RetroTweets –
Divisional Play, Wild Cards, MVPs and Cy Young
Winners 1900-1919.
1900, 1901 redux, 1902
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| 1904 Harvard Baseball Team with African-American Baseball-Team Member Matthews in Front Row. See, that wasn't so hard? It only took Organized Baseball 43 more years to integrate. |
In a prior column
posted back on August 1, 2013, we introduced the idea of “Retrotweets” and
examined how the National League and American League could have been split into
East and West Divisions in 1901, and how they could have had wild cards and
playoffs in 1901.
We could examine each
of the seasons in detail but for the sake of brevity, let us summarize our
findings by era. This column will be
devoted to the so-called “Deadball Era” 1901-1919. The next columns will be devoted to the “Babe
Ruth/Lou Gehrig/Lively Ball Era” 1920-1939.
After that will be “World War II and the 1950s” 1940-1959. Following that will arrive “The Expansion Era
- !960-1979” Part I and then “The Expansion Era Part II – The Juice is Loose –
1980-1999”. Of course, divisions were
introduced in 1969, but we will look at whether there could have been three
divisions of four teams as early as 1969, and whether there could have been
wild cards as early as 1969.
This excerpt covers 1900, 1901 and 1902.
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| 1913 World Champion Philadelphia Athletics Managed by Connie Mack Fatima Cigarettes Team Photo w/o Hall of Famers Eddie Collins, Chief Bender, Frank "Home Run" Baker, Eddie "Gettysburg" Plank, and Manager Connie Mack. The A's won AL Pennants in 1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913 & 1914, and World Series in 1910, 1911 and 1913. Players they signed but did not keep included Hall of Famers Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, & Stan Coveleski, and the infamous Shoeless Joe Jackson. |
In addition, we will
furnish lists of the NL and AL MVPs and Cy Youngs for each year. One caveat here is that for the early years
of the 20th century, due to the fact that pitchers throw so many
innings, often close to 400 IP per year, their win shares and WARs tend to
swamp out the win shares and WARs of positions players every single year, so
for the deadball era and possible for the next quintile of twenty years, we
will have an overall MVP and then a position player MVP, because the overall
MVP will usually be a starting pitcher. Looking
further on down the line, in some more recent years, relief pitchers have
received the Cy Young award. This is
hardly ever merited based on WAR—no relief pitcher is ever worth as much as a
starting pitcher in terms of WAR or win shares due to the fact that modernly,
relief pitchers only throw about a hundred innings or less. So we’re going to have to give them a
separate designation as well for the last twenty years or so. (of course, prior to 1985, relievers threw
two or three innings at a time, and two hundred innings a years, but that’s
another story). So let’s retrotweet and
examine the history of baseball’s division winners wildcards MVPs and Cy Youngs
as they were meant to have happened…
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| Eddie Collins Baseball Card, Rear w/ Text & Stats, 1910 |
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| Eddie Collins 2b HOF Philadelphia Athletics Baseball Card Front below, Back, Above. The White Elephant was the symbol of the Philadelphia Athletics for nearly all of their existence. |
Going back to the 1900
National League:
1900
National League
NL
East Record GB
Brooklyn 82-54 -----
Phila 75-63 8
Boston 66-72 18
NYGiants 60-78 23
NL West
Pitts 75-63 -----
StL 65-75 9
Chi 65-75 9
Cin 62-77 13.5
For 1900 the
Division Winners are Brooklyn & Pittsburgh; the Wild Cards are the Phillies
and the Braves. The Playoffs are the
Braves at the Pirates and the Phillies at the Superbas (now the Dodgers). Brooklyn was really mostly the former
Baltimore Orioles, which with the Braves had won the vast majority of NL
pennants during the 1890s, while the Phillies had often come in 3d or 4th. The Pirates were a newcomer, having absorbed
several key players from the dissolved Louisville franchise, notably Honus
Wagner and Fred Clarke, both of whom would have HOF careers, along with some
key pitchers. Thus, four very good
teams. Hard to pick these playoffs. We’ll guess that Brooklyn and Pittsburgh
might make it to the NLCS, but after that, a coinflip. And, since the AL is still a year away,
that’s the championship.
1900 NL Overall MVP – Denton True
“Cyclone Cy” Young aka “Cy Young”, P, St. Louis with a 7.3 WAR. Best position players were Honus Wagner of
the Pirates and Elmer Flick of the Phillies, tied at 6.8 WAR.
1900 NL Position Player MVP – Co-Winners,
Honus Wagner, Pirates, Elmer Flick, Phillies, tied, 6.8 WAR.
