Scott Fennessy’s 1902 AL Update

The completion of this season gives me a pretty good chunk of the first decade of “modern baseball” I now have 1901, 02, 03, and 05 in the books. Unlike my other dead ball replays this set was generated just a couple of years ago, so they had much more detailed breakdown of stats, and unlike in the past the pitching was not a set of A rotations, so hitting was more prevalent than in my other replays.

Final Standings

                                                W-L         Pct

Philadelphia A’s                    89-51     .636

St. Louis Browns                   80-60     .571

Cleveland Indians                 78-62     .557

Boston Red Sox                    76-64     .543

Chicago White Sox               69-71     .493

Washington Senators          60-80     .429

Detroit Tigers                        55-94     .407

Baltimore Orioles                 55-84     .396

Philadelphia A’s 89-51

After several seasons as the preseason favorite, the A’s FINALLY come through. This was a team that had pretty good balance of pitching and hitting, but still had a couple of holes.

Center fielder Dave Fultz is not the kind of guy that exactly scares you, but he manages to get on just enough to set the table for the powerful middle of the lineup. Dave hit .278 with 9 triples and 33 stolen bases for the year. Tully Hartsel in his first year in the AL hit .274 with 41 steals.

Jasper Davis and Ralph Seybold were the heart of the lineup and the heart of the team as well. Perhaps the most powerful twosome in the league Davis hit .305 with 8 triples, 7 homers and 108 RBI. He also managed 34 steals while playing solid defense at first base.

Ralph “Socks” Seybold

In the real, 1902 Ralph Seybold set a then record 16 homers. That would stand until the bambino came along and changed the game forever. In my replay he had a solid year and finished with 14 homers to go with a league leading 118 RBI and a .292 average.

Ossee Schreckengost came over from the Red Sox in the off season and in his first real chance as the everyday catcher did a solid job. While Ossee doesn’t really like to take pitches (drawing only 15 walks) he hit .273 with 3 homers and was a huge improvement over Mike Powers.

Luis Castro hit .286 off the bench and had a pinch hit homer in July against the Senators.

Rube Waddell

Rube Waddell was the most overpowering pitcher in the AL this year and won the coveted Pitcher of the Year award. Finishing at 36-10 with 251 strikeouts and a 2.61 ERA. His only real weaknesses were being too near the plate at times, which resulted in allowing 9 home runs, and 8 hit batsmen.

Teammate Eddie Plank had another solid season, and arguably his best yet. He ended the season with a 30-15 record and a 2.83 ERA. However, the third spot in the rotation was a real soft spot. Bert Husting won 20 games, but he also lost 24. Additionally he was pretty inconsistent. He would follow up a solid 3-1 victory in which he allowed just 7 hits with a 8-1 bombing where he was throwing batting practice.

St. Louis Browns 80-60

The 1901 Cardinals, err 1902 Browns were a big surprise to me. This really was about 70 percent of the 1901 Cardinals team, with only first baseman/outfielder “Honest John” Anderson remaining from the original 1901 Milwaukee Brewers hitters.

John had another solid year, hitting .313 with 3 homers and 99 RBI’s while stealing 14 bases. He had a solid tandem at the top of the order as Charlie Hemphill arrived to hit .299 with 3 homers and stole 40 bases. Sandwiched between these two was the deadly duo of Bobby Wallace who hit .271 with 30 steals while playing gold glove defensively at short, and Jesse Burkett who hit .282 with 34 steals. These two were the heart of the Cardinals offense in 01 so it was no surprise that the top of the Browns lineup was solid indeed.

In fact of the starting 8 position players 4 are former Cardinals, as outfielder Emmett Heidrick hit .293 with 82 RBI’s and second baseman Richard Padden who was on fire and hitting way over his cards ability until a final month slump brought him back to reality and a .252 average.

Of the pitching staff, only Bill Reidy remains from Milwaukee. The implanted pitching was a massive improvement as Francis “Red” Donahue jumped over from the Phillies and won 26 games, while John Powell brought over teammate John Sudhoff (from the Cardinals, of course) who won 23 and 27 games respectively. The bullpen was not needed very often, but when called upon was like pouring gas on a fire as only the afore mentioned Reidy had an ERA under 4. Despite being rated a D, Reidy managed a 2.15 ERA in limited use.

Cleveland Indians 78-62

The tribe was armed with perhaps the two best offensive cards in the game and the team actually out did their actual season results. Napoleon Lajoie was the defending MVP and Triple Crown winner in the AL with the A’s in 1901 and rightfully earned a lot of heat by jumping to Cleveland. It bothered him so much he went on to become the first two time MVP and did it back to back to boot.

