On February 11, 1982, the St. Louis Cardinals sent Garry Templeton to the San Diego Padres for Ozzie Smith.
Smith became a key member of the Cardinals right away, as they went on to win the World Series that year. From 1982 on, Smith posted 39.7 oWAR and 18.6 dWAR with the Cardinals, good for a total of 58.3 Wins Above Replacement in St. Louis.
Templeton, meanwhile, played 10 seasons with the Padres and totaled 8.4 oWAR and 0.2 dWAR. San Diego then traded Templeton to the Mets for Tim Teufel, who gave them 2.5 oWAR and -0.5 dWAR in 3 seasons.
Ozzie Smith, Jennie Finch, and Gary Carter / Icon SMI
A couple of comments:
1) It’s kind of strange how things worked out. Templeton was younger than Smith and had done a lot more to that point in his career. But for some reason, his career went off the rails after joining the Padres whereas Ozzie blossomed after joining the Cardinals.
2) In many ways, it should have been a one-sided trade for the Padres. Not only did they get the younger shortstop with the better track record, they got Sixto Lezcano who was only in his late 20s and had had several good seasons with the Brewers. He was outstanding at age 28 for the Padres (7.2 WAR) but then did nothing else the rest of his career. The Padres also got Luis DeLeon who had two big seasons for them as a setup-man/closer at age 23 and 24 but then did nothing else. The Cardinals, on the other hand, got Steve Mura and Al Olmsted, neither of whom ever did much in the big leagues. In some ways, it’s mind-boggling to think about how this trade didn’t work out for the Padres.
I think it was pretty much impossible for anybody to see how valuable Ozzie Smith was going to be. Even during his career with the Cardinals, he was regarded as a no-hit guy, but nearly 40 oWAR in St. Louis says otherwise. I actually think Ozzie Smith may somehow still be underrated.
Definitely. That’s why it’s so surprising in retrospect. The same is true of the Mariners trading away Omar Vizquel. I doubt they foresaw that he’d still be in the majors nearly 20 years later.
At the time, most people — or at least those of us who played Stratomatic — thought the trade made no sense. Templeton was a much better player than Smith at that point — a solid fielder who was a powerful hitter for a late 1970s and early 1980s shortstop.
Wasn’t there some sort of conflict between Templeton and Cardinals management?
Cardinals Manager (and GM) Whitey Herzog and pulled Templeton off the field the year before when he flipped off Cardinal fan- on ladies day- after not running out an infield ground out and they had to be separated by players on the bench. Herzog then promptly put Templeton on the disabled list. Smith was actually pretty well down on Herzog’s list of who he wanted to get but the Padres were the only team that was interested, mostly because Smith’s agent had asked for a 5 year/$25M contract (this was at a time before any player had made as much as $2M/year).
I know at the time that EVERYONE thought that Templeton had far more talent and was a better ballplayer than Smith but Templeton’s attitude had pretty much soured the market for him so Herzog just made the best deal he could, even though he thought at the time he was getting the worst end of it.
Rick Burleson and Ivan DeJesus were the names at the top of Herzog’s list. Templeton’s decline was also hastened by bad knees. According to an Inside Sports magazine article from 1982, the Busch Stadium Astro-Turf was to blame for that condition.
Thanks for the additional context Hartvig and Steven! Herzog was definitely a no BS manager and traded away several starters over the years who he considered bad influences.
BTW, this article has some nice context on the Templeton-Herzog relationship:
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_e2ebeb70-ce60-592f-a506-99c938347842.html
A few tidbits:
1) Herzog called Templeton the most talented player he ever saw (more talented than Mickey Mantle or George Brett).
2) Templeton had a substance abuse problem which contributed to his behavioral issues.
3) Templeton later managed Herzog’s grandson in the minor leagues.
Hartvig, I was at that game; remember the steam coming out of Herzog’s ears. Whitey got Ozzie to “hit to the astroturf” and his batting took off. Plus, he cut down a LOT on his strikeouts … until he became one of the best contact hitters in the game. I think that was underrated about him at the time, and may still be. And, whoever noted before that he NEVER had a negative UZR … that’s incredible.
Plus, now that TLR is gone, it would be nice to see Ozzie back at Busch.
Andy, I just checked Ozzies Smith’s BR-page and I noticed he had a 3.1 dWAR in 1989, but no other season higher than 1.9. I know oWAR can jump from a year based on a number of things, but how is it possible to average 1.5 dWAR for seven years, have a 3.1 and then going down to the 1.something for next several seasons?
