Some Interesting Stats On Gene Tenace

This is another one of those "Tenace was better than is commonly thought" articles. Here is the link to his Retrosheet page Gene Tenace. I was looking at the best hitting seasons by catchers to see where Joe Mauer this year ranks and I noticed that Tenace did fairly well. Using the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, here are the top 10 seasons since 1900 by catchers who qualified for the batting title in offensive winning percentage(OWP):

1 Mike Piazza 1997 .814
2 Mike Piazza 1995 .783
3 Mickey Cochrane 1933 .769
4 Mike Piazza 1996 .757
5 Roger Bresnahan 1906 .745
6 Darren Daulton 1992 .745
7 Chris Hoiles 1993 .741
8 Roy Campanella 1951 .739
9 Mickey Cochrane 1931 .732
10 Gene Tenace 1975 .732

(this means seasons where their most common position was that of catcher). Tenace had only 3 seasons as a catcher when he also qualified for the batting title. All 3 are in the top 60 seasons since 1900 for catchers. One is 44th (.680). The other is 56th (.668). The only 8 years he had 400+ PAs were from 1973-80. Here are the top 25 in OWP during that time period with 2500+ PAs:

1 Joe Morgan .737
2 Rod Carew .727
3 Reggie Jackson .724
4 Willie Stargell .717
5 Ken Singleton .703
6 Reggie Smith .696
7 Oscar Gamble .688
8 George Brett .684
9 Fred Lynn .684
10 Mike Schmidt .682
11 Gene Tenace .677
12 George Foster .676
13 Dave Parker .667
14 Bob Watson .658
15 Mike Hargrove .647
16 Cesar Cedeno .647
17 Ken Griffey Sr. .646
18 Jim Rice .645
19 Eddie Murray .645
20 Dave Winfield .643
21 Keith Hernandez .643
22 Greg Luzinski .642
23 Andre Thornton .635
24 Pete Rose .635
25 Jose Cruz .633

He does well (actually 16 of these guys had at least 4000 PAs and no one was under 2700). Of course, it his Tenace's prime years, so it is slightly biased in his favor. But he still looks good. Of the 10 guys ahead of him, 6 are in the Hall of Fame. And I see that he is ahead of 3 Hall of Famers shown here (and a few more ranked lower), who were generally going through the quality part of their careers. If not, they were certainly not in any kind of decline phase.

In those years, here is where he ranked in OWP:

1973 4th (.714)
1974 22nd (.597)
1975 6th (.732)
1976 4th (.693)
1977 9th (.680)
1978 11th (.665)
1979 10th (.668)

He did not qualify for the league lead in 1980 with just 416 PAs. But his OWP was .650 that year. 1974 was the only year in this period he was under .650.

I also came up with a point system several years ago (probably 5-7 years ago). I only counted seasons when a player had a .600+ OWP. I then multiplied his PAs that season times (OWP - .600). The idea was to calculate how much high quality hitting players did. Tenace ranked 131st among all hitters. He ranked 8th among catchers. But through 2008, he ranked only 161st in games at catcher with 914 (for some reason his own personal file at Sinins shows only 892 games at catcher). So his high rank is remarkable given he did not play that much at the position. He got exactly 1 vote for the Hall of Fame in 1989 and was, of course, dropped from futher balloting getting less than 5% (0.2%, actually). Anyway, here is the link: Ranking Hitters by Their Performance Above a .600 Offensive Winning Percentage. Here is the top 10 in that:

Mike Piazza 601.21
Bill Dickey 412.07
Mick. Cochrane 326.31
Yogi Berra 321.63
Carlton Fisk 301.47
Buck Ewing 268.16
Fred Carroll 266.11
Gene Tenace 265.57
Johnny Bench 259.78
Rog. Bresnahan 255.04

Bill James says that 20 Win Shares in a season constitutes an all-star type year. Tenace had at least 22 every year from 1973-79. In 1975, he had 32, tied for 4th place, 1 behind MVP Fred Lynn and John Mayberry and Ken Singleton. He averaged 24.7 WS per season over those 7 years. His 198 WS for the 1970s was the 31st highest total, including pitchers. He ranks 177th in Wins Above Replacement level at Sean Smith's Top 500 site.

If Tenace is counted as a 1B man, he would rank 19th all-time in OWP for a minimum of 5000 PAs. Here are the leaders

1 Lou Gehrig .797
2 Dan Brouthers .771
3 Jimmie Foxx .746
4 Johnny Mize .743
5 Mark McGwire .739
6 Jason Giambi .727
7 Jim Thome .724
8 Roger Connor .717
9 Hank Greenberg .715
10 Jeff Bagwell .704
11 Willie McCovey .702
12 Carlos Delgado .684
13 Todd Helton .680
14 Jack Fournier .679
15 Cap Anson .677
16 Will Clark .674
17 Bill Terry .674
18 Norm Cash .672
19 Rod Carew .667

If he is counted as a catcher, he would be 2nd

1 Mike Piazza .687
2 Bill Dickey .644
3 Mickey Cochrane .643
4 Yogi Berra .629
5 Gabby Hartnett .610
6 Johnny Bench .607
7 Jorge Posada .606
8 Wally Schang .592
9 Ted Simmons .591
10 Carlton Fisk .575

Of course, he had under 500 PAs after the age of 33, so his percentages don't suffer much from a decline phase. But still, he did rank pretty high on my OWP above .600 list, where no one is hurt by a decline phase.