6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Jackie Robinson and Vetting Replacement Value GM's

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Monday, February 09, 2004

Jackie Robinson and Vetting Replacement Value GM's

The Bench Coach has a piece whose ground I'm not sure I want to tread on, but the boisterous side of me is spoiling for, well, not necessarily a fight, but certainly an understanding of terms, anyway. The fundamental issue I have with the line of thinking that says the team must interview someone of X racial heritage is that it completely inverts the whole Jackie Robinson affair.

Jackie -- and anybody else with dark skin -- was kept out of baseball because he was black, until Branch Rickey signed him in 1945. Jackie came up in 1947 as a first baseman, though he would eventually play second, third, outfield, and one game at short. Well: here's Jackie's 1947 numbers, against what he replaced:

Player	AB	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
J Robinson	590	.297	.368	.427	.795
E Stevens	310	.242	.301	.426	.727
H Schultz	249	.253	.290	.353	.644

There's clearly no question that Jackie was a huge improvement over the Stevens/Schultz platoon; his OPS was .068 higher than the better of the two. Even though Jackie's SLG was a relatively weak .427 (for a first baseman), he represented a tremendous improvement in OBP over either of them. But -- the important thing is he was better than the guy he replaced.

Some time last year, I can't remember exactly, there was a bit of a hubbub about black managers not managing for any but the scrub teams of the majors. Perhaps the thinking was aimed at Lloyd McClendon over in Pittsburgh, but I will take this as a vote of no-confidence in the Cubs and Dusty. There's a long line waiting to become GM's, and only 30 jobs. Build a winner, and they will come. Who did you have in mind, Coach, who would be better than, say, Dan Evans?

// posted by Rob @ 8:35 PM link // 0 comments