Other Crap

Baseball's ultimate one-year wonder.

You think Brady Anderson was a fluke? Consider Fred Dunlap. In 1884 he had the best OPS+ in baseball history until Barry Bonds discovered steroids. That's right, higher than Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, or anyone in their best year. He also won the triple crown, or what portion of it was available, since they didn't count RBI that year. He did lead the league in homers and took the batting championship with a solid .412. That was not an era when everyone batted .400 like the mid-1890s. Dunlap won the batting championship by 52 points, and it took only a modest .285 to make the league's top ten.

He also led the league in on-base percentage (by 50 points), slugging percentage (by 120 points), runs scored (with 160, 30 more than the nearest competitor), hits and total bases. He missed leading the league in doubles by a single two-bagger.

Does that sound impressive? I haven't even started yet. He was also the manager of the team, and they went 94-19, for an unbelievable .832 winning percentage. That's equivalent to about 135 wins in the modern schedule! They won the pennant by 21 games in a 113-game schedule. They scored eight runs per game while holding their opposition below four.

This was not just Brady Anderson having an excellent year. This was a guy who had arguably the greatest hitting year and the greatest managerial year in baseball history - at the same time!

Oh, yeah, did I mention that he was also the best-fielding second baseman of his day, and by a wide margin? He led all major league second basemen with a .926 fielding percentage. That was spectacular in those bare-handed days. It was 54 points higher than the next best regular in the league. He also led all second sackers in range factor, with 6.41 chances per game. The next best regular averaged 5.71.

So what happened to the esteemed Mr Dunlap? The next year, playing in even more games, he batted .270 with two homers. His slugging average dropped just a tad, from .621 to .333. His managerial skills also suffered a bit. His St Louis Maroons finished in last place, 49 games out of first, with a .333 winning percentage, a drop of about 500 points! Their run production dropped from eight per game to three and a half. Dunlap was dismissed as manager 50 games into the year, although he remained on the team as the regular second baseman. He was still the best-fielding second baseman in baseball, and would continue to be for years, despite having forgotten what to do with a bat or a line-up card. It turned out to be a good thing that ownership kept him around, because the next manager (the first baseman) led the team to a 6-32 record, a performance so dismal that Dunlap got his old job back, at least until the end of the year.

"Sure Shot" Dunlap kicked around for several more years, even got another chance to manage (years later, for 17 games in the middle of a season), and continued to play great defense, but he never again batted more than .274, hit more than seven homers in a season, or had a winning record as a manager. He never again led any league in anything on the offensive end, and was dead before his 45th birthday, all but forgotten

But in 1884 he was the baseball God.

Well, except maybe for Ol' Hoss Radbourn. If you're a huge fan like me, you know that was also the year when Radbourn went 59-12 as a pitcher. Technically, he was 59-12-2. He started 73 games and finished all of them, but two were ruled a draw because of darkness (since there were no lights in those days). The bullpen didn't get a lot of work back then, although Ol' Hoss did find time to make two relief appearances in games started by other pitchers. (Wait! They had other pitchers?)