Bucky Walters

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Bucky Walters

2016 Veterans' Committee HOF Ballot: Bucky Walters

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2016 Veterans' ballot for the Pre-Integration Era. The ballot includes 10 names, including "three executives and one of the game's earliest organizers". Player won-lost records don't really have anything to say about non-players. Player won-lost records also don't really have anything to say about players who played before 1921 (and relatively little to say about players who played before 1921). So, I don't really have anything to say about the non-players on the ballot or about 19th-century major-league players Bill Dahlen and Harry Stovey.

But I have calculated Player won-lost records for at least part of the careers of four of the candidates on the Pre-Integration ballot. This article looks at one of these players: former major-league pitcher Bucky Walters. The first table below presents Bucky Walters's career as measured by Player won-lost records. The records here have been extrapolated based on the games for which I have play-by-play data to estimate results for those games for which I do not have play-by-play data. The number of games actually played by Bucky Walters are identified as "Total"; the number of games for which Player won-lost records are calculated are identified as "Known".

Season	Team	Age	Total	Known	pWins	pLosses	pWin Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	eWins	eLosses	eWin Pct.	eWOPA	eWORL
Bucky Walters Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
			Games
1931	BSN	22	9	7	0.7	1.2	0.373	-0.2	-0.2	0.8	1.1	0.411	-0.2	-0.1
1932	BSN	23	22	11	1.5	2.6	0.365	-0.5	-0.3	1.6	2.3	0.412	-0.3	-0.1
1933	BOS	24	52	37	5.7	6.5	0.467	-0.4	0.1	5.7	6.0	0.488	-0.1	0.4
+– 1934		25	106	66	10.2	11.4	0.472	-0.5	0.4	10.1	11.1	0.476	-0.5	0.5
	BOS		23	12	1.7	2.4	0.424	-0.3	-0.1	1.9	2.6	0.416	-0.4	-0.2
	PHI		83	54	8.3	9.0	0.482	-0.3	0.5	8.2	8.5	0.489	-0.1	0.6
1935	PHI	26	49	30	9.2	9.6	0.489	0.1	1.0	8.9	10.0	0.470	-0.3	0.6
1936	PHI	27	64	40	14.6	22.5	0.394	-3.5	-1.7	16.5	17.5	0.485	-0.1	1.6
1937	PHI	28	56	44	16.6	13.9	0.544	1.8	3.2	16.1	15.9	0.504	0.6	2.0
+– 1938		29	51	45	14.2	13.7	0.509	0.8	2.1	14.8	15.3	0.491	0.3	1.7
	CIN		36	36	9.9	8.6	0.534	1.0	1.9	10.1	10.0	0.504	0.5	1.4
	PHI		15	9	4.4	5.7	0.432	-0.5	-0.0	4.8	5.8	0.452	-0.3	0.2
1939	CIN	30	40	40	22.5	14.8	0.604	4.6	6.3	20.5	15.7	0.566	3.1	4.8
1940	CIN	31	37	37	19.8	16.4	0.546	2.3	3.9	18.5	17.0	0.521	1.4	2.9
1941	CIN	32	39	39	19.2	16.8	0.533	1.8	3.4	18.3	17.2	0.516	1.2	2.7
1942	CIN	33	39	39	16.7	13.7	0.549	2.1	3.3	16.6	14.3	0.537	1.8	3.0
1943	CIN	34	37	37	16.7	15.5	0.518	1.1	2.5	15.5	16.4	0.485	0.0	1.4
1944	CIN	35	37	37	19.3	13.0	0.598	3.7	5.1	18.2	15.4	0.541	2.0	3.4
1945	CIN	36	24	24	11.3	9.5	0.544	1.3	2.2	11.1	10.2	0.519	0.8	1.8
1946	CIN	37	24	24	9.5	8.8	0.518	0.7	1.5	9.7	10.4	0.483	0.0	1.0
1947	CIN	38	20	20	8.4	9.5	0.468	-0.3	0.5	7.3	8.6	0.457	-0.4	0.2
1948	CIN	39	7	7	1.7	2.4	0.404	-0.3	-0.1	2.1	3.2	0.395	-0.5	-0.2
1950	BSN	41	1	1	0.0	0.1	0.375	-0.0	-0.0	0.1	0.2	0.363	-0.0	-0.0
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			714	585	217.6	201.8	0.519	14.6	33.2	212.4	208.1	0.505	8.9	27.5
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			4	4	2.0	1.7	0.537		0.4	2.1	1.5	0.585		0.5
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			718	589	219.6	203.5	0.519		33.5	214.5	209.6	0.505		28.1

Overall, I am missing 129 games from Bucky Walters's career.

Bucky Walters was the ace of back-to-back National League pennant winners in 1939 and 1940. In those two seasons, he went a combined 49-21 with a 2.38 ERA in 624 IP, finishing first and third in MVP voting (there was no Cy Young award back then). Outside of those seasons, Walters ranged from pretty good to mediocre, with only one other 20-win season (23-8, 2.40 ERA, 285 IP), but that one probably deserves an asterisk, as it came in 1944, in the heart of World War II.

But overall, Bucky Walters had a very solid career. The next table shows the 10 players whose career value was most similar to Bucky Walters's, as measured by Player won-lost records. For this comparison, I extrapolated missing player games (for both Walters and everybody else) and based the comparison only on total pWins, total eWins, and pitching wins.

Player	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL	Batting	Baserunning	Pitching	Fielding
						Wins over Baseline
Bucky Walters	585	197.0	177.4	16.0	32.5	-3.0	0.2	4.1	1.4
Burleigh Grimes	426	182.6	164.8	13.6	28.2	-3.2	-0.0	3.1	1.0
Tommy Bridges	293	129.4	112.8	11.7	22.7	-3.3	0.0	4.5	0.3
George Uhle	570	167.2	148.4	14.2	27.6	-1.1	-0.0	3.5	0.5
Bob Welch	509	194.9	178.8	14.4	31.6	-3.4	-0.1	5.7	0.6
Lew Burdette	636	184.5	173.4	12.3	28.5	-4.0	0.1	5.5	1.0
Freddie Fitzsimmons	450	169.9	156.2	11.7	26.0	-3.9	-0.3	4.4	1.3
Fernando Valenzuela	474	188.5	182.2	12.4	29.0	-4.0	-0.2	5.7	1.4
Larry French	481	165.4	151.5	11.3	25.9	-4.4	-0.1	5.5	0.5
Vida Blue	508	201.0	184.0	14.1	31.4	-2.8	-0.1	5.4	0.6
Milt Pappas	525	200.3	192.1	12.2	29.6	-6.1	-0.2	6.1	0.7

The second player on the list is in the Hall of Fame. Although I think most sabermetric observers view Hunter's election as something of a mistake; he is not, for example, in the Hall of Merit. On the other hand, one pitcher in the above table is in the Hall of Merit, Rick Reuschel.

Only 8 of the 10 players in the above table (other than Walters) pitched since the Cy Young award was first given (in 1956). Five of those 8 pitchers won a Cy Young award (although at least a couple of them were probably questionable from a pure statistical standpoint).

Overall, I think the table above does a nice job of placing Bucky Walters's career in perspective. A very solid career, perhaps on the borderline of the Hall of Fame with legitimate periods of greatness. That's a fine, fine career.

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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