Introduction and First Picks
Expansion drafts resemble keeper fantasy league drafts (such as Scoresheet Baseball). The draft starts after each existing team protects umpteen players. Working on a different project, I initially looked at the expansion drafts to quantify how much they thinned out the established teams. I ended up having a blast exploring their rich history. I ranked every significant pick, sorted those rankings by draft, looked at which teams lost the most talent and why the best picks were allowed to be picked. I want to share interesting histories of some expansion picks. For example, an extraordinary number of them became Major League managers. The most fun was making an all-star team of best picks ever.
The first baseball expansion draft was on December 14, 1960 giving birth to two American League franchises: the "new" Washington Senators who became the Texas Rangers 10 years later (the "old" Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins) – and the Los Angeles Angels, who changed their name three times and are now commonly known as . . . the Los Angeles Angels (with "of Anaheim" officially tacked on). (Perhaps, in another year it will be the Los Angeles - Orange County Angels of Anaheim and San Bernardino County.) The Major Leagues have added 14 teams in total and they all started off with an expansion draft. The last one was in November of 1997 and brought us Arizona and Tampa Bay.
Of the major North American sports leagues, the National Football League beat out the American League with the continent’s first known expansion draft by a few months. The Dallas Cowboys selected players from the other NFL teams in March of 1960. The NBA’s first expansion draft (Chicago Packers – now the Washington Wizards) conducted their first expansion draft a few months after the A.L. (April ’61). The NHL didn’t expand until 1967, but when they did, they doubled in size going from 6 teams to 12.
All the players selected in these drafts have completed their Major League playing careers except Bobby Abreu and Miguel Cairo. Abreu could be considered the greatest expansion pick of all-time. The only expansion pick fans might place above him is Trevor Hoffman.
Two statistics are used here for roughly comparing the overall value of players’ careers: Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and Win Shares Above Bench (WSAB). WAR was invented by Tangotiger and friends and Win Shares came from Bill James long before it. As far as I recall, even the original concept of WAR came from Bill James. In this study my WAR data comes from Baseball-Reference and my WSAB figures come from Baseball Gauge.
The "Wins" in WAR refer to the wins in the team’s W-L column that a player brings to his team over a 162 game schedule above what a good AAA player would do in his place. "Win Shares Above Bench" is similar except it is comparing the player to a typical bench player rather than a good minor leaguer – although, I don’t think there is much difference, and 2) the "Wins" are multiplied by three to reach Win Shares.
The only other expansion pick you could compare in greatness with Hoffman and Abreu is Jim Fregosi. Trevor Hoffman set the record for most saves in a career (since broken by Mariano Rivera) and was an all-star or MVP vote getter 9 times. Twice he was the runner-up for the Cy Young Award. Bobby Abreu was an all-star or MVP vote getter 7 times, but never finished in the top 10. Hoffman did twice. Both Hoffman and Abreu had long healthy careers. Hoffman posted an ERA of 1.82 at age 41. Abreu received MVP votes at age 35 and is still active. He will be 38 in March.
Jim Fregosi was an all-star or MVP vote getter for eight years in a row ages 21 to 28. Incredibly, he never topped 350 At Bats afterwards. It is safe to say the vast majority of baseball fans and experts would rank these players 1. Hoffman, 2. Abreu, 3. Fregosi. However, neither WAR nor WSAB do. WAR pegs Hoffman with 30.8 wins above a replacement level pitcher, while crediting Abreu with 58.7 wins above a replacement outfielder and Fregosi with 46.1 wins above a replacement infielder. Using Win Shares Above Bench we get Bobby Abreu with 164, Trevor Hoffman with 120.4, and Jim Fregosi with 95.5.
Even though I understand that relief pitchers do not face nearly as many batters as every day players have plate appearances; and that the folks who devised WAR tried to take inning leverage into consideration (we all agree that teams generally do save their better relievers for when the need to stop the other team from scoring is greatest); and that I have always regarded the hype surrounding saves as a bit of myth building and confusion caused by studying a flawed statistic: a great closer gets paid as much as an all-star, so I’m going to be un-scientific and step closer to the ignorant masses’ conception of greatness.
