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Major league players you thought were outstanding who were really just average.
Goldenage
Posts: 3,278 ✭✭✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
Growing up in the tri-state area, our local tv showed a lot of Mets and Yankees games.
Whenever the Angels were in town, there were three guys who always played well against the Yankees. Brian Downing,
Doug DeCinces, and Frank Tanana.
I always thought Frank Tanana was an outstanding pitcher growing up. Not Steve Carlton like, but just a step below.
When I look at his numbers, he's only a .500 pitcher (perhaps playing for the Angels had something to do with that), but
he doesn't really have amazing stats like I thought he would.
Who's a player you thought was awesome growing up, but he was basically just average or above average.
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Interesting. I'm thinking.
I was a huge Wally Joyner fan
I thought Joe Carter was AWESOME growing up. He always seemed to do big damage against the Red Sox. All those RBI and just look at that OBP%
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett
This is easy for an Indians fan growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. Andre Thorton.
Frank Tanana was above average for the majority of his career. And he was outstanding before he got hurt.
That said, I don't really care how good he was or wasn't - he threw the division-clinching 1-0 shutout against Toronto for Detroit in 1987 and that's all that matters. Watching him ring up guys with his 80mph fastball was awesome.
I have a reverse scenario for you. As a youngster whenever I saw Brian Downing playing on tv it appeared this guy was always stinkin up the joint. Seemed like every time I saw him he was whiffing at strike 3 and never seeming to get any hits, as a youngster I just formulated that he must be one of these one dimensional players just in the lineup for his defense. But later in adulthood and upon further review of his career stats he had a really decent offensive career. Over 2000 hits. I would have never believed those stats until I actually looked them up.
Pretty similar, dontcha think? Based on ERA+ I'd say Who Dat? was better, but I can accept a "too close to call" decision. That's Hunter's entire career, at which point he was no longer good enough to play major league baseball (nor was he in his last season, but he played anyway). But Who Dat?, also known as Frank Tanana, put together his stats through 1989, and was good enough to keep playing major league baseball, for four more years. I won't debate how good he was in those last four years, suffice it to say he was less than stellar, but one thing I know to an absolute certainty - he was better than Jim Hunter post-1979 when he was no longer playing.
Frank Tanana was nowhere close to a HOF level pitcher, but Frank Tanana was a better pitcher than Jim Hunter. That's a fact.
Brandon Phillips always seemed to be better than he actually was.
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I liked him too. That was a really fun time at the "Big A" when he was an Angel. I tried to never miss a game. Some good memories. Wally Joyner was very, very generous with his time. He would visit with the local church kids. He was everywhere! I remember him playing softball on the field behind the church with my boys and the other kids. The boys were thrilled. He's a nice man.
George Brett and Joe Carter will live in my mind as awesome forever!
very good points here. It sure does appear Tanana was at least as good and probably a little better than catfish.
it makes me wonder if Frank is underrated or Catfish is overrated.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Frank under
Santo
Lou Brock as a hitter. Cub fans still talk about that trade. Cub fans should have been more angry that they let Maddux walk.
In the end, he finished with a 109 OPS+. His running ability makes him better than average for sure....but the hype of joining the 3,000 hit club, he is a little underwhelming with the bat.
Until recently I never knew that there was any George Brett controversy. Is is good, great, so-so, no good, etc? Never gave it any thought. But, I never think about how good or great or not so great any athlete is. Anyway, what's up with this George Brett thing?
Brett was great, that was just a joke directed at the lunatics who think he was better than Mike Schmidt.
He was no Harmon Killebrew, that's for sure.
There are lots of Schmidt lovers who are insanely jealous of Bretts postseason exceptionalism compared to Schmidt’s horrible overall postseason performances against better pitching.
Mike put up slightly better numbers during the regular season hitting at the smaller vet and against Expos pitching.
But when it came to when it counted the most, Schmidt was a little leaguer, while Brett was a stud.
The Schmiddtys are just jealous.
Thanks, Goldenage. Sounds good to me.
I've always been astonished to see Brock ranked 37th among left fielders in JAWS, somewhere between Brett Gardner and Matt Holliday, and far below Jim Rice. Doesn't seem possible for a player that bad (as Brock's ranking) to be a first ballot HoFer.
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Short answer would be Hunter is over rated and Tanana is under rated. Overall, I like Hunter as clearly the better pitcher, not as good as most people think, and not as bad as dallas thinks.
Hunter did the "same" in 15 seasons as Tanana did in 21.
Frank was looking like a GREAT pitcher when he first came up, had some arm trouble and became a "junk pitcher".
From 1975-1977 he was awesome. Probably deserved the Cy Young in 1977, but his lack of innings might have hurt him.
From 1978-1993 he had one real nice year, was average every other season and was a 200 inning per year pitcher. Great guy to have as a number 2-3 starter.
Hunter had a 10 year run where he pitched 250-300 innings, he had a 4 year run where he was top 4 in Cy Young voting and he was undefeated in WS play during that time. He was on 5 WS champions.
Coming down with diabetes coupled with the wear and tear of those 10 years of pitching a lot of innings brought his career to a pretty abrupt end. He wasn't able to "hang around" very long. We'll never know how Hunter would have pitched in those last 6 years if he could have continued, but I'll bet he would have been pretty average, or below.
_Playing on good teams always helps! _
Tanana gets remembered as a great pitcher at the beginning of his career who was average for a long time.
Hunter gets remembered for those 4-5 years where he was great and played for great teams.
Please explain to me how Tanana's 1977 OPS+ is so much better than 1976's, 1976 looks better to me, and no, I am not looking at wins.
One of my favorite Tanana quotes, at age 39: "In the '70s I threw in the 90s; in the '90s I throw in the 70s."
I didnt realize Hunter had Diabetes and that contributed to his retirement. I think you are right that Hunter is mostly remembered for being a top pitcher on those WS teams. His name was in the limelight at the right times.
plus he had a catchy nickname. I think I can remember that Steinbrenner actually gave it to him.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Ok, that's interesting. Has anyone yet put in the time to see just how much Schmidt feasted on bad Expos pitching? Was Montreals pitching bad enough to give Schmidt enough of an advantage to put him above Brett?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Charlie Finley, who wanted Vida Blue to change his first name to "True".
Vida declined!
alright, I just checked, and thats not it.
Schmidt didn't feast against Montreal, it was the 4th worst team for him to face for his career. he was worse across the board against the expos than for his career stats.
He did hit very well against Cincinnati, the Cubs and San Diego.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.