Lots of things can cause that. Remember it depends not only on the chances Smith got that year but also how other shortstops did that season.
Think that is odd, check out Carlos Lee. Thru 2010 a dWAR of -6.7 his 2010 dWAR was -2.0. Then he sees the light in 2011 and posts a +2.1 dWar, making him the second best in all of baseball in 2011, really Carlos Lee??
You’re surprised by this? I’ve been saying it on here for years. dWAR is useless for evaluating anything and it corrupts oWAR numbers making some people on here make some very poor evaluations of many player’s total value.
I complained on here that Nick Swisher was a top-5 dWAR guy for most of 2011. Nick Swisher? Really? The guy is an average RIGHT FIELDER ffs, far from the best player at any position in all of baseball.
dWAR has many fundamental flaws that are never even mentioned when it’s stats are thrown around so ubiquitously on here. It over-values multi-position players (playing multiple positions poorly is not a +), it is too position dependent (we compare players offensively between different positions and include their dWAR which is fundamentally stupid), and it is highly inaccurate.
A criticism of dWAR based on its rating of any one player is pointless. And what do you mean that Swisher was a top-5 dWAR guy “for most of 2011”?
Even among the vocal advocates of dWAR, nobody claims that its one-year ratings are totally reliable — but you’re complaining about a partial-year rating?
I don’t claim to be an expert in defensive metrics. When I doubt a dWAR number, I compare it to other ratings. So: In 2011, Swisher’s RF/9 was a bit above the league average, on a team with fewer balls in play than most. (Yanks were #1 in pitcher SO, and their WHIP was lower than average.) He had 9 OF assists, and just 1 error. On the surface, that sounds like a good RF to me.
As for the statement that playing multiple positions poorly is not a plus, obviously that depends a great deal on how poorly. But more generally, I just disagree. In these days of 12 pitchers (sometimes 13) and short benches, defensive versatility — even at a below-average level — is valuable.
Agreed. I’m not sure WAR of any flavor, or any single stat, can fully capture how valuable Ozzie Smith was.
Using UZR, Ozzie never registered a single negative season with the glove, up through age 41. Even the best fielders seem to have one or two UFO seasons with the glove, registering a negative, especially as they age. Omar Vizquel, for example, has had six negative seasons.
As Bill James once noted, sometimes the defensive gap between the best fielder and the second-best fielder is much greater than the gap between the second-best fielder and the tenth best fielder. The gap between Smith and the rest of the field was as large as any I can remember, and I’ve been watching games since the 70s.
Andy,
A lot of people still think of Ozzie Smith as a mediocre hitter, but if you take his career from 1982-on, and include basestealing, baserunning, staying out of GIDP, and reaching on error (i.e., all the “not-hitting” parts of offense), he’s at about league-average level, and defnitely way above-average for a shortstop.
It’s those first four years of his career in SD (esp. 1979: -43 Rbat!) that drag down his career offensive numbers.
He arguably should have been the MVP in his runner-up year in 1987. I still remember Templeton flipping off the crowd at Busch in 1981; I was at that game. I knew then he wasn’t long for St. Louis.
That said, Whitey got Ozzie to use the astroturf while hitting ground balls to take advantage of his speed more.
And, I still remember game 4, 1982 WS, when Ozzie followed McGee home, scoring from second on a sac fly. Only time I’ve ever seen it.
Agreed! Ozzie is underated.
I’d trade Ozzie for Jennie Finch. Whatever became of Jennie’s flamethrowing brother Sid?
Sidd is pushing 50 now and tore his rotator cuff, opting to treat it through yoga and meditation. Sadly, his fastball is down to 118 mph now, although, granted, that was clocked at the top of a mountain ice peak with sub-zero temperatures, and Sidd hadn’t warmed up.
I would love to see what you readers can come up with for a funny caption to this photo, i.e. what’s Carter saying?
“If she came in on me, I’d take her the other way.”
“I’d like to lay one down on her.”
“Break out the tarp, this field is getting wet.”
She’s taller than you, she’s younger than you, and now I can finally say she has better hands than you — sorry Ozzie, but please pack your Gold Gloves and go!
LOL!
“Did you say you liked the St. Louis fan base better?!”
