What player is the most under rated Yankee?

I have not seen such equivocation since the Drones Club members Bingo Little and Gussie Fink-Nottle.  

Yikes, not exactly a wrong thread violation, but for sure a misdemeanor.  A thousand pardons grandforks  Just substitute your name for where I said Rizz and we're good to go!  Yeah, plagiarism is cool now, daddio.  Only squares give attribution.
[/quote]



You’ve been dissing me for years. I’m used to it.

I’m just happy that someone actually took the time to read that little rant. I’m looking forward to the Top 100 Yankees thing ending, so I will no longer feel compelled to post comments on that site.

More like a scholarly dissertation than a rant, GForks. Joe Gordon was one of those players who seemed to be overlooked for decades before gradually getting his due as a great second baseman.

As for that site -- there are a lot of smart people over there, but there's a level of nastiness and snarking that makes it unattractive to me.[/quote]

Nastiness and snarking is so 2003.  

Long ago, I was a member of Boston.com's Red Sox forum, which no longer exists.  There were a lot of knowledgeable posters and good baseball fans and more than several Yankee fans, but there were also the "Yankees Suck" Red Sox fans, too.  For those fans, I would sometimes write fake news articles - like today's parody sites - complete with invented quotes from Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz.  I had so much fun writing those to sound like specific baseball writers.  The more astute forum posters thought it was a riot; however, the numbskulls were livid, first furious and believing the fake articles, then apoplectic that they were taken in.  Good times.

[/div][/quote]



That is fricking hilarious. Going by your posts over the years, that is a totally Riz move.

Pipps was praising Chi the other day for being concise. I need to learn how to get on that train. My latest Pinstripe Alley rant took up my entire lunch hour and I still had to finish it after work. And I had to eat a darn salad for lunch, to make it easier to type. Now I’m starving.


Gil McDougald is one of the most under-rated players in baseball history. He has a decent case to be included in the top 20 of this list, but should be in the top 25 at worst.

Three things really worked against McDougald receiving the accolades he deserved.

1. The Herb Score incident
2. Not having a set position
3. Yankee Stadium

The Herb Score incident really took an emotional toll on McDougald, and not too long afterwards he came darn close to doing the same thing to another pitcher. That elicited talk in baseball circles along the lines of “Better watch out for McDougald, he’ll take your head off.” McDougald, noted for ripping nasty line drives up the middle and for being a fiery player (he had a dash of Paul O’Neill in him), started to lose his zest for the game. Instead of playing well into the 1960s with a 15+~season career, he retired after a mere ten seasons.

Gil McDougald was in the same class defensively as Ryne Sandberg and Roberto Alomar. But he did something that neither of them ever did — he played shortstop and third base at a Gold Glove level, as well.

McDougald finished in the top four in defensive win shares for ALL American League positional players in half of his seasons. And he did it with three different primary positions (the position he played the most in that given season)— twice as a second baseman, twice as a shortstop, and once as a third baseman.

McDougald never had the opportunity to establish himself at one position and be regarded as The Guy at that position in the league. He was always flipping from 2nd to 3rd, then back to 2nd, then over to short, back over to 3rd, etc.

A recurring theme for many Yankees hitters that played in the original Yankee Stadium was seeing their offensive stats depressed by their home park. McDougald’s stats were neutered by Yankee Stadium. McDougald hit almost three times as many HRs on the road as he did at home, his batting average was 41 points lower at home than it was on the road, and his OPS was 167 points lower at home than it was on the road.

167 points…Lower…At home.

Here are the 11 best road OPS+ marks produced by Gil McDougald, Roberto Alomar, or Ryne Sandberg:

1. McDougald - 176
1. McDougald - 176 (yes - twice)
3. Alomar - 169
4. McDougald - 160
5. McDougald - 151
6. Alomar - 148
7. Sandberg - 147
8. Alomar - 145
9. McDougald - 140
10. McDougald - 136
10. Sandberg - 136

McDougald has six of the 11 best marks by himself, the other two produce a combined total of five. And McDougald has four of the top five marks. The results are similar if you replace Alomar and Sandberg with Frankie Frisch and Craig Biggio to run the comparison with McDougald.

Ten-Best Seasons Average

McDougald - 139.84
Biggio - 132.98
Alomar - 132.23
Frisch - 130.32
Sandberg - 123.99

One of the things that made Ryne Sandberg, RYNE SANDBERG was Wrigley Field. One of the things that made Gil McDougald simply Gil McDougald was Yankee Stadium.

Robinson Cano and Willie Randolph are both going to place higher on this list than Gil McDougald did.

But should they?

Joe Gordon is the only second baseman with a better defensive reputation than Gil McDougald, am we already went over the defensive win shares thing, so let’s turn to offense.

McDougald’s fifth-best road OPS+ mark would match Randolph’s best mark. McDougald’s worst mark was a 107. His second-worst mark was 117. Randolph failed to reach 100 in seven of his 13 seasons with the Yankees. Randolph’s calling card was working walks (and he was darn good at it) and getting on base. His lifetime OBP on the road was .362.

McDougald’s was .379.

Randolph did play three more seasons for the Yankees than McDougald did. McDougald’s ten best seasons were much better than Randolph’s ten best seasons. So what did Randolph’s three extra seasons produce? OPS+ marks (overall) of 100, 88, and 77.

We don’t even need to go into the weeds of comparing the Steroids player to the Non-Steroids player when comparing Cano and McDougald. Because a clean McDougald tops Cano (regardless if Cano was brimming with steroids or not). McDougald beats Cano’s best road OPS+ mark twice, and so on.

Nine-Best Yankee Seasons Average

McDougald - 143.85
Cano - 137.90

Wow, that's the definitive essay on Gil McDougald grandforks And not one word longer than it needs to be! It's pretty hard to add anything to that. You're right that Gil was a Gold Glove-caliber player at second, short and third in a way that as far as I know has no equivalent anywhere in baseball history.

Because of the way Casey used him -- and in his ten-year career Casey was his only manager -- he tended to get lost in the shuffle of all the talented infielders he was sharing playing time with, starting with Jerry Coleman, Phil Rizzuto and Bobby Brown and on through Billy Martin and Andy Carey and Jerry Lumpe and toward the end with Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek and Clete Boyer. He rotated through all of them without ever losing his focus or complaining about how he was utilized.

I've seen it written that Stengel's Yankees were always at or near the top in turning double plays despite a constantly changing cast of characters. The one part that didn't change was McDougald. Bill James said that there were three men who made Casey Stengel a genius -- Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Gil McDougald. Personally I would add Whitey Ford to that list, but it doesn't change the basic fact that he was a star-level player who somehow got categorized almost as a utility infielder.

Hope you made up for the light lunch with a hearty dinner.