In this study it is not necessary to get bogged down into the fine details of precision, so let’s just get on with it. Doubling Hoffman’s WAR during the years he led his teams in saves puts him at 61.1, which gives him a small edge over Abreu. That seems about right, doesn’t it? Doubling the WAR during team leading saves campaigns for other expansion pick relievers (Bob Miller, Hal Woodeshick, Mike Marshall, Dave Giusti, Tom Burgmeier, Skip Lockwood, Diego Segui, Jack Acker, Steve Reed, Bryan Harvey, Darren Holmes) does a similar more satisfactory job of ranking them among their peers than ranking by WAR alone.
I will refer to "AWAR" as a player’s career WAR accumulated after he was drafted plus a second dose of a reliever’s WAR accumulated during any season’s campaign in which he led his team in saves. Ignoring negative WAR seasons for all players might be a righteous nuance, because in many cases teams do not actually have a decent replacement level player to take his place. However, it is too difficult to separate those cases from players who were just playing below expectations. If a player is in a slump during an otherwise positive season, his stats from those games still count. Why should we take out his sub-replacement level seasons? OK, I concede this is a highly debatable issue, but we are starting to get bogged down, so, with a convenient rationalization I took the easier choice.
Similarly, I could have discounted seasons that were past a player’s arbitration or free agency years. A team generally doesn’t get more out of a player than what they pay for at that point in his career. But then, I wouldn’t be able to compare pre-free agency 1960s picks to 1990s picks who enjoyed a mature maximum benefit from free agency. Again, I decided (or rationalized) that the easier path of counting the player’s entire post expansion pick career as what we would be more interested in seeing.
With regards for keeper fantasy leagues, my choices make the most sense. We often protect or even play a rookie before he fully blossoms – dragging our team down. In that sense we are including his negative seasons in his value to us. Of course, using post pick career totals is right for keeper leagues that do not have to worry about free agency.
When referring to WSAB, I mean full career Win Shares Above Bench after their expansion selection. Just as with AWAR, negative campaigns are included, however, I did not double WSAB for closers as it is relatively much higher already than it is for a closer’s WAR.
Below are the AWAR rankings for each draft. The "Levels" are where they played during the season before the draft. The level in all-caps is where they played the most. Their age is how old they were on November 17 of the autumn of the draft. (The days that the draft took place varied, but I wanted to keep the relative ages the same.) For Major League "Years", if a player spends most of a season in the minors, it doesn’t count except as a "+". If he only spends a small part of the season in the minors, he does get credit, but with a "-". If the player had many partial seasons, they were roughly added together. Injury rehab assignments do not count.
To be eligible for the top picks lists, each player’s time in the Majors measured in seasons added to their AWAR must be >= 7. Major League service time was added to the minimum qualification, because it is another objective way of measuring value. A player with a long career but not much measurable contribution could be helping his team in other ways. The players are ranked by AWAR. WSAB is included in the evaluations when we want to get a little more precise about someone’s value such as determining who the "best" among a group was or who deserves a spot on the all-time expansion team.
Top 1960 American League Expansion Draft Picks
Player Level Age Year From By Years AWAR Pos.
