The Amazing Career of a Horrible Hitter

In 18 Major League seasons he cracked 20 home runs, a quarter of them in 1974, when he slugged .300. 

(He didn't bat .300; he had a slugging percentage of .300.)

His career totals of .228/.300/.280 are inflated by a .287/.351/.345 season in his prime. In other words, the only thing keeping him from being a pitcher was his inability to pitch.

He made the All-Star team in 1976, when he actually batted league average. He only came close to average two other times and retired with an OPS 32% below middling.

Sliding into outs in 31% of his 242 steal attempts further degraded his value. 

Yet. . . .

His slick fielding at shortstop earned the Orioles 40 wins over his career, roughly triple his offensive value. He is remembered as a key cog in a powerhouse franchise that won four pennants. His total career value -- 55 wins -- is greater than Davey Concepcion's, a contemporary named to eight All-Star berths.

It's hard to find as truly awful a hitter as Mark Belanger who nonetheless managed to start 2000 games and play an important role on a terrific team. Few others position players lacking the ability to hit for average or power, run fast or walk often have ever authored such a respectable resume.

We can thank Earl Weaver for recognizing the value of defense and writing Belanger's name on the lineup card 150 times a season. Weaver, always an innovator, knew that Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and other pitching stars who passed through the Baltimore rotation owed some of their success to the reliable dirt-scooper at short. We can also thank the likes of Boog Powell, Frank and Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair and Don Buford for making a power contribution from their shortstop unnecessary.

But mostly it's worth remembering fondly how a skinny intellectual from Pittsfield, MA could turn one skill - often overlooked -- into a career rated 508th best ever by Baseball-Reference.

Mark Belanger would have turned 69 next week, but he died of cancer 14 years ago from a lifelong addiction to sucking on poison sticks. He leaves behind many happy Baltimore baseball fans and the memory of an accomplished career, despite the absence of a single offensive skill.

Earl Weaver, Sabermetrician

Sabermetrics lost its grandfather this week. 

Earl Weaver, who died this week at age 82, was in many ways the first sabermetrician. Weaver employed, and later elucidated, strategies now supported by voluminous research from the SABR community.

Weaver didn't know VORP or the run expectancy matrix. He had his own innate vision of the game that transcended its time.

Weaver wove his strategies, a particular human resources style and good players to a .583 winning percentage over 17 years, four pennants and a 1970 World Championship.

More specifically, Weaver was the first -- or the first to enunciate -- the following philosophy: because a team has a small and finite number of outs per game, an out is precious and avoiding outs is the key to success.

These rules were the cornerstone of his managerial career and he won 1400+ games using them:

• A home run is the fastest way to score a run.
• Obvious corollary: get players who hit home runs.
• If you play for one run, that's all you'll get.
• Obvious corollary: don't play for one run unless that's all you need.
• Conserve your 27 outs at all costs.
• Obvious corollary: on-base percentage is more important than batting average. (Put another way, walks are very important.) 
• Defense matters.

 As a result of these insights, now confirmed by objective analysis, Weaver hardly attempted a sacrifice unless the pitcher or Mark Belanger (lifetime .582 OPS) was batting. He urged his hitters to take pitches and railed at his pitchers for allowing walks. He limited steal attempts. He used his best relief pitchers in the highest-leverage situations. (To be fair, everyone did back then, but he would still be exercising that strategy even in the age of the sub-optimal bullpen paradigm.) He didn't give speedy out-makers the most opportunities to make outs by batting them at the top of his lineup.

Earl Weaver's valedictory managerial season came in 1986 -- his first and only losing season. Twenty-six years later, half of today's managers and nearly the entire cadre of reporters covering the game know less about it than he did then.