What Can We Learn from the 1959 Chicago White Sox?

The terms “scouting” and “player development” are so frequently seen together that they should probably just get a room. It is axiomatic in today’s game that S&PD is the best, and perhaps only sustainable, route to baseball success.  This seems particularly true for the so-called small-market teams who are far too cash-poor to fish in Lake Boras. Which makes the recent antics of A.J. Preller (and the slightly less recent antics of Alex Anthopolous – see #12 and 13) so surprising. These are teams that play in the shadow of giants – figuratively in the Blue Jays’ case and both figuratively and literally for the Pads. If any teams should be S&PD-ing, its these, yet sweeping trades indicate that the two franchises have been less than fully successful at filling their major league roster holes with home-grown talent.

However difficult it is to be a GM in today’s AL East or NL West, few GMs have labored in a more unforgiving environment than those damned souls condemned to compete in the AL in the late 50s and early 60s, during the last of the pre-division-era Yankees dynasties. From 1947 through 1964 the Evil Empire missed the World Series just three times: in 1948 (Indians), 1954 (Indians), and 1959 (White Sox). Of these three, the 1959 “Go-Go” Sox have always stood out as the least probable Yankee-killers.

In an era when offense and power were essentially considered synonyms, the 1959 White Sox hit just 97 homers, not just last in the AL, but last in the majors. It took just four Indians to reach that total in 1948 (Gordon, Keltner, Boudreau, and Eddie Robinson). Yes, the 1959 Sox had three Hall-of-Famers (Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, and Early Wynn), but only one (Fox) was arguably in his prime.

All this said, the 1959 White Sox did a lot of things well. They got on base at a .327 clip, 3rd best in the AL. They stole 113 bases, leading the league, and totaling almost as many as the next two teams combined. They led the league in ERA (3.29), though the advanced metrics were less impressed with this staff. And they defended. Oh, did they defend.  They led the majors in Total Zone, and only the Spiders were even close. The White Sox had four of the top ten players in the majors, as rated by FanGraphs’ Def stat. And they were the four guys in the middle of the diamond (catcher Sherm Lollar, Fox at second, Aparicio at short, and Jim Landis in center).

So far, so small market. But of the 15 players with a WAR of least 1.0, just three were home-grown (Aparicio, Landis, and backup catcher Johnny Romano). Aparicio would end up in the Hall, and both Landis and Romano would have respectable careers (just over 20 WAR each), though Romano would spend most of his career with the Indians. The rest of the 1+ WAR players on the 1959 team were acquired by trade, with the exception of three aging but effective relievers, two of whom were signed off of waivers and one of whom was purchased.

And these were no ordinary trades. Let’s look at a couple of the more significant ones (many of these were multi-player deals – I’m focusing on the most significant players going each way):

Sox acquire Nellie Fox from the Philadelphia A’s for C  Joe Tipton in 1949.

Fox was just 21 in 1949, and his 300 or so plate appearances to that point had produced nothing of note, except one interesting harbinger of things to come: 34 career walks against just nine strikeouts. Fox would finish with 719 walks  and just 216 Ks in a career spanning over 10,000 plate appearances. No player with that many PAs has struck out less often.

As for Joe Tipton, you can admit you’ve never heard of him – you’re among friends here. Tipton spent one miserable year with the White Sox as a punchless 27 year old backup catcher before being sent to the city where it’s always sunny. He would develop into a useful backup bat, and amass a career war of 5.4. Fox had a WAR of 6.0 in 1959 alone.

Sox acquire Sherm Lollar from the St. Louis Browns for OF Jungle Jim Rivera and assorted Cracker Jack prizes in 1951.

Lollar was a bit of a late bloomer, with both the Yankees and Browns giving up on him before he found a home on the South Side at age 27, where he would be named to the all-star team six times.  This was probably a little generous, but he was a durable contributor at a position not normally associated with “durable” or “offense.” Rivera, for his part, would go on to a modest career WAR of 6.9. Even better, the Browns traded him back to the South Side the following year, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

Sox acquire Early Wynn from the Cleveland Indians for LF Minnie Minoso in 1957.

An exchange of one Hall-of-Famer for anoth- oops! Sorry about that. At age 37, Wynn looked like he might be done, with his ERA jumping from 2.72 in 1956 to 4.31 in 1957.  He was still durable, though (263 IP), so the Sox decided to get him in exchange for their star left fielder whose power had seemingly collapsed (sliding from 24 homers to 12 in the same two years). This one didn’t work out quite as well for the Sox, who got 6.5 WAR from Wynn in 1958-59, while a resurgent Minoso clobbered the ball to the tune of a 10.5 WAR for the Spiders. Wynn was nevertheless the Sox clear ace in 1959, going 22-10 with a 3.17 ERA (3.66 FIP) and leading the league with 255 IP. Minoso would return to the Sox in 1960, and he still had a couple of good years left, but he would never get that World Series ring.

Sox acquire P Bob Shaw from the Detroit Tigers for OF Tito Francona in 1958.

Shaw was the Sox’s second-best pitcher in 1959, behind only Early Wynn. He was 18-6 with a 2.69 ERA (though his FIP, at 3.36, was less kind). His career looks a little like Ervin Santana’s – basically a slightly above average pitcher with wild year-to-year ERA swings. The Sox would deal him just three years later, and he would pitch for seven different teams in his 11-year career, but he came through for the Sox when it counted most. Tito (whose real name is John Patsy Francona) had a forgettable year in a part-time role in Detroit, but showed the on-base skill that would propel him to three superb years in Cleveland before lapsing back into a bench role, albeit a long and fairly productive one, for the remainder of his career.

There were several other trades that went into building the 1959 Sox, but you get the idea. And it wasn’t just this year – the wheeling and dealing continued from 1957 through 1965, during which time the Sox would finish worse than second just three times. It was the White Sox’s misfortune that their dominance of the AL West ended four years before the division was created.

While the White Sox weren’t especially adept at developing players, they were extremely adept at finding them, and this is where scouting comes in. The Sox appear to have been very good at scouting both other teams’ rosters and their own. The only whiff in the transactions above involved Minoso, a player who was not quite done tormenting baseballs, and even in that trade the Sox received a very effective starter. This is what scouting without player development looks like. And it’s not bad if, you know, you like that sort of thing.

There are obviously only so many lessons today’s front offices can learn from those of yesteryear. While the Sox’ strategy may bear some superficial similarity to A.J. Preller’s, the Sox were able to ruthlessly exploit the reserve clause to pay quality veterans vastly less than any reasonable conception of their market value. Trading for veterans was a lot less costly back then. And while Preller was perhaps unimpressed with prospects he traded away, it is safe to say that he benefited to some extent from the Padres’ previous player development machine, in the sense that other teams were impressed enough with the young Padres (what do you call Padres prospects? los hijos?) to take them off A.J.’s hands.

But the broader point, as suggested by a commenter on my previous post, is that not every successful team has achieved that success by following whatever the then-current orthodoxy prescribes. Small market teams may be better off thinking outside the box than getting spent to death in it.