Career stats adjusted for military service

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Bill-

That is fine work. You picked the right four to examine.

I suggest Warren Spahn, whose career was not interrupted in the middle, but just as he got to the Majors. Three full years lost including a Battle of the Bulge Purple Heart.

I may be trickier to predict what he would have done with the lost time.

Again, fascinating work - we appreciate it.

Thank you, Raymond.

Spahn would be very tricky, yet interesting. Could he have picked up 37 wins in those three seasons, and make it to 400? Maybe. He won 20 or more games 13 times, and he was a 20 game winner as early as 1947. If he'd pitched those three years, though, would he have played as long as he did?

[CW]

Interesting analysis!

I'm not sure how much his career was cut short, but how about Mathewson?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by CW

Interesting analysis!

I'm not sure how much his career was cut short, but how about Mathewson?

Christy Mathewson's career was already in decline when he was traded from the Giants to the Reds (along with fellow future Hall of Famer Edd Roush). He made a commitment to them to manage for three years. He pitched in one game for the Reds in 1916, then retired after the season. He was a full time manager for 1917, and the first 118 games of 1918. Mathewson enlisted late in the fall of 1918. By then he'd retired as a baseball player, so his career numbers were in no way affected by the war.

[almostdone]

Very fascinating Bill. I have looked at this before with Williams but not the others and not to the extent that you did. Thank you.
I know he didn't miss as much playing time in WWII as the others but I have wondered what Stan Musial's final numbers would have been. Maybe in the 500 hr club? Or perhaps even that much closer to 4000 hits, although I think that would be a bigger stretch.
Also I wonder about one of my all time favorites, although not the power hitter like the others, Pee Wee Reese?
Drew

[CW]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Christy Mathewson's career was already in decline when he was traded from the Giants to the Reds (along with fellow future Hall of Famer Edd Roush). He made a commitment to them to manage for three years. He pitched in one game for the Reds in 1916, then retired after the season. He was a full time manager for 1917, and the first 118 games of 1918. Mathewson enlisted late in the fall of 1918. By then he'd retired as a baseball player, so his career numbers were in no way affected by the war.

Ah, gotcha. Very interesting -- will look forward to more analysis.

[the 'stache]

Ok, I'm signed up with Imageshack again. I'm used to their format, so it's not worth wasting my time looking around.

Musial's interesting. The season he missed was 1945. Musial was already a superstar by this point in his career, but he had not yet found his home run swing. He wouldn't hit more than 20 home runs in a season until 1948 (the year he exploded for 39), and he only hit a combined 60 home runs in the two seasons before and after his military service. So, there's virtually no chance he'd have hit 25 home runs that missed season. But, if he'd have played that '45 season, maybe he finds his home run swing before 1948.

We don't know for sure if his home run power resulted from a changed approach at the plate, or just because he matured more physically. One thing we know. He was already putting up spectacular extra base hit numbers prior to his home run surge-68 doubles and triples in 1943, 65 in 1944 and a whopping 70 in 1946. Sometimes it's a simple adjustment at the plate that helps a player find their power. That's what happened with Robin Yount. He'd certainly matured physically, and the decision to do weight training increased his strength. But it was a slight adjustment in his swing that ultimately helped him become a home run threat. The starting position of his hands were lowered considerably, and a shortstop that averaged 7 home runs for every 162 games played between 1974 and 1979 became a superstar that averaged 22 home runs per 162 games played between 1980 and 1985. Like Yount, a subtle change to the positioning of Musial's legs, or his hands, could have provided more loft to the fly balls he was hitting. So while Musial might have only hit 16 or 17 home runs in the season he missed, I believe he would have had a slight increase to his home run totals the next few seasons, and I think it's not at all a stretch to think he'd have hit 500 home runs. People talk about his compiling 1,815 hits at home, and 1,815 hits on the road. But if you look at his run production, those numbers are also remarkably similar. He scored 1,949 runs and drove in 1,951 runs. He certainly would have crossed 2,000 in each category.

Tonight, I will project Musial's adjusted career numbers, as well as those for Pee Wee Reese and Johnny Pesky. Pesky is one of my favorite all-time Red Sox, and I also think he's one of the most overlooked great players in the team's history. It will be a treat to see where his numbers might have ended up. If you guys have any other suggested players, I'd be happy to start looking at them, too.

Just as an aside, while looking at Musial's career stats, his power surge I think is too often overlooked. I already believe that Stan Musial's 1948 season is one of the five greatest offensive performances in baseball history. As far as complete statistical domination goes, nobody has matched what Musial did that year.

Nobody in the modern era has ever led their league in runs scored, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, average, on base, slugging, OPS, and total bases in the same season. Musial fell 1 home run short of doing just that. Only Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize, who each hit 40 home runs, kept "the Man" from achieving something that we may never see. Musial was simply sensational in 1948. He scored 135 runs, had 230 hits, including 103 extra base hits (46 doubles, 18 triples, 39 home runs). He drove in 131 runs, led the NL hitting .376 with a .450 OBP and a .702 SLG. His OPS of 1.152, OPS + of 200 and 429 total bases were also the tops in the National League.

