Ted Williams

[Jobu]

This isn't how things work, but it is interesting to look at Ted's career #s if you fill in his war years with the averages of the full seasons just before and after each. He missed full seasons in 1943-44-45 for WWII and almost full seasons in 1952-53 for Korea, so I did the same exercise to fill in all five years.

Missing Seasons jpg.png


If you add these totals to his career line it makes a huge difference:

Adjusted Career.png

While it is impossible to say he wouldn't have gotten injured, it is also possible that he would have outperformed the averages, especially in his prime during the WWII years, so there is both downside and upside.

If he actually had finished with these career numbers, I think people would look at him dramatically differently.

And a 1939 photo of Ted by Arthur Griffith.
Ted Williams type 1 photo Arthur Griffin 1939 6.75x8.5 a.jpg

[BearBailey]

Undervalued in todays market if you consider what he used to go for, he just hasn’t seen the increases many other players have in the past 30 years or the past 5. If you were putting together the mid 1950s sets it was mantle, Williams, mays and whatever key rookie cards. Now Aaron, Clemente, banks, Koufax are all pretty similar priced to Williams in those sets. The early cards vs DiMaggio for whatever reason DiMaggio has always been more.

[DeanH3]

Originally Posted by Jobu

This isn't how things work, but it is interesting to look at Ted's career #s if you fill in his war years with the averages of the full seasons just before and after each. He missed full seasons in 1943-44-45 for WWII and almost full seasons in 1952-53 for Korea, so I did the same exercise to fill in all five years.

Attachment 588458


If you add these totals to his career line it makes a huge difference:

Attachment 588459

While it is impossible to say he wouldn't have gotten injured, it is also possible that he would have outperformed the averages, especially in his prime during the WWII years, so there is both downside and upside.

If he actually had finished with these career numbers, I think people would look at him dramatically differently.

And a 1939 photo of Ted by Arthur Griffith.
Attachment 588460

Thanks for filling in those gaps Bryan. Definitely interesting food for thought. I'll add, Ted hit 29 HR's in his last year, 1960. He would have been 23 behind Ruth. I wonder if he would have hung on 1, maybe 2, more years to break Ruth's record. How would he be viewed if that had been the case? And Aaron would have been chasing Ted's HR record instead if Ruth. Again, fun to speculate.

[jethrod3]

[QUOTE=Jobu;2371675]This isn't how things work, but it is interesting to look at Ted's career #s if you fill in his war years with the averages of the full seasons just before and after each.
Attachment 588458

If you add these totals to his career line it makes a huge difference:
[ATTACH]588459

It's not a bad approach to take for filling in the gaps. If you compare the projections for Ted with Aaron's career numbers, one realizes that Ted played about 200 games (or more than one full season's worth of games) less than Aaron. He finished with about the same number of games played as Bonds, but I don't recognize him as the all-time home run leader.

[ALR-bishop]

There are variants to his 55 and 56 cards. The 55 involves missing dots on the i in his auto ( recurring print defect) and the 56 involves a minor cropping difference in the image. Only weird folks like me collect both. The 55 and 56 Hocus Focus are not beautiful but they are tough.