Jim Fregosi D 18 ’60 Bos. Angels 16++ 46.1 SS
Dean Chance B 19 ’60 Bal. Was.2 10+ 31.9 SP
Hal Woodeshick MLB 28 ’60 Min. Was.2 7 15.5 RP-sp
Chuck Hinton C-aaa 26 ’60 Bal. Was.2 11 13.9 IF-OF
Albie Pearson AAA-MLB 25 ’60 Bal. Angels 5+ 11.8 OF
Bobby Shantz MLB 36 ’60 N.Y.Y. Was.2 4 8.7 RP
Dick Donovan MLB 32 ’60 Chi.W. Was.2 4+ 7.7 RP-SP
Bob Johnson MLB 24 ’60 A’s Was.2 10- 6.4 IF
Ken McBride AAA-mlb 25 ’60 Chi.W. Angels 4+ 6.0 SP-rp
Fred Newman B 18 ’60 Bos. Angels 4+- 4.7 SP-rp
Johnny Klippstein MLB 33 ’60 Cle. Was.2 5+ 3.0 RP
Buck Rogers AA-aaa 22 ’60 Det. Angels 7++ 2.5 C
Dean Chance, who was Jim Fregosi’s teammate on the 1960s’ Angels, has the 4th highest expansion WSAB of all-time: 76.3 – behind the big three of Abreu 164, Hoffman 120.4, and Fregosi 95.5. In AWAR, the top five are Hoffman 61.1, Abreu 58.7, Fregosi 46.9, Mike Marshall 32.3, and Chance 31.9. Both star Angels were chosen in the first ever expansion draft conducted in 1960, when 18 players could be protected from each team’s 25 man roster. Minor leaguers were eligible, too, although unlike the most recent drafts, they were the exception.
Yet, both Fregosi and Chance were snatched from the minors. You wonder how Boston, who gave up Fregosi - and Baltimore, who gave up Chance, could have misread their prospects so badly. However, the Angels didn’t jump on them either. Fregosi was the Angel’s 6th infielder taken and their 2nd shortstop. No wonder: he was merely an 18-year-old .267 hitter who had only completed his first pro season in Alpine, Texas of the Level D Sophomore League. Chance, coming off a year at the AAA level, was the 11th pitcher drafted – and he was drafted by the other expansion team: Washington, then immediately traded for the Angels’ pick from the same round. Sorry, I have no idea why such a wacky deal was made, but the new Senators were snookered for Joe Hicks on that one (-0.3 AWAR).
The Los Angeles Angels were exceptionally respectable for a pre-1990s expansion team. They won 86 games in their 2nd year. In WAR and WSAB, Fregosi and Chance towered over all other draft picks of the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, the new Washington Senators were even worse than the regularly losing old Washington Senators who quickly became quite respectable in Minnesota. The new Senators lost 100 games or more in each of their first four years – and didn’t climb over 80 wins until Ted Williams officially returned to professional baseball as their manager in 1969.
Outfielder and sometimes infielder Chuck Hinton (13.9/29.8 AWAR/WSAB) was the best player Washington drafted AND kept. The Senators could have used 7 Chuck Hintons. Over his three years with the team, he played every position outside the battery. However, if first year results were placed at a premium, Dick Donovan would get the top prize on the Senators. He immediately led the league in ERA.
Hal Woodeshick was the only full time Major Leaguer to go directly from the old Washington Senators to the new Washington Senators. He was a reliever with a similar post-pick career value (15.5/25.2) as Donovan. However, Woodeshick only spent a couple months with Washington before he was traded to Detroit and struggled. That fall, two days after the National League had their expansion draft, Woodeshick was purchased by one of the new teams - Houston. A year later, the 30 year old 7 year veteran suddenly matured into one of the most dominant relievers in baseball.
Besides Fregosi, Boston lost a good pitcher Fred Newman (4.7/12.5) in the draft. However, Baltimore took a bigger loss. In addition to Chance, they lost Hinton and the Angels’ 2nd best pick: 5’5" Albie Pearson (11.8/31.1). The rising Orioles managed to finish only two games behind the pennant-winning Yankees in 1964. It is safe to conclude that Dean Chance alone would have made enough difference that year to put Baltimore in their first World Series. For the vastly inferior expansion Angels, Change produced the Major League’s leading ERA (1.65), while pitching the league’s most innings (278), and winning the league’s most games (20-9). Chance took the only Cy Young Award that year. The leading vote getter in the N.L. was not Koufax for a change – due to an injury, he only came in 3rd with both leagues combined – but a future expansion pick: Larry Jackson, then of the Cubs.