He won his second straight batting title with a .351 average, hit 5 homers and drove in 64 runs despite batting second all season. He also stole 28 bases.

While Lajoie won the batting title with relative ease, the MVP race was far closer than one would have expected. Teammate Charlie Hickman used his monster card to near perfection. After escaping the dungeon of NY he promptly hit .336 with 9 homers, 92 RBI’s and stole 13 bases. He finished 1 vote behind Lajoie for the MVP title.

Third baseman Bill Bradley was one of the early greats at third. He really could do it all, but for some reason in my replays he would either constantly get injured or just not get the dice rolls. Finally he overcame these obstacles and he had that breakout season I had hoped for. Finishing 3^rd in the MVP race he hit .339 with 8 homers and 89 RBI’s, all career highs.

Elmer Flick completed the quartet of hitting stars by compiling a .319 average with 63 RBI and 25 steals. While center fielder Oliver Pickering played great defensively he was a huge disappointment at the plate, hitting just .224. Shortstop John Gochnaur may have had the worst year at the plate for everyday players, mustering a weak .202 average and killed many rallies. Unfortunately for manager Lajoie there were no better options.

While the hitting was solid for the most part, the pitching was rather suspect. Bill Bernhard came along and posted a solid 29-13 season with a 0.95 WHIP, but after that it all went downhill somewhat quickly. Earl Moore underperformed a lot and finished at 19-21, but did strike out 175. Rookie Addie Joss showed promise with 18 wins, but was done in by the long ball (8 allowed) and a lot of hits. Cleveland fans are hoping for improvement next season. The bullpen was horrific with several hurlers having ERA’s over 5.00 so once you got past the starter it was pretty much over for the tribe.

Boston Red Sox 76-64

The Red Sox underperformed a bit and it showed in the numbers and final standings. Being the only fielding 2 team in the entire league helped a bit, but whenever they would close on St. Louis or Philadelphia they would either manage a split series or lose outright. This allowed Cleveland to sneak in during September by playing the bottom of the league.

Several players hit well for the Sox, so I was a bit confused as to what happened. Pat Dougherty hit .272 with 36 steals, and Chick Stahl had a solid season after a brutal 03 replay. He hit .281 with 31 steals. Buck Freeman had a good year at .290 with 8 homers, but usually did his damage with the bases empty as he only drove in 77 runs.

Jimmy Collins

Jimmy Collins got his best card ever and had a great year. He hit .296, and finished second in homers to Seybold with 10. He also drove in 93 RBI and had a total of 51 extra base hits while stealing 26 bases. He also provided stellar defense at third.

Shortstop Freddy Parent had another solid season, hitting .296, but had the worst power production of his career, just eking out one homer, a two run shot against the Indians in the early part of the year. Candy LaChance had a huge improvement over his 03 replay as well, hitting .283.

Cy Young

Cy Young struggled early and I think this was a big part of the team’s overall problem, as the rest of the staff underperformed their cards, or were not that good to begin with. Young, however, had a dominating second half and pretty much matched his numbers, finishing at 34-11 and a 2.09 ERA and finished second to Waddell in the Pitcher of the Year voting. Bill Dinneen and George Winter struggled, but Dinneen did manage 21 victories. Nick Altrock did manage 3 saves on the year.

Chicago White Sox 69-71

And now we get to the defending AL champions. The pale hose took a pretty bad tumble. Very little remains of their pennant winning roster (tiny as it still is). Ironically 3 members of this team form the core of the 05 Giants championship lineup.

Ed Green jumped from the Cubs to the White Sox and had a decent season. He hit .275 with 68 RBI and 35 steals from the two spot. George Davis hit a .283 and won the team RBI crown by 1 with 89 while stealing 40 bases. Player-Manager Fielder Jones hit a career high .304 while driving in 88 runs and stealing 22 bases.

Sammy Strang clearly liked the number 77. He hit .277 with 77 RBI. Sam Mertes struggled badly at times, but led the team with 49 steals. The rest of the team struggled mightily, because once you got past Mertes and Isbell in the .240 range most of the bench was barely able to crack .200.

Pitching was the key to the World Series trip the year before, and it was the reason they struggled this season. The trio of A starters was reduced to a trio of one B and two C starters. The entire staff consisted of only 6 pitchers. None of them did very much. James “Nixey” Callahan, in what would be his last year in primarily a starting pitchers role eked out a 22-21 record with a 2.53 ERA. Bob Patterson and Calvin Griffith were not horrible, but very inconsistent. The “bullpen” small as it was, was similar to the starters. Not consistent, but I do tip my hat to pitchers George Leitner and James Durham; both were rated as D starters but had ERA’s in the low 2.00’s. Durham was used 25 times, so it was not like I brought him in for a batter or two either.

