\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nDespite a better career OPS, Simmons didn’t make much of a difference.\u00c2\u00a0 Not to mention Munson was a much better defensive catcher\u00e2\u20ac\u201dBill James grades Munson a B- and Simmons a C, but Munson had 34 career fielding runs above average and threw out 44% of opposing base stealers while Simmons was -8 and 34%, respectively.\u00c2\u00a0 You could argue that Munson died before entering his decline phase, making his numbers artificially high, but Simmons didn’t catch much past the age of 32 either, so the comparison is apt.<\/p>\n
Of course, I haven’t taken pitching or defense into account, and anything can happen in a one-game playoff, but it appears that Aguilera has the advantage when it comes to lumber.<\/p>\n
* Poles’ Negro League statistics are from 1916-1920 (provided by Gary Ashwill and Scott Simkus in conjunction with a project they’re working on for Baseball-Reference.com).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month Bobby Aguilera posted an article in which he listed a roster of players who he feels are the best at each position who aren’t in the Hall of Fame, including two of the biggest snubs of all time, Dick Allen and Ron Santo.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Graham Womack responded with a roster of his own, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3515,4579,10971,4164,10699,5468,867,1934,5090,6320,21230,10774,239,10765,1850,9175,2000,10767,4610,10775,10768,10779,746,7835,10766,8565],"class_list":["post-7969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-albert-belle","tag-allen-1b","tag-baseball-musings","tag-bobby-grich","tag-dave-parker","tag-dick-allen","tag-don-mattingly","tag-dwight-evans","tag-edgar-martinez","tag-game-playoff","tag-hall-of-fame","tag-lf-356","tag-maury-wills","tag-outsiders","tag-pete-rose","tag-reggie-smith","tag-roberto-alomar","tag-ron-santo","tag-shoeless-joe-jackson","tag-smith-cf","tag-snubs","tag-spottswood-poles","tag-thurman-munson","tag-tim-raines","tag-time-dick","tag-womack"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t