Luis “Mambo” De Leon! I think he’s still pitching in the Puerto Rico Winter League. 🙂
Most Triples Through Age 23, Over the Past 100 Years:
1. Buddy Lewis 54
T2. Garry Templeton/Rogers Hornsby 52
4. Arky Vaughan 50
5. Carl Crawford 49
6. Jimmie Foxx 48
Two-R Garrys: Garry Trudeau; Garry Wills; Garry Trudeau
One-R Garys: Gary, Indiana; Gary Coleman, Gary Busey, Gary Cooper
Gary as a name derives from Anglo-Saxon roots, based on the word for “spear”.
I recall thinking that Ozzie’s hitting had gotten so inept as to cancel out anything he did defensively. When the trade was made, along with the maturing of Terry Kennedy and Tim Lollar, as well as Eric Show, it DID improve the Padres to their second-ever .500 record. The team was pretty close to first at the break. Dick Williams did a great job even with Broderick Perkins being a dud at first base. Actually, pretty much the entire infield didn’t hit too well, now that I think about it.
The ultimate results of the trade were undeniably surprising. But Templeton was also overrated during his STL years, because of his high BA and high hit and SB totals. But his steals really added no value, due to his poor success rate (averaging 30 SB and 15 CS in his 4 “big” years with STL). And of course, he was one of the biggest hackers in MLB history.
Templeton is the only player with two seasons of 200+ hits but less than 20 walks. Only 4 other players had even one such year, and none since 1938.
So, for instance, in 1979, when his .314 BA was 43 points above the league average, his .331 OBP was 6 points below the league average.
And he never made any progress in that regard. He did get a few more walks in his SD years, but only by getting IBBs when hitting 8th. He finished his career averaging 20 unintentional walks per 700 PAs.
I’m sure there are many factors in Templeton’s decline. But having no control of the strike zone does usually catch up to a hitter.
Fascinating stuff as always, JA. As someone who wasn’t around at the time, it’s crazy to think that a guy would walk that little. But it makes sense that his hit totals were so high – fast guy (high BABIP), swings at everything, always looking to put it in play. Yup. You’re gonna bat .300 if that’s what you’re like as a hitter.
Not sure I agree that he was overrated. Looking at WAR among shortstops during his four peak years, Templeton ranked 1st, 6th, 3rd and 3rd. He was second in total WAR for shortstops in that 4 year period. Shortstop was a very different position 30 years ago and Templeton was definitely among the best during that stretch.
And I believe that Bill James looked at the relationship between BB/SO ratio for batters and career length and found no relationship.
Ed, I agree with you in one respect: For 1977-80 combined, Templeton was the best hitting SS in baseball, with a 105 OPS+, just ahead of Yount and Smalley. The median OPS+ for a regular SS in that time was 77.
So Templeton was a very good hitting SS for that time, and mainly because of that — since WAR compares to others at the position — he was #2 in total bWAR for shortstops.
But based on my memory of that time, Templeton was hailed as an excellent hitter, regardless of position. He got a LOT of notice for those two 200-hit seasons. And that’s the sense in which I say he was overrated.
For 1977-80 combined, Templeton batted .308 — tied for 9th-best in all of baseball (min. 1,000 PAs). But his .327 OBP ranked 160th. He was 28th in total PAs, but 13th in outs made.
He deserved to be regarded as one of the top shortstops of that time. But definitely not as one of the top hitters.
The other thing is, the offensive standards of the position were changing. The late ’70s was the last time for a good while that a 105 OPS+ would be tops among SS over a span of years. For 1980-83, there were 5 regular shortstops with OPS+ of 108 and up, with Yount and Ripken over 125. Pick almost any 4-year period thereafter and you’ll find at least a half-dozen shortstops with OPS+ higher than Templeton’s. If his performance had come just a few years later, it would have earned far less WAR.
John- Your memory is right in line with mine. I remember comparisons with not just Lou Boudreau & Joe Cronin but Rod Carew as well.
But I think Ed is right here also. He put up some incredible numbers at a very young age. IF he had applied himself, stayed away from drugs and learned from his mistakes both on and off the field, he could very well rank alongside of Yount, Smith, Trammell, Ripken & Larkin in the Golden Age of Shortstops. But he didn’t and now we’re writing articles about how a team that traded a shortstop with a career OPS+ to that point of 66 for him wound up getting fleeced.
Spring training of 1982, he told a teammate, “You hit when you can, I hit when I want to.” Humble.
Fair enough. I was born in ’69 so I don’t really remember the early part of his career that well.