Washington Senators 60-80

Welcome to another truly bad season in the nation’s capital. Although there were a few good players, they were once again doomed to a lower division finish. Ed Delahanty hit .333 with 5 homers in his first year with the club, and he stole 35 bases too. George Carey took over at first base and hit a respectable .277 with a team high 87 RBI.

Outfielder James Ryan had a terrible first half, but went on a huge tear in the second half with a pair of 10 game hit streaks and finished with a .297 average and 71 RBI. He did seem to strike out a lot though Bill Keister hit .277 and also struggled in the early going. While he hit 3 homers he underperformed his card by a lot in my opinion but seeing how bad the bench was (only 4 reserves) It’s not like he had competition.

Like Chicago, the Senators were not blessed with great pitching. For the third straight replay they get a trio of C starters. Al Orth was the only one with a winning record at 20-19. While none were terrible, nobody ever really dominated. Wyatt Lee was the most interesting of the pitching staff, rated primarily as an outfielder and a DY he never got the chance to play as much as I hoped for, but made the most of his limited time. Going 4-5 with one save and a suprising .97 WHIP he would give me just enough innings in relief to spare the starters from too much abuse, but when I gave him spot starts he struggled. When given spot starts in the field he did manage to hit .255 with a homer though. I think he is a player who if left only on the mound would have been a good starting pitcher. In the seasons where he was only a starter he was rated as a B.

Detroit Tigers 55-94

About a month into the season Detroit was in dead last and I looked at the cards and was confused. I then went online and saw they were actually a pretty bad team. You would not expect that from the cards they received. Eventually they started to play better, but by that time their fate was sealed. Had they played like this all season they probably could have caught Washington and Chicago.

Jimmy Barrett continues a string of steady seasons, hitting .286 with 32 stolen bases. “The Tabasco Kid” Norman Elberfeld (still my favorite nickname of the deadball era, even if it shortened to “Kid” once he went to NY) was again the best overall player. Norman hit .280 with 74 RBI and stole 23 bases while playing a solid shortstop.

Dick Harley was absolutely brutal until about the end of July and did manage to get up to a .257 average, but in the leadoff spot only stealing 19 bases with two 11’s in 1902 is a disgrace. Ervin “Dutch” Beck gets an honorable mention here as he only hit .245 but led the team with 5 homers. Beck is the answer to an important trivia question. “Who hit the first home run in American League history?”

Detroit actually had better pitching than the two teams I felt they should have caught. Ed Siever lived up to his A rating by finishing 20-15 and 2.42 ERA. George Mercer wound up 17-17 after a great July and August run where he went 7-1 to overcome a terrible 0-5 start. George Mullin was the team punching bag, going 10-23 along with his 4.10 ERA pretty much limited the win streaks for certain.

The rest of the staff was absolutely brutal, as every one of them had ERA’s over 5.00. They also had several R rated pitchers and only had two pitchers manage to punch out more than 100 hitters, which had to come into play. On an interesting side note, they turned a triple play against the Browns in September. This gives them a total of three in 6 replays. Not bad.

Baltimore Orioles 55-84

The team’s final season in the majors for 51 years was not very fun. Oddly enough they got much better than expected pitching early, and didn’t commit a lot of errors, despite their fielding 3 rating (in their defense there are only 2 in the entire game that were better)

Unfortunately reality set in, and pitching normed out fairly quickly and the bottom half of the lineup took the season off it seemed. Kip Selbach led the team with a .269 average and tied teammate Jimmy Williams for the team lead in steals with 39. Speaking of Jimmy, he would be the only player to go to New York when the Yankees (then known as the Highlanders) formed in the wake of their going under.

Although their averages were only in the .250 range Herm McFarland and Wilbert Robinson were somewhat productive. Both drove in over 80 runs and stole about 20 bases each.

The pitching was their guaranteed ticket to the cellar. Even though advanced metrics drastically reduced the number of A starters in the game this team was cursed with a C, C, D rotation and all the remaining pitchers were also D’s. Lewis Wiltse was the team “leader” with a 16-20 record, but was the victim of many losses where he only allowed a couple of runs, resulting in a surprisingly low 2.80 ERA.

Chris Heismann finished with a 13-18 record and a 4.18 record, but at times looked like he could become an ace in the future. Harry Howell while being rated a D starter was very valuable indeed. Unfortunately he didn’t pitch very well, going 14-17 and underperformed his card, which was why I was always trying to find him a spot.