1900 NL Cy Young – Cy
Young. 7.5 pitching WAR. Yes, that Cy Young. And he was already 33 by 1900 and still
throwing smoke. Young only went 19-19
but the St. Louis Perfectos aka Cardinals were 65-75, and they stunk. And this was Cy Young’s 12th best
season in terms of WAR. Young, Wagner
& Flick will all end up in the HOF.
1901 AL and NL – we did in an
earlier blog. The Phils won the NL East
and the Pirates won the NL West, with Brooklyn and St. Louis as wild
cards. Boston won the AL East while the
Chisox won the AL West, with the Phila As and Detroit Tigers as Wild
Cards.
1901 NL Overall MVP – Christopher “Christy” aka “Big Six” aka
“Matty” Mathewson of the New York Giants.
9.0 WAR easily leads the NL.
1901 NL Position Player MVP- Highest
position player WAR is Bobby Wallace of the St. Louis Perfectos aka Cardinals
with a 7.7 WAR. Wallace was a superb
fielder and RH hitter who could run and hit some as well. Wallace’s’ career total defensive WAR of 28.7
is 8th all-time behind 1)Ozzie Smith, 2) Mark Belanger, 3)Brooks
Robinson, 4)Cal Ripken, 5)Joe Tinker, 6)Luis Aparicio, 7)Rabbit Maranville &
8)Pudge Rodriguez. Nice company. Both Mathewson & Wallace are in the
HOF.
1901 NL Cy Young – Christy
Mathewson, 9.1 WAR as a pitcher. Christy
Mathewson attended Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, and is buried at
Bucknell. Many believe him to have been
the greatest pitcher of all time, and he has certainly inspired generations of
baseball players at Bucknell.
1901 AL Overall MVP– Cy Young, now
of the Boston Red Sox, with a 12.6 WAR.
The best position player is Nap Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics
with an 8.4 WAR. Young and Lajoie are
both HOFers.
1901 AL Cy Young - Cy Young.
12.6 pitching WAR. This time,
pitching for a 1st place division winner, he goes 33-10 with a 1.62
ERA leading the league in strikeouts and ERA+.
So that’s two Cy Youngs for Cy Young.
If you neutralize his stats to a 750 run season, it looks like
this: 43 wins, 5 losses, 1.41 ERA, 434
IP, 354 H, 7 HR, 185 K. You’d have to
say Cy Young was the gold standard by which you’d measure any pitcher. He didn’t start pitching until he was 23, but
he had more than 500 career wins anyway.
1902 AL & NL
1902 NL
NL
East Record GB
Brooklyn 75-63 -----
Boston 73-64 1.5
Phila 56-81 18.5
NYG 48-88 26
NL
West
Pitts 103-36 -----
Cinn 70-70 33.5
Chi 68-69 34
StL 56-78 44.5
Division Winners are
Brooklyn, NL East, and Pirates, NL West.
Wild Cards are Boston Braves and Cincinnati Reds. The NL Playoffs will be Reds at Pirates and
Braves at Trolley Dodgers/Robins. The
Braves/Dodgers is a flip, while the Pirates would probably crush the Reds. After that, the Pirates would probably crush
the winner of the Braves-Dodgers matchup.
Brooklyn has its second division win in three years and was a wild card
in 1901 Pitts has won its third
consecutive NL West division crown. The
Phils after a wild card and a division crown have fallen out of the playoff
hunt due to losses to the AL, the big one being HOF Ed Delahanty jumping to
Wash of the AL. Boston is a wild card
for the 2d time in three years.
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| 1950s Relief Pitcher Gus Constantine Keriazakos. Not a Deadball Player, but I like him because, after all, his name is pretty much Kyriazis with a few vowels and consonants re-arranged. And, he played for the Athletics, though not until they were in KC. |
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| The Back of Gus Keriazakos' Baseball Card. For some reason, the KC Athletics in the 1950s had a lot of Greek-American ball-players, including Gus Keriazakos, Lou "The Nervous Greek" Skizas, and John Tsitouris, who is famous in Phillies lore for beating the Phillies in Game One of the Ten Game Losing Streak that cost the Phils the 1964 pennant. Beware of Greeks throwing 1-0 shutouts in which Chico Ruiz steals home.... |
This is probably where
we discuss the world famous “Honus Wagner” baseball card. Honus Wagner did not smoke, and therefore did
not want his picture on a tobacco company endorsed baseball card. He asked his card be pulled from production
after a small initial run. Thus, very
few were made, and the cards that were made instantly became exceedingly rare.