Want to really put Musial's season in perspective? Since 1900, only two hitters have hit seasons where they hit .370 with 45 doubles, 15 triples and 35 home runs: Musial, and Lou Gehrig in 1927.

[howard38]

Two guys whose stats are tough to project because they weren't quite the same players when they returned from military service:

Everyone knows that Cecil Travis lost four years to the war after having a career year in 1941. He was only 27 and batted .359. He struggled badly when he returned and retired soon afterwards.

Sam Chapman also had a career year in 1941 and also lost four years. He was only 25 when he batted .322 w/25 HRs. He was a decent player when he returned but never close to his 1941 level.

Dick Wakefield might also fall into this category. He was in the service, discharged and then went back in the service. In the meantime he batted .355 w/12 HRs in just half of the 1944 season when he was only 23. When he returned again in 1946 he was never as good.

I guess it's impossible to project what kind of numbers these guys would have put up if their careers had not been interrupted. Maybe their big years were just flukes or perhaps they would have been hall of famers.

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by howard38

Two guys whose stats are tough to project because they weren't quite the same players when they returned from military service:

Everyone knows that Cecil Travis lost four years to the war after having a career year in 1941. He was only 27 and batted .359. He struggled badly when he returned and retired soon afterwards.

Sam Chapman also had a career year in 1941 and also lost four years. He was only 25 when he batted .322 w/25 HRs. He was a decent player when he returned but never close to his 1941 level.

Dick Wakefield might also fall into this category. He was in the service, discharged and then went back in the service. In the meantime he batted .355 w/12 HRs in just half of the 1944 season when he was only 23. When he returned again in 1946 he was never as good.

I guess it's impossible to project what kind of numbers these guys would have put up if their careers had not been interrupted. Maybe their big years were just flukes or perhaps they would have been hall of famers.

Chapman had an interesting stat line when he returned from active service. In 1940, he showed outstanding power potential with 26 doubles and 23 home runs along with his 23 home runs. He hit .276 in 134 games, but struck out 96 times in 508 official at bats. For the period, that was a pretty high strikeout rate. He was ever so slightly below a 19% strikeout rate. The next season, his real breakout season of 1941, one of the reasons for his improvement was a big cut in his strikeout rate. In 552 at bats, he hit .322 with 29 doubles, 25 home runs and 106 RBI. He'd more than cut his strikeout rate in half to just under 9%. He struck out only 49 times, and walked 46 times.

He missed all of 1942 to 1944, and almost 1945. In looking at his numbers after returning, while he never again had the same level of success he had in 1941, he maintained his improved strikeout rate. Between 1946 and 1950, he had a .261 AVG with 19 HR and 85 RBI per season. Still pretty good. His strikeout rate for the period was about 12.4%. But again, when you consider his walkout to strikeout ratio was almost exactly 1:1, I wonder why he didn't have a little more success than he did. 322 walks and 333 strike outs with good power-you have to wonder what he might have accomplished had he not been away from the game for so long. It's actually remarkable that he was away from the game as long as he was, and still enjoyed a pretty successful run when he did come back.

By my estimation, he missed about 562 games because of his service in the Navy during WW II. For the 1942 to 1945 period he missed, I used his production from 1939 to 1946 as a basis, and his career numbers are greatly improved.



Cecil Travis was really coming into his own when he joined the Army in the winter of 1941. He'd been an All Star three of the prior four seasons, and he'd finished second in the American League in hitting with a .359 average. In many seasons, that would have won him a batting title. Unfortunately for Travis, that was the year that Ted Williams hit .406.

From 1937 to 1941, Travis had averaged 140 games played. Therefore, I estimate that he missed some 525 games to military service between 1942 and 1945. A career .314 AVG across 7,000 career at bats would make for a pretty impressive career, don't you guys think?



Dick Wakefield, I admit, is a player I knew nothing about. I'd heard his name a few times, but I don't recall ever looking at his career stats. But it's really sad that he didn't get a chance to continue his career. If you look at that first season and a half he had roughly 1,000 at bats (1,029 to be precise). The guy had a .328 average at 23 years old. What's more, in his first season, he'd hit only 7 home runs in 633 at bats, driving in 79 runs. In his second season, he'd hit 12 home runs with 53 RBI in only 276 at bats. He finished 6th in the MVP vote his rookie season. He was so good in 1944 that he finished 5th in the MVP vote even though he only played in 78 of 154 games. In 1945, while Wakefield was serving America in the Navy, his Tigers won the World Series. It's almost impossible to think that Wakefield wasn't a superstar in the making on one of the best teams in baseball. But Wakefield was arrogant, and headstrong. He bet Ted Williams that when they got back to baseball, he'd hit for a better average than Williams, hit more home runs and drive in more runs than Williams. When he returned to the Majors, he never regained his stroke.

I can average out the time missed based on those roughly 1,000 at bats. It shows tremendous potential, and a level of play that he never again achieved once he returned to the Major Leagues.