Was this guy looking at WAR 77 years ago?

[PowderedH2O]

I am always intrigued with MVP and Cy Young voting. The AL MVP race of 1941 has always pushed a button with me. Ted Williams had one of the finest offensive WAR seasons of all time, but garnered only 8 of 24 MVP first place votes, with Joe DiMaggio getting 15. We can go back and forth about the two players that year. We can all agree that both guys kicked butt and would have won MVP awards in many other years with those seasons they had.
But who got the other vote? Well, it went to Thornton Lee of the White Sox. I've looked at his numbers: 22-11 with a 2.37 ERA. Those are really good numbers, but on the surface it looks pretty much like a typical Jim Palmer/Juan Marichal type season. I just happened to look at the WAR number and it made me do a double take. His 9.2 was better than DiMaggio's 9.1. That 2.37 in the great offensive 1941 AL season was worth an adjusted ERA of 174. He had 30 complete games, and led the league in ERA and WHIP (although I doubt he ever knew that).
Obviously, the only WAR conversation in 1941 was WW II, but a sportswriter made a vote that I considered to be a throwaway that actually wasn't quite as heinous as I first thought. I'd still rank Lee 3rd, but I give somebody credit for seeing a great performance on a 6th place mediocre White Sox team. Makes you wonder if the sportswriter was doing some sort of sabermetrics of his own, or was is just a Chicago beat writer who liked Lee.

[AGuinness]

This is interesting (with the caveat that WAR is not an exact stat, and Lee being .1 WAR better than DiMaggio is not hard proof that his season was better or more valuable), and I went over to good ol' Wikipedia to look at Lee's page. And a fun (if true) connection to Williams was revealed:

"On September 17, 1939, Ted Williams hit a home run off Thornton Lee, one of 31 homers he hit in his rookie season. Williams homered off Thornton's son, Don Lee, of the Senators, on September 2, 1960, thus becoming the only player in major league history to hit a home run off a father and son."

No citation for that, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt. Anybody know if this has happened since (or remains the only instance)?

[commishbob]

.......

"On September 17, 1939, Ted Williams hit a home run off Thornton Lee, one of 31 homers he hit in his rookie season. Williams homered off Thornton's son, Don Lee, of the Senators, on September 2, 1960, thus becoming the only player in major league history to hit a home run off a father and son."

No citation for that, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt. Anybody know if this has happened since (or remains the only instance)?

Bob Lemke had a blog post on this and noted that the Lees both gave up a dinger to Preston Ward...but noted that the homer off Thorton came in 1948 and then ".... 18-year-old Don Lee was pitching for the Casa Grande (Ariz.) Cotton Kings in the American Baseball Congress amateur tournament in Wichita, he gave up a home run and a double to Ward, who was playing with the U.S. Army's Ft. Leonard Wood team that eventually came in second in the tourney. Don took the loss in the 5-2 game."

http://boblemke.blogspot.com/2011/07/williams-touched-father-son-for-homers.html

Sure miss Bob Lemke.

[clydepepper]

NEXT UP?


Anyone want to research this idea:


An All-War-Years War Team:
Populate a nine-man lineup or even a roster with the players leading in WAR at each position for the period 1942 through 1945.



Calling Bill Gregory?


.