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Sometimes when I’m doing odd sorts via bb-ref (all hail Sean Forman!), Silver King will pop up. Over a three-year period, he had 14.7, 8.3 and 13.2 bWAR. The game sure was different for a boy born on this day in 1868.
Born on the same day, but just a couple years later is Elly De La Cruz. What a tremendous, and tremendously odd set of ski…
Sometimes when I’m doing odd sorts via bb-ref (all hail Sean Forman!), Silver King will pop up. Over a three-year period, he had 14.7, 8.3 and 13.2 bWAR. The game sure was different for a boy born on this day in 1868.
Born on the same day, but just a couple years later is Elly De La Cruz. What a tremendous, and tremendously odd set of skills. I really hope that he can put it all together. EDLC turns 22 today.
Max Patkin is mostly known to people my age for his appearance in Bull Durham. He had a real baseball life, first as a pitcher in the minors and then as a coach for the Bill Veeck era Cleveland squads before becoming an attraction at minor league parks for decades. He was born on this day in 1920.
It is the birthday of both a General and Napoleon. For many, many decades, our politicians were largely former members of the military so General Crowder was a Senator, of course. He lead the AL in wins twice in the 1930s. Danny Napoleon was a really bad outfielder for some really bad mid 1960s Mets squads.
Lloyd McClendon was, as a player, Just Another Guy. But when he managing, he could do it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhnoCkp2QUo Happy 65th!
Bonus baseball related content: baseball wouldn’t be baseball without peanuts. And peanuts wouldn’t be peanuts without George Washington Carver, born on this day in 1864.
And poor Don Mossi, a fine pitcher winning over 100 games across a dozen years. But known these days solely for his truly misbegotten appearance. His SABR biography: “By this time Mossi had appeared on enough bubble-gum cards to have caught the attention of millions of young fans, who marveled at his unusual visage. He did not have the classic country-boy good looks of a Mickey Mantle or the dark, handsome face of a Sandy Koufax. Don was, well, different. He had a long, slightly crooked nose, his eyes were close together, and his ears stuck out to the edges of the cardboard. Indeed, some of his teammates called him Ears. Others nicknamed him The Sphinx. Later, when these young fans grew up, they were less diplomatic. One said he looked like ‘Mount Rushmore on a rainy day.’ Bill James wrote that Don was the ‘complete ugly player. He could run ugly, hit ugly, throw ugly, field ugly, and ugly for power. He was ugly to all fields.’” Mossi would have turned 95 today.
I know there could be recency bias at play, but Elly has the best raw power-speed combination I've ever seen. Bonds was great at both, but his raw power peaked way later after his speed faded, and I don't think he was ever regarded as *the* fastest player in the league. Elly seems like an even more tooled out Eric Davis or Bo Jackson. With close to Michael Jordan's build. Never seen anything like it.
The Eric Davis comp is a good one. Bo was, of course, really fast, but we didn't get to see it on the baseball field very often. But the comp that is stuck in my mind is a direct peer: Oneil Cruz.
Edit: I don't know what "raw" power speed really means, but there was this guy who had seventy steals and forty homers this season. Perhaps he wouldn't win a footrace against EDLC, but as far as effective baseball speed, that should do it.
I was just think statcast's exit velo & sprint speed. Acuna is obviously a great power-speed guy and had the top exit velo this year (Elly had the 3rd highest). Elly was #1 in sprint speed, while I think there is something wrong with Acuna's (he's listed as 208th, but 33rd in 'bolts.' I'm guessing that he was picking his spots to let loose to protect the knee). Acuna is tooled out as well, and obvs is the single season power-speed leader by a long shot. Elly likely will never reach those heights, but his raw tools are amazingly even louder IMO.