The first three expansion picks ever: Eli Grba by the Angels, Bobby Shantz by the new Washington Senators, and Duke Maas by the Angels were each taken from the Yankees organization – you know, the organization that was in the midst of playing in 14 out of 16 World Series. That gives you an idea of how dominant they were in depth. In stars, they had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Moose Skowron, and Tony Kubek each on a long streak of all-star games or MVP votes.
Top 1961 National League Expansion Draft Picks
Player Level Age Year From By Years AWAR Pos.
Ken Johnson MLB 28 ’61 Cin. Hou. 8+ 21.1 SP-RP
Turk Farrell MLB 27 ’61 L.A.D. Hou. 8 20.8 RP
Bob Miller MLB 22 ’61 St.L. Mets 13 15.0 sp-RP
Eddie Bressoud MLB 30 ’61 S.F. Hou. 6 13.8 SS
Jim Hickman MLB 24 ’61 St.L. Mets 13- 12.4 OF
Bobby Shantz MLB 37 ’61 Pit. Hou. 3 7.6 RP
Roger Craig MLB 31 ’61 L.A.D. Mets 5- 7.3 SP
Jack Fisher MLB 24 ’63 S.F. Mets 6 6.8 SP
Felix Mantilla MLB 27 ’61 Braves Mets 5 5.1 IF-OF
Chris Cannizzaro AAA-mlb 23 ’61 St.L. Mets 8++ 4.4 C
Claude Raymond AAA 24 ’63 Braves Hou. 8 4.2 RP
Al Spangler MLB 21 ’61 Braves Hou. 9+- 2.1 OF
Al Jackson AAA-mlb 25 ’61 Pit. Mets 8 0.3 SP
Bob Aspromonte MLB 23 ’61 L.A.D. Hou. 10 0.0 3B-ss
The first two picks of the following 1961 draft, Eddie Bressoud by Houston and Hobie Landrith by the new team at the Polo Grounds in New York, were both taken from the old team at the Polo Grounds who had moved a few years earlier to San Francisco. Although the Giants finished in third place in 1961, they dominated the National League in ’62 and started a streak of averaging 91.4 wins through the next 10 years. They had a few stars, too: Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey, Olrando Cepeda, and Mike McCormick.
Whereas, the Yankees’ four biggest stars were all of European ancestry (Berra, Ford, Mantle, & Maris) the Giants’ four future Hall of Famers (all of the above except McCormick) were of 15th century African ancestry. I know this is digressing from the expansion drafts, but these were rapidly changing times both in technology and civil rights – and that was reflected not only in those teams, but in the expansion draft.
When the American League expansion draft took place, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was the U.S. President. A year later, when the National League added two teams, John F. Kennedy was President and the Americans had launched a man into outer space. The National League was a step ahead of the American League in integration from the late 1940s through the 1960s - even among the Yankees and Giants that had recently played just across the small Harlem River from each other. The first 36 players taken in the first expansion draft all had light coloured skin – at least, as best I can tell from the Baseball-Reference picture of Cuban Hector Maestri who Washington drafted 20th.
Finally, Willie Tasby became the first dark-skinned player selected in an expansion draft. Chuck Hinton was still available until the 44th pick. Los Angeles did not draft any African-Americans. (As a young boy in a whites-only Connecticut suburb of New York at that time, polite folks were using the word "Negro" instead of "colored". Less than a decade later, "black" was the only accepted term.) On very last round the Angels took a brownish skinned Cuban Julio Becquer. Just as their opening season began, the Angels traded for an outfielder of dark skin colour with 35 games of Major League experience: Lou Johnson, who much later became a regular on the Dodgers. Johnson played in 1 game, then was traded for a minor leaguer who quickly became the early Angels one black star: Leon Wagner.
