of his career was probably when he went head-first over the fence in Fenway during the 2013 post-season, trying to rob David Ortiz of a Grand Slam home run. Ortiz and Hunter were the best of friends, having been together as young players in the Minnesota farm system. 63 projected Win Shares, 276 actual.
11. Maury Wills, 1959
Buried in the minor leagues for eight and a half seasons, Wills was on the verge of being released until he decided to try switch hitting and bunting a lot to take maximum advantage of his speed. Called to the majors as an emergency stop gap in 1959, he played dreadfully in his first month in the majors, hitting .143 in his first 15 games, being 0-for-3 as a base stealer, and making two errors in his first major league game. He was 26 years old. The Dodgers, desperately short of options at shortstop due to injuries, stuck with him. He caught fire in September, 1959, hitting .345 in that month after hitting no better than .241 in any other, and went on from there to a near-Hall of Fame career. 32 projected Win Shares, 253 actual.
10. Dwight Evans, 1973
Batted just .223 in 119 games as a rookie. 55% of rookies who hit .220 to .229 will retire with less than 600 career games, and Evans did not explode on the league in his second year; kind of like Tony Phillips, he didn’t really find himself as a hitter until he was about 30. He hit .272 in his career, but while he hit "only" .272 he had 3,214 secondary bases in his career, as opposed to 2,447 hits. Secondary bases are extra bases on hits (Evans had 1,745), walks (1,391) and stolen bases (78). On average over time, there are about as many secondary bases as hits. Doc Cramer had 2,705 hits but only 1,259 secondary bases. A player with significantly more secondary bases than hits will virtually always also have more runs scored + RBI than hits, and a player with significantly fewer secondary bases than hits will almost always have less. In this case, Evans had 2,447 hits but 2,861 runs scored and RBI, while Cramer had 2,705 hits but only 2,199 runs scored and hits. Evans as a rookie projected for just 94 career Win Shares, but actually had 347.
9. Bobby Abreu, 1998
Another right fielder who was very similar to Evans in career hits, secondary bases and runs scored + RBI, and who was always underrated because of that. Abreu hit just .250 as a rookie, with 3 homers in 59 games. After that season he was taken by Tampa Bay in the 1998 expansion draft, but was traded immediately (by Tampa Bay) to Philadelphia, where he began his great career. He was traded for Kevin Stocker, which illustrates the general point of this list. If Houston had any idea how good he was going to be they would never have left him exposed in the expansion draft, and if Tampa Bay had any idea how good he was they would never have traded him for Kevin Stocker. Projected for 102 Win Shares based on his rookie season; wound up with 359.
8. Roberto Clemente, 1955
Had 501 plate appearances as a rookie but hit only .255 with 5 homers. Didn’t hit his stride as a hitter until 1960, but was only 25 years old in 1960. Projected for 118 Win Shares based on his rookie season, he wound up with 377.
7. Graig Nettles, 1969
Hit just .222 as a rookie for the Twins in 1969; see note about Dwight Evans, who hit .223. After his rookie season he was traded as part of a package for Luis Tiant, who won only 7 games for the Twins before entering a career crisis. Nettles was a tremendous defender and had a great launch angle, hit everything in the air. Based on his rookie season we would have projected him for 52 Win Shares; he wound up with 311.
6. Darrell Evans, 1971
Similar to Nettles, a good defensive third baseman (not as good as Nettles) with a great launch angle. As a rookie he hit .242 but with 12 homers in 89 games, not terrible numbers, but he would have projected for only 89 career Win Shares. He wound up with 363. These comments are short because I assume you all know the stories of guys like Dwight and Darrell Evans, Roberto Clemente and Graig Nettles. Let me know if I’m wrong about that.
5. Lou Brock, 1962
Brock hit just OK as a rookie, .263 with 9 homers, 16 stolen bases, and basically duplicated that season in 1963. The Cubs had Billy Williams in left field, just a year older than Brock; Williams did not have the speed or arm to play the other outfield positions. They tried to make Brock a center fielder based on his speed and their needs, but he just was not a center fielder, so they tried him in right, but that didn’t work, either. They had to trade him, really; they didn’t have any option about that. They didn’t make a good trade. Based on his rookie season we would have projected him for 70 career Win Shares. He wound up with 348.