1902
AL
AL
East Record GB
Phila As 83-53 -----
Bosox 77-60 6.5
Wash 61-75 22
Balt 50-88 34
AL
West
St. Louis 78-58 -----
Chisox 74-60 3
Cle 69-67 9
Detroit 52-83 21.5
The Philadelphia
Athletics, already managed by Connie Mack, have captured the AL East Division
crown after getting a wild card the previous year, while the St. Louis Browns
have rocketed from last to first and captured the NL West Division. The wild cards are the Bosox and the Chisox,
who were division winners in 1901. The
AL playoffs will be Chisox at As, and Bosox at Browns. Note that under a divisional setup with wild
cards, the St. Louis Browns get into the playoffs in 1902; in the 8 team league
setup, the Browns had to wait until 1944 to win a their one and only pennant in
St. Louis. All four teams are pretty
closely matched, assuming 7 game series and 2-3-2 home away home splits, it’s
gotta be close. First, let’s give the
edge to the Bosox because they have Cy Young who can pitch three times in a
four game series. Next, the As have
Eddie Plank and Rube Waddell, which is a pretty good 1-2 punch in a short
series, so let’s pick them over the Chisox, who have not yet got Ed Walsh. That leads to an ALCS of As v. Bosox,
featuring Plank and Waddell v. Cy Young Bill Dineen and Tully Sparks. This is really a flip—the As have great
hitting but Boston has great defense with Jimmy Collins, Freddy Parent and Hobe
Ferris in the infield. At the end of the
day, slight edge to Boston because of Cy Young, probably in a 7 game
series.
That brings us to the
World series, which will be Pirates v. Bosox.
This ends up being the 1903 World Series, but let’s not get
distracted. The Pirates have good but
not great pitching, with Jack Chesbro, Deacon Phillippe and Jesse Tannehill (a
southpaw). But oh what offense, with
Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke, Tommy Leach, Ginger Beaumont, Claude Ritchey and
Kitty Bransfield all with huge OPS+ numbers.
Boston has to win at least 2-3 games because of Cy Young, but the rest
of the games will be the Pirates bashing Boston pitching around. The pick has to be Pirates in seven.
1902
NL Overall MVP -
Jack Taylor, P, 3b, OF Chicago Cubs, 10.2 WAR.
Taylor actually earns 9.3 WAR as a pitcher, and then also plays
additional games at 3b, the OF and 1b, where he excels as a hitter and
defensively, and earns additional WAR.
1902
NL Position Player MVP - The position player to
come closest to Taylor is Honus Wagner at 7.2 WAR. Honus Wagner has now won the NL Position
Player MVP two of three years.
1902
NL Cy Young Award – Jack Taylor, P, Chicago Cubs, 9.3
pitching WAR. He is closely trailed by
Noodles Hahn of the Cincinnati Reds with 8.9 pitching WAR. Jack Taylor posts his best season by far in
the big leagues, going 23-11 with a league leading 1.29 ERA, a league leading 8
shutouts, a league leading ERA+ of 206, and a league leading WHIP of .953. He allows 2 HR in 333 2/3 IP, 273 H, 45W and
88K. His line normalized to a 750 run
context has him going 33-6 with a 1.63 ERA, 353 IP, 338H, 2HR, 56W and a 1.116
WHIP. According to his SABR bio, Taylor
pitched 187 consecutive complete games from June of 1901 to August of
1906. It’s doubtful we’ll see the likes
of that again. Cal Ripken only appeared
in 2,500 whatever consecutive games; Taylor pitched nearly 200 consecutive COMPLETE games over a six year
period. Taylor’s is by far the greater
feat.
1902
AL Overall MVP -
Rube Waddell, Philadelphia Athletics.
10.3 overall WAR. Cy Young close
behind at 10.1 overall WAR. Both are in
the HOF.
1902
ALPosition Player MVP - The position player to
come closest to Waddell & Young is Ed Delahanty of the Washinton Senators
at 6.7 WAR. Long a Philadelphia
Phillies, and destined for the HOF, Delahanty batted .400 twice in the 1890s,
hit 4 HRs in a game, and was considered the game’s premier hitter and LF. His defection to the AL hurt the Phillies
badly—they went from winning 83G in 1901 to losing 81G in 1902—though Delahanty
was only part of the story. He would
lead the AL in doubles, BA, OBA, SA and OPS+, posting a .376/.453/.590/1.043
line with 10HR, 14 3B & 43 2B, 93 RBI and 103R scored, for a team that went
61-75.
1902
AL Cy Young Award – Cy Young, 10.0 pitching WAR, nosing
out Rube Waddell, 9.7 pitching WAR. Both
HOFers. Cy Young has won three straight
Cy Youngs.
to be continued.....
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