Jack Splat versus the field

Jumpin' Jack Wilson from Wikipedia

We took a look at Gene Alley yesterday, and as we were tossing the BS around while gulping down the morning's first coffee at work, my hot stove buds debated how Jack Wilson would stack up against the other tenured Pirate shortstops. So we put together what we considered the top half dozen shortstops to wear the Buc uniform. They spent 63 years and 8,380 games representing this town. Here's a chart we came up with of some selected stats to see how these long time Bucco SS's compared:

             all
player  yrs games avg  obp rs rbi rp field l-avg dp

Wagner  18  2433 .328 .387 88 82  165 .946  +13  49
Vaughan 10  1411 .324 .409 94 76  162 .950   +2  79
Groat    9  1258 .290 .325 62 50  109 .962   +1  97
Alley   11  1195 .254 .310 40 31   65 .970   +6  64
Bell     8  1106 .269 .339 78 53  121 .976   +1  79
Wilson   7   997 .269 .312 65 48  105 .977   +4 102

(The stats are for years as a Pirate, broken down to season average. rp is runs produced = rs+rbi-hr. l-avg is how many percentage points above the league average the player fielded over his career. The fielding stats are for SS only. We didn't show home runs because of the different eras involved, but Jay Bell was the group's top slugger, averaging 10 dingers/year. No A-Rods in this bunch.)

So what's it tell us? Well, we can start with the obvious - Honus Wagner and Arky Vaughan were head and shoulders above the crowd when it came to hitting a baseball. Jay Bell was a pretty good run producer, and in fact fares better overall than we thought he might. Dick Groat was a good stick, but his run production wasn't that great.

The fielding was a surprise, though. The later the era, the better the fielding percentage, with Jack Wilson being the top gloveman and Wagner the worst. That probably has quite a bit to do with the conditions of the fields they played on, and in Wagner's case, the quality of second basemen he played with - he's also dead last in DP's, and it takes two to turn one.

To normalize that, we took the league average and compared it to the individual fielding percentage (l-avg comparison). When we compare apples to apples, Wagner vaults from dead last in fielding to first, finishing his career a whopping 13 points higher in fielding percentage than the league average during his years.

Wagner and Alley also have somewhat deceiving stats because they played for Pittsburgh as their baseball days wound down while everyone else was in their prime as a Pirate. So their numbers may be a bit devalued overall.

To make a long analysis short, we totaled the obp, rp, l-avg fielding comparison and dp's, 1 point for the best, 6 points for the worst. Hopefully this simple formula gives equal weight to glove and bat. Like golf, the lowest score wins. The best of the Bucco's shortstops according to the Green Weenie are *tada*:

Honus Wagner (9)
Arky Vaughan (10)
Jay Bell & Jack Wilson (14)
Dick Groat (15)
Gene Alley (17)

No matter how you slice it, Wagner and Vaughan are the best we've ever had at short. But Bell, Wilson and Groat are so tightly bunched that you can't separate them with a gnat's eyelash. Alley's glove was one of the Buc's better ones, but his bat drops him down to the bottom of the heap.

And to answer the original question, Wilson more than holds his own in some pretty fast company.

Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't throw one Jumping Jack Flash factoid into the post. When he was a teenager and playing on a summer travel team, Wilson's roommate was his future Pirates teammate Freddy Sanchez. Sanchez played shortstop while Wilson manned second base. Funny how the more things change, the more they say the same. It just took a couple of decades to get them back together and in their right positions.

Alley Oop

Gene Alley's card from Baseball Dugout

When people talk about Pirate shortstops, Honus Wagner, Arky Vaughan and Dick Groat are always on the tip of their tongues. But for pure artistry in the field, Gene Alley rates among them. Over his career, he played more games at short (977) for the Bucs than anyone except Wagner, Vaughan, Groat, and Jay Bell (Jack Wilson is breathing down his neck with 974 games at SS and should pass him in April.)

Born in Richmond, Va., Leonard Eugene Alley spent his entire pro career in the Pittsburgh system. Signed in 1959, he buttoned up his Bucco flannels five years later when he was called up in 1964. Alley played in 81 games that year for the Pirates and hit .211. The next season Alley settled in at the plate, batting .252.

In the majors, Alley wasn’t counted on to be a stick man. The Pirates had Stargell, Clemente and the rest of the Lumber Company to provide the ooomph. His value to the team was with his glove. But Alley found a way to be productive at the plate with the help of manager Harry Walker, who managed the Pirates from 1965 to ’67.

