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July 24, 2010

You Can Blog It Up

Just in Time for HOF inductions, the Whitey Herzog All-Stars

by Steven Goldman

As you know, these best-of rankings were inspired by Bill James Bill James Guide to Managers. This is the first time I've put together a list for a manager who James covered as well. I pointedly did not consult the book before doing this, so as not to be influenced, although since I'm going by measures such as VORP, TAv, WARP, SNLVAR, and WXRL and James was using his own criteria, there wouldn't have been much chance of that anyway. I did deviate from my system in one place below, which I'll cover in the notes. Before proceeding to the list, I just want to say that if you weren't around at the time, it's almost impossible to conceive of how much fun Herzog's Cardinals teams could be, and how frustrating if you were rooting for the opposition. Given the home-run heavy nature of the current game (yes, even this year), Whitey's Cards, with six switch-hitters and 200 and 300 stolen bases a year, seem like an impossible fantasy now. He was the most creative, aggressive manager of his day and his elevation to the Hall is long overdue.

As always, the notes:

• I made one subjective decision, the inclusion of Hendrick in right field to the exclusion of Al Cowens '77. Hendrick was primarily a right fielder for Herzog, but in 1983 he played more games at first base (92) than he did in right (51). However, he was a better hitter than Cowens both in the seasons under consideration and overall (Cowens hit .312/.361/.525 with 23 home runs, 112 RBIs, .293 TAv, but it was a fluke season). Cowens was undoubtedly the better defensive player. I felt it was more representative to include Hendrick, who was a more reliable performer for Herzog.

• The inclusion of Hendrick over Cowens is one of two places where my results differ with the James list. His Herzog rotation includes Larry Gura '78 instead of Forsch. Gura isn't a bad choice (16-4, 2.72 ERA in 221.2 innings), and is a good symbol for Herzog, who got great results out of pitch-to-contact guys (Gura K'd 81 that year). However, SNLVAR says that Forsch was better, 6.0 to 5.0. I also liked that Forsch was a good hitter for a pitcher, not Don Newcombe good, but far above average. His best hitter year was 1987, when he hit .298/.333/.509 with two home runs in 71 plate appearances, and he had a couple of other years at that level. He hit only .171 in the year listed here, but drove in a career-high 12 runs on four doubles, a triple, and two home runs as well as pulling off 11 successful sac bunts and a sac fly.

• I added caught stealing to the stat line because steals were so important to Herzog's teams.

• I had to look twice to make sure that Willie Wilson '79 wasn't a better choice than Lonnie Smith for left field. Wilson, who played left field that year because Amos Otis (whose '78 was a contender for this list until Willie McGee's '85 trumped it) played center. He hit .315/.351/.420 with an 83/12 stolen base effort. His defense was certainly better than that of the famously slippery Smith's as well. Smith's big edge in TAv (.301 vs. .277) convinced me I had it right.

• John Tudor had a league-leading 10 complete-game shutouts in 1985. He finished a very distant second to Dwight Gooden in the Cy Young Award voting. There have been just 29 seasons with an SNLVAR of 10 or above since the mid '50s.

Steven Goldman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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