Players Going to War

skitch815 · Post #1 » by **skitch815** » Tue Apr 1, 2008 1:59 am

I've just started reading the book "The Teammates" by David Halberstam. It's a story about the lifelong friendships between Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Dom Dimaggio and Bobby Doerr. The story is told in both flashbacks to the 40's and in current time (2001) as Dimaggio and Pesky drive to Florida to see Williams before he dies. So far an excellent book.

So I was reading in the back of the book, where they included the players stats season by season. I knew that Ted Williams missed some time because of World War 2, but I didn't realize it was 3 seasons. He also missed most of 2 seasons when he reenlisted for the Korean War. The guy hit 525 (est) home runs while missing a good chunk of his prime years. I think he could have easily hit 650 or more HR's had his career not been interupted.

So I guess the main point of this post is to ask some of you stat nerds (and I say that in the most complimentary way possible) could tell me if there is a site that estimates these stats or do any of you have any way to figure out an estimate on your own?

Post #2 » by **HCYanks** » Tue Apr 1, 2008 2:20 am

It's probably reasonable to guess he would have hit somewhere between 100-120 HRs as a ballpark figure. Baseball Reference has him at 521, so barring injury he would have easily eclipsed 600 but 650 is probably a little on the high side.

I'm sure projection systems like PECOTA could be manipulated to give more specific estimates, but i'm not sure if anyone's ever attempted it (seems like something Baseball Prospectus or The Hardball Times would jump on for an article idea).

But of course the truth is we'll never really know... we can only speculate.

EDIT: Didn't notice the Korean War thing. Yeah, I guess 650 would've been possible.

Post #3 » by **Bleeding Green** » Tue Apr 1, 2008 2:54 am

Well, the season before he left for war he hit 36 and the year he came back he hit 38. Just pencil in 110 homers. And the two season he missed from the Korean War, he hit 30 before, and 29 after. So pencil in 60 HR for those two seasons, minus the actual HR he did hit in those two years, so 46.

In 1953 he had already hit 13 HR in just 37 games. He was slugging .900!

156 more HR missed due to war, which puts him at 681. Although that 1953 season was shaping up to be incredible, so maybe he'd have hit 50 or something just that one year and he'd be up over 700 HR. Pretty crazy.

Plus he was still mashing the **** out of the ball when he retired at age 41. .316/.451/.645 in his final season and a homer is his final AB. Talk about going out on top. Ah, what could have been. In some alternate Universe it would have been neat to see him play those seasons and hang around a couple more years at the end and make a push towards 755.

Post #4 » by **craig01** » Tue Apr 1, 2008 5:49 pm

Then how about Bob Feller?

He lost almost 4 full seasons in his prime.

You could probably add 90+ wins and nearly 1,000 more K's to his totals.

That would have given him over 350 W's and 3600 K's.

skitch815 · Post #5 » by **skitch815** » Fri Apr 4, 2008 10:29 pm

Thanks for the imput guys. This topic is interesting to me, and I wish I was a little more of a stats guy, I would love to figure out some projections. The rough projections are about the same as I was thinking.

I just finished reading that book, too. A really really good read about how things worked back in the majors and minors in the 30's and 40's.

One thing that the book doesn't answer that maybe one of you Red Sox fans can; what is the story behind "Pesky's Pole"? I've always wondered and thought the part about him might address it.

NH_soxfan14 · Post #6 » by **NH_soxfan14** » Sat Apr 5, 2008 3:01 am

Email somebody at Baseball Prospectus, i have this book from them that puts babe ruth in todays world and they say he would hit like 900 home runs. They would deffinately come up with something good.

Post #7 » by **Bleeding Green** » Sat Apr 5, 2008 3:11 am

Are you talking about their translated stats where everything is normalized to some fictional nonsense.

Barry Bonds hits a mere 897 homers and Aaron a mere 960.

NH_soxfan14 · Post #8 » by **NH_soxfan14** » Sat Apr 5, 2008 4:00 am

Bleeding Green wrote:Are you talking about their translated stats where everything is normalized to some fictional nonsense.

Barry Bonds hits a mere 897 homers and Aaron a mere 960.

I thought it was total Bull, it was some precise number like 927.