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Whenever somebody compiles a list of fluke MVPs, Versalles gets mentioned. That’s only partly fair. There’s no question that his 1965 was an extreme outlier. He batted .273/.319/.462 that year compared to .238/.286/.353 in his other 4,850 plate appearances. He set career-highs in just about everything that matters, including on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, total bases, runs, RBIs, hits, doubles, stolen bases, and stolen base percentage.
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September 14, 2017 Flu-Like SymptomsOne Entire Season of Baseball From the 1960s (Part 4)
(Note: Last year, I wrote "One Entire Season of Baseball From the 1970s," reviewing the 1971 season. My goal is to repeat the exercise every summer, selecting a different decade. We'll present the 1960s version Monday through Thursday this week, five teams at a time, introducing each team with salient figures from their season. Monday's entry is here, Tuesday's entry is here, and Wednesday's entry is here.) The American League First Division
Amazingly, he kept up that pace for five more years, leading the league in strikeouts in four of them (and walks in three) before wearing down. He pitched only 82 2/3 innings after his 30th birthday. McDowell, who battled alcoholism as well as arm problems, was Nolan Ryan before Nolan Ryan came along, posting prodigious strikeout and walk totals through his 20s. Ryan eventually got the walks under control, to a degree, and of course he lasted far, far longer. In McDowell’s first eight seasons as an ERA qualifier, he led the league in strikeouts five times and walks five times. In Ryan’s first eight seasons as an ERA qualifier, he led the league in strikeouts six times and walks six times. The 1965 season was typical McDowell. He struck out 29 percent of the batters he faced, leading the league, far ahead of teammate Sonny Siebert, who was second with 26 percent. (The league average was 16 percent.) McDowell, though, was third in the league in walk rate (12 percent). He struck out 325, 99 more than runner-up Mickey Lolich, while walking 132, 19 more than Boston’s Dave Morehead. He allowed the lowest batting average (.185), slugging percentage (.244), and OPS (.531) in the league. Sandy Koufax was a unanimous choice for Cy Young that year—there was only one awarded until 1967—and McDowell finished only fifth among pitchers in the AL MVP vote, presumably because he pitched for a non-contender and compiled a 17-11 record. As you might guess, Cleveland scored just 3.5 runs per game that McDowell started, the lowest run support on his team and 12th-lowest among the 42 pitchers who started 20 or more games in 1965.
The only other AL team that got as many starts from its top five starters was Boston, whose starting corps was considerably less successful (4.19 ERA vs. Detroit’s 3.47). Lolich was seventh in the league in innings, McLain was 13th, Aguirre was 17th, Wichersham was 22nd, and Sparma was 37th. Of the quintet, McLain was 21 years old, Sparma was 23, and Lolich was 24. Such heavy workloads, both game-specific and season-long, would be unthinkable for such young pitchers today.
Shortstop Luis Aparicio (.250 TAv) and center fielder Paul Blair (.243), both of whom were weak hitters, bunted 14 and eight times, respectively, which is defensible, but right fielder and Rookie of the Year Curt Blefary had seven sacrifices, third baseman Brooks Robinson had four, left fielder Boog Powell had four, and first baseman Norm Siebern had two. And they were, by far, the Orioles’ four best hitters. It’s not like the Orioles struggled to score. They averaged 3.96 runs per game, a touch above the league average of 3.94. They played a few more one-run and extra-inning games, which support one-run strategies, but the differences weren’t large (56 one-run games vs. an average of 52; 21 extra-inning games vs. an average of 18). Rather, the Orioles just liked bunting. From 1965 through 1975, under Hank Bauer and Earl Weaver (Weaver replaced Bauer in the 81st game of the 1968 season), Orioles position players bunted 664 times, an average of 66 per season, second in the league to only the chronically weak-hitting Angels with 692. Weaver became famous for eschewing the sacrifice, but his epiphany didn’t occur until 1976.
The average AL team had 32 complete games in 1965. The Athletics had the fewest in the league, 18. The White Sox were tied with the Senators for the second fewest, 21. Every other team had at least 32. The A’s and Senators had few complete games because they had bad starters. The White Sox’s paucity of complete games owes to a great bullpen. Chicago’s starters were superficially good; their 3.24 ERA was fifth in the league, only 0.04 behind the second-best Angels. But White Sox Park was an extreme pitcher’s park, suppressing run-scoring from both sides of the plate by 11 percent, the most in the league. This is partially evidenced by the team’s 4.63 starter DRA, third-worst in the league. The relief corps had a 2.54 ERA and 3.72 DRA; no team had a wider spread between starter and reliever ERA and DRA. In 2017, despite an uptick in saves requiring more than one inning pitched (13 percent of saves so far vs. 9 percent last year), nearly seven of eight saves have lasted an inning or less. In 1965, the White Sox notched seven one-inning saves. Another six were two-thirds of an inning, and four comprised one out (including two by 22-year-old, left-UCL-intact Tommy John). The remaining 36, or 68 percent, were more than an inning. Used exclusively in relief, Fisher pitched 165 1/3 innings, Wilhelm 144, and Bob Locker 91 1/3. No reliever has pitched more than 100 innings since the Yankees’ Scott Proctor in 2006, and none have eclipsed Locker’s total since the Mets’ Carlos Torres in 2014. 1. Minnesota Twins, 102-60: 44 percent. That’s the percentage of career value, as measured by WARP, that Twins shortstop Zoilo Versalles, the American League MVP, generated in 1965. Think WARP is overstating it? Both Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs WAR peg his 1965 at more than half his career value. Versalles played 12 major-league seasons and was a batting title qualifier in seven of them.
Just two years later, his .200/.249/.282 line was one of the reasons the Twins finished a game behind the Impossible Dream Red Sox. But that doesn’t make him undeserving in 1965. He was 20th in the league in TAv, 16th in OPS, and 11th in ISO. He was an outstanding baserunner, leading the league with 10.4 BRR. And he not only played the key defensive position of shortstop, he played it well; his 2.3 FRAA was fourth in the AL among shortstops. All told, by WARP, he was the second-best player in the league, with 6.4, trailing only the Indians’ Vic Davalillo, whose 6.6 WARP was fueled by the highest FRAA in the league. Again, if you don’t like WARP, he led the league in our two colleagues’ WAR. So while Versalles was undoubtedly an unexpected MVP, he certainly wasn’t an undeserving one. Bonus figures: 29 percent, 32 percent. In an echo of Versalles’ unlikely MVP, Baltimore’s Blefary was the Rookie of the Year in 1965, during which he generated 29 percent of the 15.0 WARP he accumulated over an eight-year career. The NL Rookie of the Year was Jim Lefebvre, whose 5.1 WARP in 1965 represents 32 percent of this career value. Postscript: 1965 Compared to Today I’ve alluded to some of the differences between baseball in 1965 and the contemporary game. I’ll close with a few tables comparing 1965 to 2016. I chose 2016 rather than the current season because we’re not done with 2017, and there are seasonal stats-distorting effects in September.
Rob Mains is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @Cran_Boy
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Average time of game:
1965 -- 2:36
2016 -- 3:04
Difference -- +:28
Source:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/misc.shtml
Thanks David. Yeah, the figures I used were average time for a nine-inning game. That phrase didn't fit in the document I gave our editors but I think they magically bought me some space, so I'll get that adjusted.