Frank McCormick

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Frank McCormick

2016 Veterans' Committee HOF Ballot: Frank McCormick

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 1916). 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 first baseman Frank McCormick. The first table below presents Frank McCormick'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 Frank McCormick 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
Frank McCormick Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
			Games
1934	CIN	23	12	12	0.3	0.4	0.379	-0.1	-0.0	0.4	0.4	0.498	-0.0	0.0
1937	CIN	26	24	24	1.7	3.5	0.329	-1.1	-0.8	2.5	2.7	0.483	-0.2	-0.0
1938	CIN	27	151	151	18.0	15.5	0.537	0.1	1.4	17.2	16.3	0.514	-0.7	0.6
1939	CIN	28	156	156	20.6	16.0	0.563	1.0	2.5	20.2	16.4	0.552	0.6	2.1
1940	CIN	29	155	155	23.1	15.1	0.604	3.1	4.7	21.6	16.7	0.564	1.6	3.1
1941	CIN	30	154	154	17.8	16.1	0.525	-0.3	1.1	17.0	17.0	0.500	-1.2	0.3
1942	CIN	31	145	145	17.2	15.1	0.533	0.1	1.4	16.5	15.8	0.511	-0.6	0.7
1943	CIN	32	126	126	12.4	11.3	0.523	0.0	1.0	12.6	11.1	0.532	0.3	1.2
1944	CIN	33	153	153	21.8	15.4	0.585	2.3	3.8	20.7	16.6	0.555	1.1	2.6
1945	CIN	34	152	152	16.8	17.4	0.492	-0.8	0.5	17.5	16.7	0.512	-0.1	1.2
1946	PHI	35	135	135	15.6	13.1	0.543	0.3	1.5	14.9	13.9	0.518	-0.4	0.8
+– 1947		36	96	96	7.8	7.5	0.511	-0.1	0.5	7.8	7.5	0.512	-0.1	0.5
	BSN		81	81	6.7	6.1	0.526	0.1	0.6	6.7	6.1	0.526	0.1	0.7
	PHI		15	15	1.1	1.4	0.437	-0.2	-0.1	1.1	1.4	0.436	-0.2	-0.1
1948	BSN	37	74	74	5.0	5.6	0.472	-0.3	0.1	5.0	5.6	0.476	-0.3	0.2
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,533	1,533	178.3	152.2	0.539	4.3	17.7	174.0	156.5	0.527	0.0	13.4
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			14	14	1.3	1.5	0.470		-0.0	1.3	1.5	0.467		-0.0
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			1,547	1,547	179.6	153.7	0.539		17.6	175.4	158.0	0.527		13.4

Retrosheet has full play-by-play data for every season since 1928. Frank McCormick played every game of his career before then for the Cincinnati Reds. Retrosheet has better coverage of Reds games than for virtually any other team, as Retrosheet was able to secure copies of the scorebooks of Tom Swope from the Hall of Fame. Swope covered the Reds for the Cincinnati Post from the 1910's through the 1960's. Because of this, I have extremely strong coverage of Frank McCormick's career. Overall, I am missing only 0 games from Frank McCormick's career.

Frank McCormick was the starting first baseman for back-to-back pennant winners in 1939 and 1940. He also ended his career as a platoon first baseman for the NL pennant-winning 1948 Boston Braves (of "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain" fame).

Frank McCormick won the NL MVP award in 1940. McCormick had an excellent year in 1940, batting .309/.367/.482 with 19 HR, 127 RBI, and leading the league with 191 hits and 44 doubles, while playing excellent defense at first base. The next table shows the top 10 players in the major leagues in 1940, as measured by pWins over either positional average or replacement level. Results have been extrapolated here to fill in missing player games (note that this doesn't affect McCormick because of the Swope scorebooks).

		pWins over Positional Average Top 10 Players						pWins over Replacement Level Top 10 Players
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL		Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Bob Feller	25.0	16.6	4.9	6.7	1	Bob Feller	25.0	16.6	4.9	6.7
2	Hank Greenberg	26.6	17.4	3.7	5.4	2	Hank Greenberg	26.6	17.4	3.7	5.4
3	Dolph Camilli	20.1	12.0	3.3	4.6	3	Lou Boudreau	23.8	18.6	3.1	4.9
4	Lou Boudreau	23.8	18.6	3.1	4.9	4	Arky Vaughan	25.3	20.7	2.8	4.7
5	Frank McCormick	23.1	15.1	3.1	4.7	5	Frank McCormick	23.1	15.1	3.1	4.7
6	Jimmie Foxx	19.1	12.5	3.0	4.2	6	Dolph Camilli	20.1	12.0	3.3	4.6
7	Joe DiMaggio	22.0	15.1	2.9	4.4	7	Joe DiMaggio	22.0	15.1	2.9	4.4
8	Arky Vaughan	25.3	20.7	2.8	4.7	8	Lonny Frey	22.1	16.9	2.7	4.3
9	Claude Passeau	17.8	13.3	2.8	4.2	9	Jimmie Foxx	19.1	12.5	3.0	4.2
10	Rudy York	21.1	14.0	2.8	4.2	10	Claude Passeau	17.8	13.3	2.8	4.2

Per the tables above, Frank McCormick was the 4th-most valuable player in the 1940 National League, behind Dolph Camilli (Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman), Harry Danning (New York Giants catcher), and Enos Slaughter (St. Louis Cardinals right fielder). In the cases of Danning and Slaughter, however, I have play-by-play data for fewer than half of their actual games, so their numbers should be taken with a grain (or more) of salt.

Obviously, Frank McCormick was before my time, so that all I know of him is a set of statistics on a page. To try to put those numbers in some context, then, the final table of this article shows the 10 players most similar in career value to Frank McCormick, as measured by Player won-lost records.

Player	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL	Batting	Baserunning	Pitching	Fielding
						Wins over Baseline
Frank McCormick	1,533	178.3	152.2	4.3	17.7	5.0	0.3	0.0	1.2
Bill Skowron	1,657	162.6	139.8	4.2	16.6	5.7	-0.1	0.0	1.0
George Kelly	1,218	141.0	119.8	5.6	16.0	3.8	0.4	0.0	1.9
Elbie Fletcher	1,395	149.8	129.0	3.0	14.3	8.1	0.3	0.0	0.8
Donn Clendenon	1,361	137.0	124.0	-0.3	10.4	5.3	0.1	0.0	0.6
Mike Hargrove	1,663	158.6	148.4	1.1	13.2	7.4	-0.1	0.0	1.6
Carl Everett	1,405	151.1	144.8	0.6	13.4	4.1	0.4	0.0	1.1
Daniel Murphy	1,280	154.6	140.2	5.4	16.4	3.5	0.3	0.0	1.3
Dan Driessen	1,729	168.0	146.1	4.6	16.9	5.7	1.0	0.0	1.2
Justin Morneau	1,545	166.8	149.5	3.0	15.4	6.5	-0.3	0.0	1.4
Kevin Seitzer	1,438	160.1	149.6	4.0	16.5	2.8	0.0	0.0	2.5

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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