A year later the Metropolitan Club of New York as the Mets were officially called took a dark skinned Venezuelan Elio Chacon with their 2nd pick. Joe Christopher was their 5th pick and Felix Mantilla was their 6th pick. The Houston Colt 45s (now Astros) the first Major League team from the south integrated themselves on the 6th round with a dark skinned Cuban named Ramon Mejias. Again, we have another example of how fast the world was changing in the early 1960s and how much more advanced the National League was than the American League.
The Amazin’ Mets lost 100+ games their first four seasons (1962-1965) and again in their 6th. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game is Jimmy Breslin’s hilarious account of their 120-game losing inaugural season. The Mets’ first finish above 9th place was a World Championship. How fun was that! A few months earlier in July of 1969, mankind first walked on the moon. Hence, at the same time the U.S. brought mankind from their first venture into the outer most layer of the earth’s atmosphere to actually stepping on the moon, the Mets went from laughingstock expansion team to World Champions. That summer we really felt anything was possible.
I do not use "laughingstock" mindlessly. The Original Mets drafted or otherwise acquired several fading stars. Former Brooklyn Dodgers Gil Hodges, Charlie Neal, Don Zimmer, and Roger Craig were all once either all-stars and/or MVP vote getters. Each one was a Mets expansion pick.
Their manager was the long time New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel. They purchased four time OBP leader and extraordinary centerfielder Richie Ashburn for one last season. They drafted multi-year all-star Gus Bell (Buddy’s pop, David’s gramps). Although, he hadn’t been anything resembling an all-star for five years, they managed to trade Bell for a perennial all-star whose bat was very much still alive: Frank Thomas (no relation to the Big Hurt).
They purchased a six-time-MVP-vote-getting former New York Yankee: Gene Woodling (then 39) from the new Senators who had just drafted him the year before. While most of those players were acquired for their fame more than their remaining talent, it seemed some players acquired just for the cool sound of their names: Choo Choo Coleman, Elio Chacon, Vinegar Bend Mizell, and Hobie Landrith who was traded for Marv Throneberry (who became famous for his misplays then and for his beer commercials more than 15 years later). Manager Stengel was in prime form as the head clown. The Mets brought a 17-year-old from a Bronx high school all the way to the big club – where he stayed for 17 seasons, except for a couple more partial seasons in the minors – all as a Met – even though he never became better than a good fielding average hitting platoon firstbaseman: Ed Kranepool.
Houston did a more serious job of choosing the National Leagues’ available top expansion talents. The Colt 45s came up with a pair of very good starters in Ken Johnson (21.1/30.8 AWAR/WSAB) and Turk Farrell (20.8/30.4). Actually, Farrell was strictly a reliever for the previous 5 seasons, but the Colt 45s converted him into a starter. Even Johnson had relieved more often than he started in his two years in the big leagues before coming to Houston. The Colt 45s beat out the Cubs for 8th place their first year. However, they couldn’t improve upon that during their first 7 seasons finishing 9th in four of them and dead last 10th in 1968.
It is understandable that Cincinnati left Ken Johnson unprotected with 22-year-old Jim Maloney and 21 year old Sammy Ellis just making their way into the Majors. The Dodgers blew it on Turk Farrell, because they continued to miscast him as a reliever. The Cardinals lost three players who went on to have good careers, but none of them were very helpful that first year. They were all drafted by the Mets: Bob Miller (15.0/23.3), who became an outstanding reliever with the Dodgers a year later, Jim Hickman (12.4/25.4), who had one of the largest ever pre-steroids era career spikes – in 1970 with the Cubs, and Chris Cannizzaro (4.2/-10.7), who was the 1969 expansion San Diego Padres’ first all-star. Do not confuse this ’62 Mets Bob Miller with the other ‘62 Mets Bob Miller, who had pitched for the Tigers in the mid 1950s, then resurfaced with the Reds in ’62 before he was traded to the Mets for Dom Zimmer.