Top 10 Seasons by an Angels Left Fielder
Was Darin Erstad in 2000 really a fluke?
What, you thought I forgot my series? Ha! Just been a tad on the busy side, is all. (Previous episodes: Catcher, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B.)
G AB R H HR RBI SB/CS BB AVG OBP SLG OPS+ WS AS? MVP
1) Darin Erstad, 2000
157 676 121 240 25 100 28/8 64 .355 .409 .541 137 29.8 X 8
2) Alex Johnson, 1970
156 614 85 202 14 86 17/2 35 .329 .370 .459 130 28.3 X 8
3) Garret Anderson, 2003
159 638 80 201 29 116 6/3 31 .315 .345 .541 137 25.3 X 14
4) Brian Downing, 1982
158 623 109 175 28 84 2/1 86 .281 .368 .482 132 24.6 14
5) Garret Anderson, 2002
158 638 93 195 29 123 6/4 30 .306 .332 .539 130 23.6 X 4
6) Brian Downing, 1986
152 513 90 137 20 95 4/4 90 .267 .389 .452 130 22.9
7) Leon Wagner, 1963
149 550 73 160 26 90 5/7 49 .291 .352 .456 131 22.2 X 19
8) Chili Davis, 1989
154 560 81 152 22 90 3/0 61 .271 .340 .436 120 21.6 25
9) Jose Guillen, 2004
148 565 88 166 27 104 5/4 37 .294 .352 .497 119 21.6
10) Rick Reichardt, 1968
151 534 62 136 21 73 8/7 42 .255 .328 .421 130 21.4And the winner is: Darin Erstad's .355, 240-hit 2000, the greatest fluke season in Angels history, and one of the biggest one-year wonders of all time. Or was it?? I'm here to tell you that, in fact, it was not.
It's hard to remember now, after five consecutive years of Erstad slugging no higher than .400, and exceeding the league-average on-base percentage just once, but Darin Erstad was a very good hitter, with a lot of pop, before his monster 2000 season. Take a look at his 1997 and 1998, when he was 23-24 years old:
G AB R H 2B HR RBI SB/CS BB BA OBP SLG OPS+ WS
139 539 99 161 34 16 77 23/8 51 .299 .360 .466 114 19.2
133 537 84 159 39 19 82 20/6 43 .296 .353 .486 115 21.3That's a pretty great looking young hitter, especially considering his large, fast, football-player body. Those 62 extra-base hits in 1998, for example, have never been topped by Ichiro Suzuki,Jason Varitek, Mike Cameron, Rondell White or Edgar Renteria, among others. Erstad was an All-star that year, finishing 14th in the MVP vote, and looking all the world like a young Kirk Gibson in the making. Take a look at the players he compared with through his age-24 season -- the most similar are Paul Konerko, Rafael Palmeiro, Carlos Lee, and Shawn Green. Erstad's huge 2000 season came at age 26, which (along with 27) is the age hitters are most likely to compile their best offensive season. So how did Erstad's comparables do at 26? They flat-out raked. Take a look:
NM: G AB R H 2B HR RBI SB/CS BB AVG OBP SLG OPS+ WS
PK: 151 570 81 173 30 27 104 0/0 44 .304 .359 .498 123 17.2
RP: 159 631 115 203 49 26 88 4/3 68 .322 .389 .532 155 25.8
CL: 140 492 82 130 26 26 80 1/4 75 .264 .359 .484 119 16.8
SG: 153 614 134 190 45 42 123 20/7 66 .309 .384 .588 143 23.9
DE: 157 676 121 240 39 25 100 28/8 64 .355 .409 .541 137 29.8Which one of those seasons looks like a "fluke"? If anything, it's Carlos Lee's .264, 26-homer shrug; and he rebounded to hit .291 with 31 HRs and 113 RBIs the following year. Erstad had the highest batting average and OBP of the group, plus those jaw-dropping 240 hits, but he was last in homers, third in walks and doubles and RBIs and OPS+. The real fluke in Erstad's career is what came afterward -- five years of punchless mediocrity.
Setting aside that 2000 season for a second, it's just very rare in Major League Baseball history for a hitter to be better -- let alone significantly better -- at ages 23 and 24 than he is in each year from 27 to 30. Look at Erstad's OPS+s (keeping in mind that 100 is an average score, and that the beauty of the measurement is that it factors in ballpark effects and seasonal context):
23-24: 114/115
27-30: 78/88/75/95
There were more than 80 hitters in 2005 who A) saw some playing time, and B) had at least 50 at bats at ages 23-24 and 27-30. How many of these 80+ were, like Erstad, worse in what should have been their prime than during their adolescence? Exactly four -- Ken Griffey, Jr., Ruben Sierra, Raul Mondesi, and Carlos Baerga. What do those guys have in common? Either leg injuries, bad conditioning/attitude, or (in Mondy's and Sierra's case) both. Junior, like Erstad, started hurting his hamstrings with regularity in his late 20s, and if you think it's easy to drive a baseball with gimpy hammies you probably haven't tried to (it's a testament to Griffey's amazing wrist-strength and gorgeous uppercut stroke that he could continue to be a power threat, albeit greatly diminished).
Looking at other players who were worse at 27-30 than 23-24, and it's a festival of catastrophic leg injuries, 10-cent heads on million-dollar bodies, or both: Bobby Tolan, Daryl Strawberry, Jose Canseco, Vada Pinson, Garry Templeton.... The only one I could find (and I spent a long time looking) who didn't fit in these categories was Hall of Famer Arky Vaughn. Not only has Erstad been hobbled by leg problems, but he's the type of red-ass to play through pain, and his manager is the type of leader to start scrappers who are obviously hurt. I have no doubt that Erstad was an All-Star caliber hitter whose promising career was cut short through leg injuries, rather than a guy who got ridiculously lucky in one outlier of a year.