Ed, two points about your Bill James comment:
(1) You referenced BB/SO ratio, but I was only talking about BB rates.
(2) I’m not familiar with the specific James study you reference, and while I don’t doubt that he found something like what you say, I wonder if career length is the right framework. I suspect that career length is affected by BB/SO ratio, even if there’s no significant difference in the age/performance graph line between very low ratios and very high ratios.
There is a positive correlation between BB/SO ratio and performance. And there is a minimum performance required to stay in the major leagues. Therefore, since the lower ratios tend to start off at lower performance levels, those who do decline will be more likely to fall out of the big leagues. And that would cause the very low ratio group to have a shorter average career than the very high group.
I looked at very low and very high BB rates in the live-ball era. I took players with at least 1500 PAs in their first 5 years. The very low BB group had at least 20 PAs per BB; the very high group had no more than 8 PAs per BB. There were just over 100 players in each group. Then I tabulated their average performance in the first 5 years (“before”) and from year 6 onward (“after”).
Very low BB rates:
BA — .2768 before, .2752 after
OPS+ — 89.2 before, 84.8
PAs — 2140 before, 2786 after
bWAR — 4.8 before, 6.7 after
Very high BB rates:
BA — .2779 before, .2755 after
OPS+ — 125.5 before, 119.6 after
PAs — 2299 before, 3674 after
bWAR — 14.4 before, 23.3 after
Although the before and after performances follow roughly the same slope for each group, and the average PAs in the “before” period were about the same for each group, the high BB group had far more PAs in the “after” period.
Okay, a bit more info. It’s from his “87 abstract. What he found is that k/bb rate for rookie hitters isn’t “an indicator of potential growth or development for a rookie”. Not quite what I said above, but along the same lines.
Also, I wonder if Ozzie got a confidence boost from the trade — i.e., being valued on a par with someone who was considered a big star.
In Herzog’s book, it sounds like Whitey & Ozzie hit it off pretty quickly and it sounded like Whitey developed a lot of respect for him fairly quickly. I’ve never read Ozzie’s autobiography to see what he has to say about it. But it would be interesting to find out.
Padres and HOF infielders just don’t seem to go together.
A couple of months ago was the anniversary of San Diego trading 22 year-old Roberto Alomar for 28 year-old Tony Fernandez.
And how about last year’s World Series MVP?
Ozzie’s degree of offensive improvement after age 26 is extremely rare for an established player.
Through age 26, Ozzie had about 2500 PAs and an OPS+ of 66.
So I looked at players through age 26 with at least 1500 PAs and OPS+ no more than 70. There were 41 such players, with a median OPS+ of 65. (The great majority were shortstops, by the way.)
From age 27 onward:
— Ozzie’s 93 OPS+ was 2nd-best of the group (and he played 4 times as many games as the #1 guy, Bill Rariden).
— Ozzie was the only one of the group with positive WAR Runs offensive value (counting batting, ROE, hitting into DPs and baserunning).
— Ozzie had by far the most overall value of that group — 58.3 bWAR, to Omar Vizquel’s 34.6. Only 3 others produced even 10 bWAR from age 27 onward — Belanger 25.3, Frank White 23.7 and Larry Bowa 15.4.
I’m sure Whitey never dreamed that Ozzie would have that much improvement.
I remember thinking the deal was interesting when it was made, the best glove man for a SS with a bat. I don’t think I thought it was a bad deal for St. Louis, but I honestly can’t remember. Maybe I always just appreciated defense more than some others.
One fun stat: Garry Templeton, a mostly solid and plus fielder, for his career was rated at +29 runs saved. Ozzie Smith in one year, 1989, was rated at +32.
I have to say that I thought that Whitey Herzog had lost his mind. In those days, I had far less patience with malcontents (a holdover from my football playing days I’m still trying to shake) and I still thought it was a terrible deal for the Cardinals. Hell, even Whitey Herzog thought he traded away far more than he got in return, at least at the time of the trade.
This is off-topic, but in 1975, the year before Templeton’s big-league debut, the Cardinals had an infield of 1b-Ron Fairly (Hernandez was up-and-down between Triple A and the majors), 2b-Ted Sizemore, 3b-Ken Reitz, and Mike Tyson (not the ear-biting guy) at shortstop. That had to have been one of the worst infields in terms of overall footspeed in history.
Garry Templeton had two seasons in which he had more triples than walks. I wonder whether he’s the only player to have done that.