“I wasn’t the greatest hitter,” Alley admitted. “When Harry Walker took over the Pirates, he worked with me a lot on trying to hit the ball to right field and waiting on the pitch. We worked on the hit-and-run and he liked to get the runners over."

In 1966, Alley had perhaps his finest all around season. He hit a career-high .299 with seven home runs, 43 RBI, 88 runs scored, and 173 hits in 147 games. He drilled a career-high 28 doubles. Alley added 10 triples to the mix, and his 20 sacrifice bunts were second in the National League.

More importantly, he teamed with second baseman Bill Mazeroski to turn a NL record 215 double plays. The pair joined a select list of eight shortstop-second baseman to each win a Gold Glove the same season while playing together twice, in 1967 and '68.

“I knew after playing with (Mazeroski) for a while and watching other second baseman around the league that he was the best in making the double play,” said Alley, who himself had a then-club record 128 double plays in ’66 (just beaten by Jack Wilson last season, when he turned 129). “He was great and he could turn the double play better than anyone I ever saw. You just tried to give him a good throw and that was it - he was going to turn it. You left the rest to him.”

Alley had play he and Maz cooked up for balls hit up the middle. If Maz snagged a grounder going away from first base, he'd flip to Alley to relay to first. Twice Alley had the runners thrown out on that play, but the first baseman dropped the ball. Maz and Alley finally got a runner out in Atlanta with that tactic. The third time's the charm. (Story from Glenn's Pirate Near Greats.)

Alley won first of his two Gold Glove awards in 1966. He finished 11th in voting for the MVP award, thanks to his leather.

In 1967 Alley made his first trip to the All Star game, hitting .287 with six homers, 55 RBI, 25 doubles, 59 runs scored, and 158 hits in 152 games. He also earned his second straight Gold Glove.

He started at shortstop for the NL. But Alley played with a sore right arm in that game, an injury that would bother him the rest of his career. He first felt the ache before a game at Cincinnati while warming up in the outfield.

“It happened a few days before the All-Star Game,“ Alley said. “I was shagging balls during batting practice in the outfield. I caught one and threw it in and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I got another one and threw it and it was the same thing. The pain just wouldn’t go away. It stayed like that for a while.”

He thinks the cumulative effect of thousands of throws in practice and during games over the course of his career finally took their toll. "I just made too many throws, I guess. It was just wear and tear.”

Alley played through the pain. In 1968, he was named to his second straight All-Star squad while hitting .245. In ‘69, he hit .246 with eight homers in 82 games and spent 29 days on the disabled list. Despite limited playing time, Alley continued to shine with his glove. He also had a 21-game hitting streak.

It began on Aug. 13 at San Francisco, when he went 2-for-5 with a home run off the Giants’ Mike McCormick during a 10-5 win. The balls kept falling until Sept. 9 when he went hitless in four at-bats against Montreal’s Steve Renko.

Alley hit .366 during the streak (30-for-82) with eight homers, 21 RBI, and 15 runs scored. When it began, he was hitting .218. By the time it had ended, Alley had raised his average to .266.

In 1970, Alley smacked an inside-the-park grand slam home run against the Montreal Expos on Sept. 2 at Jarry Park. With the bases loaded and one out against pitcher Carl Morton, Alley sent a line drive toward center fielder Boots Day. Boots let it get by him, (aptly named OF'er, hey?) and was off to the races.

Alley helped the Pirates win the National League East in 1970, hitting .244 and gloving everything in sight. In 1971, Alley hit .227 during the Bucs’ world championship season. In 1972, the Pirates won their third consecutive division title as Alley hit .248 in 119 games.

But Alley hit just .203 in 76 games the next season and called it quits. His knee was shot along with his shoulder, and he didn't have enough moving parts left to be effective anymore. There were no steroids or HGH then to cure your aches and pains. We can only wonder what kind of career he'd have had if there was a good ortho doc to scope him back in the day.

For his 11-year career, Alley hit .254 with 55 homers, 342 RBI, 442 runs scored, 140 doubles, and 44 triples in 1,195 games. He had 999 lifetime hits. His fielding percentage was a sterling .970 at shortstop.

When Alley was playing, he found work as a sales rep during the off season and stepped into the job full time before retiring a few years ago. Now he spends his time playing golf or hanging out with his buddies. He rarely misses a chance to get together with his old teammates. Laissez les bon temps roulez.

(Many thanks to Todd Newville who wrote up "Dead End Alley" in Baseball Dugout. I took a lot of the info and quotes from his story.)