One last point about Erstad's 2000 season -- not only was he on a terrific career trajectory, and playing in what could reasonably be expected to be his offensive peak season, 2000 was the second-highest scoring year of the last 69. The league batting average, .276, was the second-highest since 1940. The on-base percentage, .349, was the second-highest since 1950. The slugging percentage, .443, was the second-highest in American League history (the highest in all these case was 1996). All kinds of guys were putting up career-best numbers ... Troy Glaus set what will be his career-high in homers with 47, Edgardo Alfonzo hit .324/.425/.542 (his second-best numbers ever were .315/.391/.502); Jermaine Dye hit .321/.390/.561 (2nd best: .294/.354/.526); Tony Batista hit 41 homers (second-highest total: 32); Nomar Garciaparra and Todd Helton both hit .372, Mike Sweeney drove in 144 runs, the Mighty Quinn impersonated a Major League baseball player.... Like 1987, 1930, 1950, 1936, 1970 and 1979, the American League in 2000 was an offensive spike year whose individual numbers can distort as much as they illuminate. If you happened to be 26 or 27 in any of those years, chances are the surface gap between that season and the rest of your career was large. Add in some post-spike injuries, and people will talk about "fluke." But 2000 was no fluke year for Darin Erstad; it was well within his career projections, given the spike-year inflation. He just got hurt, and never again fulfilled his considerable promise.
Conspicuous absence: Joe Rudi, who signed one of the most expensive contracts in baseball history before the 1977 season, then missed 257 games over the next four years, and didn't hit all that well when he played.
The hell's HE doing here?: Rich Reichardt, one of the better unsung Angels of all time. In that offensivus horribulus of 1968, Reichardt finished 10th in the AL in homers (21) and RBIs (73), and 2nd in HBP (18). He also came 14th in the MVP vote in 1966.
Other weirdnesses: Between Alex Johnson's batting-crown year of 1970 (still the only title in Angels history), and Brian Downing's 28-homer year in 1982, not one single Angel left fielder played more than 111 games in any season. That's 11 consecutive years of not being able to figure out what to do with one of the diamond's easiest positions to fill. Oh, they tried slick-fielding first basemen (Bruce Bochte for 103 games, Jim Spencer for 24); career center fielders (Vada Pinson for 179 games, Mickey Rivers for 37, Kenny Landreaux for 32); gimpy ex-infield prospects (Bobby Valentine), terrible middle infielders with wonderful names (Winston Llenas), and guys in the witness protection program (Orlando Alvarez). Five different left-fielders played at least 10 games in 1973 and 1974; six different guys were thrown out there for at least 10 in 1976 and 1981. The great irony is that just before they solved the position for a half-decade with Brian Downing, the Angels tried out -- and then gave up on, after only 33 at bats -- the player who should have spent the whole 1980s out there: Tom Brunansky.
LFs raised at home, made famous elsewhere: Dave Collins, Brunansky, Dante Bichette.
Old soldiers who came here to die: Ralph Garr, Bo Jackson.
Win Share Seasons and Totals: For Downing, Anderson, Wagner, Reichardt, Luis Polonia, Willie Smith, and Rudi:
XX: 01/02/03/04/05/06/07 (total)
BD: 25/23/21/20/14/13 (116)
GA: 25/24/17/16/16/12/06 (116)
LW: 24/22/14 (60)
RR: 21/18/16/13/02 (70)
LP: 18/13/12/11 (54)
WS: 14/14/01 (29)
JR: 14/10/07/06 (37)
Positional miscellania: The person most associated with the position in team history, and represented at #3 and #5 on the list, is one I haven't talked about -- Garret Anderson. G.A.'s basically the modern-day Steve Garvey, minus the Teflon reputation (he's always had the knock locally for "Cadillacking," which is a racially loaded way of saying "not hustling," which he is indeed guilty of to some degree). Until his injury-marred last two seasons, he had the classic set of attributes that causes a player to be overrated -- high RBI totals (compiled in part by refusing to walk, and not striking out too much); a .300 batting average, bushels of hits. It's not an original idea, but I've always thought of him as simultaneously overrated (by the Old School/scouts crowd) and underrated (by the New School/Moneyball types). Yes he has low OBPs and run-totals, but he also never got hurt in nine years, and ably played all three outfield positions (defensive flexibility is one of the hallmarks of the Scioscia system). Sure, he frequently looks like he has no plan up at the plate, but he's also unfazed by such things as pressure or left-handed pitching. Yes, he doesn't dive, but he was also deadly efficient for many years at preventing doubles down the left-field line. There is no question but that the Angels modern era of success, beginning in 1995, is a direct correlation to the "Four Outfielders" bounty of talent, when G.A., Erstad, Tim Salmon and Jim Edmonds all showed up within three years of each other (as did J.T. Snow ... which is a tale for another day). You cannot assess the organization's most successful decade without giving proper credit to Garret Anderson. Still, he was only a very good player for those two years listed above (plus the half-season of 1995), and at this point, paradoxically, his best value to the team might be in getting surgery for his plantar fasciitis, since that would allow Juan Rivera -- a better and more promising player at this point -- to play full time in LF, while giving plenty of DH at-bats to the talented if troubled Dallas McPherson, who'll need the tuneup for when Erstad gets hurt and Chone Figgins moves from 3B to CF. Maybe you could get some insurance money for a DL'ed G.A., and certainly encourage him to understand that, if ever healthy again, he should be a DH through the life of his horribly expensive contract. But I'm also hoping for nostalgia's sake that Salmon gets some ABs this year at DH, and that he and Erstad wind up their Angel careers with a bang.
Originally posted at mattwelch.com.