4. Tony Perez, 1965
Hit .260 as a rookie, 12 homers and 47 RBI. He was playing first base as a rookie, which limited what we would expect from him. . . .a 23-year-old rookie first baseman hitting 12 homers in 104 games; that’s not Johnny Mize or Willie McCovey. In 1967 he moved to third base; the Reds were trying to get both Perez and Lee May in the lineup, like the Giants trying to squeeze McCovey and Cepeda both into the lineup. Perez had a couple of big years with the bat at third base, but was defensively challenged. The Reds eventually traded Lee May and moved Perez back to first, and he made the Hall of Fame as the first baseman on the Big Red Machine. 70 Win Shares projected, 348 actual.
3. Gary Sheffield, 1989
There has always been machinery in place to pick over the upcoming rookies and let the public know who was supposed to be good. In my youth, Topps baseball cards featured selections of rookies who were coming up, three or four on a card, and pre-season magazines picked the pre-season rookie of the year, etc. There was an Associated Press poll on the subject. I could rummage around in my memory and tell you who was the pre-season rookie of the year in 1961 (Yastrzemski) or 1964 (Don Buford); of course the voters were usually wrong, but my point is that the machinery existed. It existed 50 years before that; writers would go to spring training and compile lists of the best "bush leaguers" who were trying to cut the mustard.
By 1989 this machinery was in a fairly modern state, and Gary Sheffield had set off the Hype Machines before the season started. He was supposed to be the big news among rookies of that season. He had a dreadful rookie campaign, hitting .247 with 5 homers, 32 RBI, but also attempting to play shortstop and failing that test in a more dramatic fashion. That is another theme of this list: very often these players who don’t do anything as rookies but later become stars struggled as rookies in part because they were being asked to play a defensive position that they couldn’t really handle. Another theme is, of course, that then they get traded. Sheffield moved to third base in 1990, hit .294 but without a lot of power, then lost most of the 1991 season to injuries, hitting .194 with two homers in 50 games. After that he was traded to San Diego, where he hit .330 with 33 homers his first season. As a rookie we would have projected him for 118 Win Shares. He wound up with 431.
1. Luke Appling
Luke Appling in 1931 was on the older side for a rookie (24), didn’t hit a lick and also made—this is a little hard to believe—42 errors in 76 games at shortstop. In his second season he jumped his batting average from .232 to .274, but made more errors than any other American League player at any position (49). That wasn’t at one position; he made 37 errors at shortstop, 6 at third base and 6 at second base. At that, making 37 errors at shortstop, he improved his fielding percentage from .900 to .929. By 1933 he had settled in as a hitter, hitting .322 and collecting 197 hits, but still made 55 errors at shortstop.
After a Hall of Fame playing career Appling was a very successful minor league manager, but wasn’t perceived as having the personality of a major league manager. Because Charlie Finley, owner of the A’s, had grown up in Chicago while Appling was playing, he found Appling and brought him to the majors as a coach, as he had done with Gabby Hartnett, mentioned earlier in the series. Because Appling was part of the A’s organization I knew who he was from an early age, before I knew anything about baseball history; he was always referred to as "Old Aches and Pains." But the "Old Aches and Pains" nickname wasn’t put on him until 1948, when he gave a pre-game interview talking about how stiff and sore he was, then went out and played a terrific game in the field. Projected as a rookie for 52 Win Shares, he went on to 378.
1. Mike Schmidt, 1973
Among the 2,640 rookies in this study, only 59 hit less than .200 as rookies, or 2% of the group. Among the 59 who hit under .200, only 13 went on to moderately successful careers: Ed Bailey, Mark Belanger, Jerry Grote, Ken Henderson, Brandon Inge, Jeff King, Spike Owen, Dean Palmer, Bill Robinson, Mike Schmidt, Dick Schofield Jr., Eric Soderholm and Matt Williams. Only three of those had what I would call clearly successful careers: Belanger, Schmidt and Matt Williams.
Schmidt was, of course, by far the best of them. He was not a young rookie above his level, either; he was 23 years old, and had had a big year in the PCL in 1972. He did some things well as a rookie; he hit 18 homers, drew 62 walks in 367 at bats, and he played well in the field. Still, based on his overall rookie profile, we would have projected him for only 81 major league Win Shares. He wound up with 467.