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Baseball history: the worst hitting shortstop for a championship team ever.



Pretty much everyone agrees that shortstop is a position where the Giants need an upgrade. To offer some perspective, I thought I'd go back in baseball history to find the worst shortstop ever to start regularly for a team that won the World Series. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone worse than Ray Oyler.

The 1968 Tigers were one of the first teams I got to see much. I was a Giants fan, tried and true, but living in Indiana, with no reason for my family to vacation to California, my only real chances of seeing a game was either on NBC's Game of the Week, or hope my folks would find some reason to go to Cincinatti, catch Giants-Reds at Crosley Field. But my father was an opera singer, and he got a gig to sing with Michigan Opera, in Detroit. And I got to go with him. So, days, I'd go to Tigers Stadium and catch a ballgame, and nights I'd go to the opera. I was twelve, and my Dad was in rehearsals all day, so he arranged with the company to have an intern or a PA take me to the ballpark, and in Detroit, the PA was a tall, skinny, kid who, it turns out, was a rabid Tigers fan.

The '68 Tigers are mostly known for Denny McLain's 30 win season, as well as for a stellar World Series with the Cardinals. They had a solid team. Their outfield was Willie Horton, Mickie Stanley, Jim Northrup and HOFer Al Kaline, but Kaline broke his arm in May, giving Stanley more playing time. Stanley was a brilliant centerfielder and won the Gold Glove that year. The infield included Don Wert at third, Dick McAuliffe at second (who I loved watching because of his funky wide-open batting stance--Northrup had a weird stance, too--sort of like Craig Counsell's), and first baseman Norm Cash. The catcher was Bill Freehan, who put up a 145 OPS+ and sometimes batted cleanup. Horton was their best hitter, with .285/.352/.543 line, good for an OPS+ of 165 in that offensively-depressed era. But Horton was awful defensively, which is why Stanley was so important to their defense. And in addition to McLain, they had a rotation of Mickey Lolich, Earl Wilson and Joe Sparma, all pretty good that year. Well, Sparma was nothing special. I saw McLain pitch once, a game won by a PH single by Gates Brown, a squat little guy who batted .370 in 104 PAs. I also saw Mickie Lolich pitch, big chubby lefty with a mid '80's sinker that generated ground balls.

And then there was Ray Oyler.

This was his offensive line: .135/.213/.186. OPS+ was 20. That's right, the World Champion 1968 Detroit Tigers starting SS had an on-base percentage of .213.

They had two other SS who played, as you can imagine. Tommy Matchick (.203/.248/.286) and Dick Tracewski (.156/.239/.236) both played nearly as much as Oyler. What they did a lot was pinch hit for whoever started at SS, which makes sense given how bad those three guys were and how good Brown was that year. But Matchick and Tracewski were bad defensively, while Oyler was . . . nothing special. League average defensively.

When they got to the World Series, Mayo Smith, the manager, had two tough decisions. Kaline was back from his injury, and they needed to get his bat in the lineup. And, of course, their shortstop was Ray Oyler. So Smith moved his starting center fielder, Mickie Stanley, to shortstop for the World Series. Imagine Bruce Bochy deciding, just in time for the playoffs, to make Andres Torres our starting shortstop.

They did it though. They moved Northrup to center, played Kaline in right, and played Stanley at shortstop. And he did fine. Booted two grounders, which didn't factor into the scoring. I've read that Stanley hadn't played shortstop since high school when Smith made that move. This isn't true--the Tigers won the pennant by 12 games, and Stanley had played a few games at short and second.

Mickey Stanley was a terrific athlete, not much of a hitter, but a great defensive centerfielder. In the off-season, Oyler was left unprotected in the expansion draft, and was picked by the Seattle Pilots, where he played with Jim Bouton for that team's inaugural (and final) season. The Tigers traded for Tom Tresh, who didn't hit much either, but managed a OPS+ of 89. But the Tigers didn't win. They apparently missed that Ray Oyler magic.

So can the Giants win with Brandon Crawford at SS? Hey, he's no Ray Oyler.

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