Slightly Better than Replacement Level
Tris Speaker was once one of the best baseball players in the world. From 1909 until 1927 he was possibly the best player in baseball, and at the very least belongs in the same conversation with Babe Ruth, Joe Rogan, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Oscar Charleston, etc. The memory of Speaker’s place in the game […]
The history of Earl Naylor as a two-way player is neither long or impressive. He qualified in one season as a two-way player and spent the rest of his career mainly serving as a positional player with the occasional minor league appearance as a pitcher. Based upon how hs lone two-way effort went it’s not […]
If not for a 1922 demotion to the A-level New Haven ball club (As a reminder, I don’t use racist team names on this site so if you want to know the actual name you will need to look it up yourself) Johnny Cooney may never have spread his two-way wings. Though he spent his […]
Harry Howell had been in the major leagues for three seasons as a pitcher before he jumped on the two-way train. His OPS+ of 114 in 49 plate appearances with the Brooklyn Superbas may have been a small sample but it still gave the Baltimore Orioles the ammunition they needed to take a decent pitcher […]
Geroge Cunningham was 2 seasons into his professional career when he became more than just a pitcher. It’s unclear as to why Detroit Tigers manager Hughie Jennings thought to spend the 1918 season trying Cunningham out in a two-way role. He had been decent with the bat in 2016, putting up an OPS+ of 137 […]