Willie Stargell, the Unappreciated Legend

There are still some things that modern baseball stats are not yet capable of measuring. Ok, there are a LOT of things that they are not able to measure. This may not be more true in any one case, however, than that of Wilver Donrel (Willlie) Stargell.

According to Wins Above Replacement(WAR), the stat that supposedly takes into account the amount of wins a player adds to a team over an “average” player, “Pops” managed a score of just 57.5. To those that do not know, that is an extremely high score. Its also almost ten WAR short of the 65.4 WAR that the average HOF left  fielder collects during their playing careers. That difference may not seem super high, but it is the equivalent of two or three more very above average years.

At first glance, this number may seem right. He was a very good hitter, but he never did anything tremendously record setting, and he was an absolute train wreck  defensively. He was large, slow, and had very ailing knees for his entire career. On top of that, he could not consistently play first, which would have suited his body type much better, due to the fact that the Pirates already had a very good hitter their in the form of Donn Clendenon. A slow, injured man who is not even playing his best position could never be successful.

Offensively, though, Stargell really shined. He was an RBI machine over his 20 years, smacking in 1540 and even leading the league once in 1973. He also clubbed in 475 homers, most of them moon-shots, and finished with a .282/.360/.529 slash line. When it comes to an on-base/power blend, Willie Stargell is right up with the best of them, as he even led the league in OPS twice and, had it not been for unlucky timing, could probably have done it a few more. 

There is one shortcoming that Stargell had offensively though; his speed. As with fielding, his large frame and bad knees would not let him perform at the level many MLB players could. This is most evident in his career 17 for 33 mark on stolen bases. He had an untraditional way of managing this problem, though. While it likely was unintentional, “Pops’” high strike out rate actually was better for him than people would probably assume. Instead of hitting grounders with runners on that could result in double-plays, he would hit nothing.  Of his 5695 outs he made in his career, 1936 of them were K's. This saved the team a lot of outs and thus gave them another chance. Its why he never lead the league in GDPs, while high contact guys with similar bodies like Yadier Molina can do it multiple times in their career.

Finally, there is one quality of Willie’s game that is as important as it is unquantifiable. He was respected. He was known as a leader to his teammates. He would give “Stargell stars” to those that helped during wins, but also was not afraid to stand-up when someone did something out of line. During the Pirates best  decade(1970-1979), they won two world championships and went 839-781 for a .518 winning percentage. To maintain that over ten whole years is remarkable. What’s more, they did not finish below .500 once in that whole stretch. Much of this can be attributed to Stargell’s mere presence in the dugout. He was invaluable in this way, as that success is unattainable without him.

Overall, Stargell is as good as they come. While he is only a below average member of the HOF by WAR, the value he gave to Pittsburgh is perhaps double that. While he still isn’t quite in the Ruth/Aaron/Mays category, there still are few players that would be more worthwhile to have on a team.