More 3B than BB has been accomplished 20 times by players with at least 350 PA, but only Whitey Alperman and Garry Templeton made the list twice. In 1909 Alperman had 12 triples and 2 walks. Most recently it was done by Wilton Guerrero in 1997. Of course Chief Wilson, with his record setting 36 triples, made the list.
Both Ozzie and Garry were considerably better on turf than on grass. Not surprising for guys who’s most outstanding offensive attribute was speed, hit the ball on the ground and run. I think rWAR uses a generic runs park factor, (giving “John Pete” the same park factor at Coors as Bichette or another power hitter.) This would underestimate the amount they were better because of the carpet at Busch and overestimate Templeton’s decline when got to SD. I think OPS+ probably has the same problem too.
During his St. Louis years, Ozzie’s OPS at home was .718 while his OPS on the road was .671, a somewhat bigger than normal plus on the home side than is normal for the average major leaguer.
Busch’s park factor during Ozzie’s career was essentially neutral, which merely indicates that about the same number of runs were scored in games at Busch as in Cardinals games on the road.
I remember looking into grass/turf as a possible factor in Templeton’s decline with SD — thinking that maybe he was a better player on turf, and playing most of his games on grass in SD worked against him.
But in fact, while with the Cardinals, Templeton hit better on grass:
— BA, .309 grass, .303 turf
— SLG, .430 grass, .414 turf
In his post-STL career, Templeton hit much better on turf:
— BA, .246 grass, .263 turf
— SLG, .333 grass, .351 turf
I’d like to see those splits for the Wizard also. My main point wasn’t that this would explain much of their changing success before and after the trade, but that a too simplistic version of park effects is used in WAR and OPS+, and this may in some cases bias the results.
kds, I understood your angle — I was supplementing, not contradicting.
Here are Ozzie’s pre-trade splits — I wonder if Whitey knew?
— BA, .217 grass, .264 turf (725 PAs on turf)
— SLG, .260 grass, .321 turf (yes, those really are his slugging averages)
kds: B-Ref’s Park Factors are only “too simple” is you want them to do more than they are intended to do. B-Ref’s Park Factors are not meant to tell you what a particular player might have done playing in a different home park — that would be a very speculative enterprise no matter how much data one has. Park Factors are simply intended to put the amount of overall run creation or run prevention accomplished by all players in the context of the run scoring levels of their respective home parks. A player who creates 100 runs for his team over a season (regardless of whether he does so mostly with homers or mostly with stolen bases) has created fewer wins for his team if he has played his home games in a park in which 10% more runs are scored than average as compared to a player who creates 100 runs for his team while playing in a home park in which 10% fewer runs are scored than average. That’s really all that Park Factors are set up to do.
Trying to figure out what Ozzie Smith might have done if his home park had remained in San Diego his whole career is a task requiring consideration of a perhaps endless array of vairables. But simply figuring what the number of runs Ozzie created meant in terms of helping the Cardinals win games, given that they played in a stadium in which an average number of runs were scored (as opposed to if Ozzie had created the same number of runs in Wrigley Field, where more runs created were required to win games) is a relatively straightforward calculation that Park Factors are intended to achieve.
It’d kind of like comparing student grades with different teachers. Say I get a C+ with Professor Jones, who every year only gives out one A and two Bs a semester and everybody else gets C+ grades or lower. I can say with some confidence that I would have gotten a higher grade with Profesor Taylor, who teaches the same subject, but gives out As and Bs to almost the whole class, with just one student getting a C or lower every semester. What is much harder to figure out is with which professor I would have learned more, which is a question that requires an extremely complex judgment as to, among other things, how my specific strenghts and weaknesses in the subject mesh with each different professor’s teaching skills.
Suppose you have a park that increases HR greatly, while all other batting events occur at league average rates. Suppose that the HR’s increase run scoring so that the run park factor is 120. Do we want to apply that the same way to a batter like Ichiro as we do to a low average power hitter? Part of this is the question, do we want to figure the players results, or how good, in a more abstract sense the player is? In the great HR park a player like Ichiro would probably score a few more runs, because of the HR’s behind him, and drive in fewer, because HR ahead of him would score runners he might have driven in. He would not be creating more runs, but his WAR would be lower because on average the players in that park do create more runs. We can certainly figure component park factors, there is no need to do all this “on average” for everybody.
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Wait a minute.I just read that Reitz’career WAR was -3.2 ,so why is he being lionized here and other places ?