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Tuesday, July 08, 2003
mailbag
charles from chicago writes in about matt stairs:
i was just watching the fatfuck and it occurred to me gods truth the wunderhampster's all natural. he would have been a fucking star in the low offense 80's. you know damn well he doesnt juice. he only played full time for two seasons. and he killed the ball. more doubles would be nice, right. but hes fucking thirtyfive. hes got oldballplayer skills. he dont make a dime, and he never has. its too bad he got lost in a high offensive era. but maybe im a punk. i mean if andre dawson was a star in the 80s stairs woulda been too. i should calculate his numbers. im toolazy. he seems to have developed late or been wasted young. probably the latter.
right you are, charles! stairs has old player skills . . . power and patience. and not speed. but he has a surprising amount of one particular young player skill . . . contact. his first significant playing time came at the age of 28, and he made contact at an .832 clip. needless to say he mashed. one shudders to think what he would have done given a full career.
don't calculate the numbers yourself, send them to your friendly neighborhood blogger!
1996 .122 .832 .325
1997 .124 .830 .342
1998 .101 .822 .263
1999 .144 .766 .359
2000 .141 .744 .280
2001 .133 .776 .273
2002 .118 .815 .286
2003 .104 .789 .302
his major-league career was entirely post-peak.
since you mentioned it, let's check out the hawk:
1977 .061 .823 .234
1978 .047 .790 .239
1979 .041 .820 .235
1980 .071 .880 .209
1981 .082 .873 .288
1982 .053 .842 .234
1983 .057 .872 .275
1984 .071 .850 .190
1985 .052 .826 .229
1986 .069 .841 .230
1987 .049 .834 .338
1988 .059 .876 .230
1989 .078 .851 .263
1990 .074 .877 .256
1991 .038 .858 .253
1992 .052 .871 .206
1993 .036 .894 .170
1994 .030 .818 .276
1995 .038 .801 .204
dawson was blessed with nigh-ichiroian contact ability, and speed. but he never developed the patience of matt stairs, nor even the power. his mvp year was one of the worst selections in the history of baseball. phil rogers probably voted for him. phil rogers probably thinks he belongs in the hall of fame.
let's go by age: dawson was 28 in 1983, but stairs was better (1996). 29 . . . stairs was better. 30, stairs. 31, stairs. 32, dawson. that was the mvp year. 33, stairs. 34, stairs. and at age 35, matt stairs is still better than andre dawson was at the same age. it gets closer if you factor in the low-offense era of the 80's, but even so, that's a startling comparison. if the hamster had been tall and thin, rather than short and fat, he would have probably got that early shot, and he would have killed. he would have been better than andre dawson.
dawson's contact, combined with his inability to take a pitch, made large piles of home runs and rbi. but the thing that drags him down, and most people ignore, is his staggering number of outs. he was not great, merely very good.
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