Quote:
Originally Posted by howard38
Two guys whose stats are tough to project because they weren't quite the same players when they returned from military service:
Everyone knows that Cecil Travis lost four years to the war after having a career year in 1941. He was only 27 and batted .359. He struggled badly when he returned and retired soon afterwards.
Sam Chapman also had a career year in 1941 and also lost four years. He was only 25 when he batted .322 w/25 HRs. He was a decent player when he returned but never close to his 1941 level.
Dick Wakefield might also fall into this category. He was in the service, discharged and then went back in the service. In the meantime he batted .355 w/12 HRs in just half of the 1944 season when he was only 23. When he returned again in 1946 he was never as good.
I guess it's impossible to project what kind of numbers these guys would have put up if their careers had not been interrupted. Maybe their big years were just flukes or perhaps they would have been hall of famers.
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Chapman had an interesting stat line when he returned from active service. In 1940, he showed outstanding power potential with 26 doubles and 23 home runs along with his 23 home runs. He hit .276 in 134 games, but struck out 96 times in 508 official at bats. For the period, that was a pretty high strikeout rate. He was ever so slightly below a 19% strikeout rate. The next season, his real breakout season of 1941, one of the reasons for his improvement was a big cut in his strikeout rate. In 552 at bats, he hit .322 with 29 doubles, 25 home runs and 106 RBI. He'd more than cut his strikeout rate in half to just under 9%. He struck out only 49 times, and walked 46 times.
He missed all of 1942 to 1944, and almost 1945. In looking at his numbers after returning, while he never again had the same level of success he had in 1941, he maintained his improved strikeout rate. Between 1946 and 1950, he had a .261 AVG with 19 HR and 85 RBI per season. Still pretty good. His strikeout rate for the period was about 12.4%. But again, when you consider his walkout to strikeout ratio was almost exactly 1:1, I wonder why he didn't have a little more success than he did. 322 walks and 333 strike outs with good power-you have to wonder what he might have accomplished had he not been away from the game for so long. It's actually remarkable that he was away from the game as long as he was, and still enjoyed a pretty successful run when he did come back.
By my estimation, he missed about 562 games because of his service in the Navy during WW II. For the 1942 to 1945 period he missed, I used his production from 1939 to 1946 as a basis, and his career numbers are greatly improved.
Cecil Travis was really coming into his own when he joined the Army in the winter of 1941. He'd been an All Star three of the prior four seasons, and he'd finished second in the American League in hitting with a .359 average. In many seasons, that would have won him a batting title. Unfortunately for Travis, that was the year that Ted Williams hit .406.
From 1937 to 1941, Travis had averaged 140 games played. Therefore, I estimate that he missed some 525 games to military service between 1942 and 1945. A career .314 AVG across 7,000 career at bats would make for a pretty impressive career, don't you guys think?
Dick Wakefield, I admit, is a player I knew nothing about. I'd heard his name a few times, but I don't recall ever looking at his career stats. But it's really sad that he didn't get a chance to continue his career. If you look at that first season and a half he had roughly 1,000 at bats (1,029 to be precise). The guy had a .328 average at 23 years old. What's more, in his first season, he'd hit only 7 home runs in 633 at bats, driving in 79 runs. In his second season, he'd hit 12 home runs with 53 RBI in only 276 at bats. He finished 6th in the MVP vote his rookie season. He was so good in 1944 that he finished 5th in the MVP vote even though he only played in 78 of 154 games. In 1945, while Wakefield was serving America in the Navy, his Tigers won the World Series. It's almost impossible to think that Wakefield wasn't a superstar in the making on one of the best teams in baseball. But Wakefield was arrogant, and headstrong. He bet Ted Williams that when they got back to baseball, he'd hit for a better average than Williams, hit more home runs and drive in more runs than Williams. When he returned to the Majors, he never regained his stroke.
I can average out the time missed based on those roughly 1,000 at bats. It shows tremendous potential, and a level of play that he never again achieved once he returned to the Major Leagues.
