Was looking forward to the Twins' doubleheader today in Detroit but it's been postponed. The single game scheduled for tomorrow will now be a doubleheader, weather permitting, and the second lost game will be made up at the end of August. The Twins won their last four games before the all-star break, which is four days long, and today's postponement means it's now been possible to feel good about "how the Twins are playing" for at least five straight days—some kind of a record for this dismal season.
My makeup activity has been scrolling around baseball-reference.com looking at player records. Somehow, I lit upon Bob Feller, the Indians' great pitcher of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. I always think of Ted Williams as Exhibit A of great players whose lifetime statistics were diminished by military service in World War II. Williams did not play in 1943, 44, or 45, which were the seasons when he turned 25, 26, and 27 years old—the front-end of most players' prime. He finished his career with 521 home runs, so, barring injury, would almost certainly have hit more than 600 homers but for the lost three years. Only nine players have hit 600 career homers. At least three of them (Barry Bonds, A-Rod, and Sammy Sosa) are probable steroid users and a couple more (Albert Pujols and Jim Thome) hit a lot of their homers as designated batters. Williams's career batting average was .344, and if it had stayed right there during the missed seasons, he'd have the highest batting average of players with 600 home runs. Only the Babe, at .342, is even in the same neighborhood.
But Feller is Williams's rival in this regard. Both men were 23 years old on 7 December 1941. Feller enlisted two days later and missed more time than Williams did—all of the 42, 43, and 44 seasons, and almost all of the 45 season, when he returned to the Indians in August and pitched in just 9 games. To give some idea of what he might have done in the years he missed, during the 1941 season, his last before going to war, Feller pitched 343 [sic] innings, struck out 260 batters, won 25 games, and had an ERA of 3.15. Then in 1946, his first season back, he pitched 371 [sic] innings, struck out 348 batters, won 26 games, and compiled an ERA of 2.18. If we interpolate, filling in the missing years with the rough averages of these bookends, Feller accrues, conservatively, 90 wins and 1100 strikeouts. His career totals in these categories would then stand at 356 and 3681, respectively. On the all-time list for wins, he rises from 37th place to 8th, and for strikeouts, from 31st to 6th.
Feller's contemporary Warren Spahn pitched briefly in the major leagues for the first time in 1942 before serving in the Army during the 43, 44, and 45 seasons. His was not easy duty—according to Wikipedia, he saw action at the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the Purple Heart. When asked what he might have accomplished in the years he missed, Spahn modestly but plausibly speculated that the saved wear-and-tear may have extended his career at the back end. People speak of Williams batting .388 in 1957, when he was 38, as the greatest season by an old guy, but Spahn, age 42 in 1963, pitched 22 complete games for the Milwaukee Braves while compiling an ERA of 2.60: his won-lost record was 23-7. Spahn's point amounts to a caveat concerning the aptness of filling in statistics for missing years and adding them to career totals, as I've done with Feller. But what are you supposed to do when it's raining in Detroit? Spahn, by the way, is one of the seven pitchers who stays ahead of Feller on the all-time wins list even after you give Bullet Bob an additional 90.
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