About Me

I am a long time baseball fan who became interesting in documenting the "missing" batter strikeouts a few years back as an outgrowth of my interest in the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Grew up w/ the Big Red Machine. I now follow them and my new hometown, Detroit Tigers. Member of SABR off and on since 1979.

Friday, March 23, 2012

1888 AA Cleveland

Well, I finally made it through the Cleveland home games, only 60 of those as a pattern continues - the better teams in the league got game transferred to their home grounds so that better attendances and as a result, more revenue for both teams was generated.

Cleveland's record:  50-82, 6th place

It is too bad that Cleveland did only play 60 games as their splits show:

H: 33 W 27 L
A: 17 W 55 L 

Pretty ugly away from home.


Their lineup for the most part was not very stable - I would love to see or hear of the "stability" of lineups correlated with win percentage - it makes sense that if you are winning you stick with a "winning combination" and do not change much as opposed to a team that is performing poorly is going to be constantly "tinkering" with the lineup.  Anyway here is the top breakdown of lineup positions of the (Navy) Blues lineup (this is with 117 of 135 games documented so far):

1  Cub Stricker 2b   -    60 games
    Mortimer Hogan rf  - 38 games


2  Ed McKean ss/lf - 93 games

3  Jay Faatz 1b -      50 games
    Pete Hoteling cf - 45 games

4  Jay Faatz 1b -        38 games
    Bob Gilks cf/lf -     26 games
    Pete Hoteling  cf -  22 games

5  Bob Gilks lf/3b -    43 games
    Cub Stricker 2b -  19 games
    Pete Hoteling cf  -  15 games

6  Mike Goodfellow rf/lf - 41 games
    Gus Alberts ss/3b       - 18 games

7  Gus Alberts 3b/ss - 59 games
    John McGlone 3b - 26 games

8  Pop Snyder c    - 51 games
   Chief Zimmer c  - 49 games


As can see, not too many recognizable names pop out at you - I knew of Stricker (from his "Cub" nickname, Zimmer, McKean, and Jim McGuire (acquired later in the season).

As for the pitching staff, Jersey (from guess where? :) ) Bakley (referred to as "Bakely" in most contemporary references that I read) led the team with 61 starts and a 25-33 record.  60 CG's.

Bakley alternated, for the most part, with Billy Crowell (5-13) through mid June and then with "Cinders" (also referred to as the "Other Darby" [there was a "Darby" with Brooklyn]) O'Brien (11-19) through the end of September and finally with George Proeser (3-4).

Stricker played 11 seasons from 1882-93, with 7 different teams in the AA, Players League, and NL.



http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/striccu01.shtml

Chief Zimmer, again, I knew from the 1899 Spiders.  He played 20 games for that club and hit .342, which was completely unacceptable!   As a result, Louisville took him off of their hands.
Zimmer played in the majors 19 years, from 1884-1903

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/z/zimmech01.shtml

Jim (Deacon) McGuire was another Long Time catcher who was reknowned for his throwing (out runner) skills.
McGuire had actually played for the NL Philadelphia & Detroit teams in 1888 before catching on with Cleveland.
 McGuire played in 26 seasons between 1884 and 1912.

He was the catcher in the infamous  Cobb/Detroit boycott game of 1912 which I documented in a previous blog post.  He was 48 years old at the time.

Also, in 1895, he caught all 132 games of Washington's games - Frank Hayes of the 1944 Reds would be the next (and last?) to do so.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mcguide01.shtml

McKean was at the end of his string when I first encountered him with the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos (which were not quite as good as the Brooklyn Superbas as St. Louis finished in 4th of 12 teams).  McKean had a nice steady 13 year career from 1887 to 1899, as the NL Cleveland Spiders starting shortstop.

With the exception of the 1899 season, I wonder if he ever really left Cleveland - born in Grafton (SW of Cleveland), 12 seasons in Cleveland, and buried in Cleveland.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mckeaed01.shtml




    
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 25, 2012 at 7:39 AM

    A few days back you wrote:
    "Led the league with 109 swipes (stolen bases were ANY extra advancement as a rule, though I am discovering many/most were "legitimate" swipes).."

    Is there any way of sifting through old game accounts and actually finding out how many steals back then were legit. I for one am tired of having pre-1898 SB records airily dismissed with a "the rules were different" when I suspect that probably 90%+ of the steals were actually "real."

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    1. Jonathan FrankelApril 11, 2012 at 8:16 AM

      Anon,

      It is possible, however there are a couple of problems -

      1. not a ton of play by play to determine how the stolen base occurred - was it a straight steal or a base advance on a throw, or other.

      2. even if the play-by-play is there, there can be some amount of interpretation on if it really was one - the play-by-play could say "player stole 3rd" and it could have been at the end of a throw in from the outfield.

      Until we have more complete pbp, it will be difficult. There are some papers that have pbp accounts, depending on the scanned/microfilmed edition, such as the New York Evening Telegram, Evening World, Chicago Daily News. Some have pbp in the game summary - I recently have found some pbp in 1887 Cleveland Leader and Plain Dealer in early season games. Hope this helps answer your question. But we can definitely get some insight on what were "real" stolen bases based on the limited documentation out there. A fun research project is awaiting!

      As a side note, I started going through the 1899 Orioles and their 360 odd steals to determine what made them up and document as many caught stealings as I could. Interestingly, I found some steals that by the 1898 rules, should not have been defined as stolen bases in the Baltimore papers (base was advanced on throw-in was called a stolen base). I haven't looked at this in quite a few months, but plan on getting back to this to research this further.

      Thanks for your interest.

      Jonathan

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