Maury Wills

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Maury Wills

2015 Veterans' Committee HOF Ballot: Maury Wills

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2015 Veterans' ballot. One player on the ballot is Maury Wills.

The first table below presents Maury Wills's career as measured by Player won-lost records.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWin Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	eWins	eLosses	eWin Pct.	eWOPA	eWORL
Maury Wills Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
1959	LAN	26	83	6.8	7.0	0.491	-0.0	0.5	6.5	7.3	0.471	-0.3	0.2
1960	LAN	27	148	17.7	15.6	0.531	1.3	2.6	16.3	17.0	0.489	-0.1	1.2
1961	LAN	28	148	18.7	17.1	0.522	1.2	2.8	17.9	17.9	0.499	0.4	2.0
1962	LAN	29	165	26.0	19.8	0.568	3.6	5.3	24.5	21.3	0.535	2.1	3.8
1963	LAN	30	134	19.7	16.2	0.549	2.1	3.4	18.1	17.7	0.506	0.5	1.9
1964	LAN	31	158	19.5	21.4	0.477	-0.9	0.7	19.9	20.9	0.487	-0.5	1.1
1965	LAN	32	158	23.2	20.9	0.526	1.7	3.4	22.6	21.5	0.512	1.1	2.8
1966	LAN	33	143	20.8	20.4	0.504	0.7	2.3	19.9	21.3	0.483	-0.2	1.4
1967	PIT	34	149	19.2	18.0	0.516	0.2	1.8	19.2	18.1	0.515	0.2	1.8
1968	PIT	35	153	19.7	18.4	0.518	0.6	2.1	19.5	18.6	0.512	0.3	1.9
+– 1969		36	151	20.4	20.7	0.496	0.4	2.1	20.7	20.4	0.503	0.7	2.4
	LAN		104	15.2	14.1	0.520	1.0	2.2	15.1	14.2	0.515	0.8	2.1
	MON		47	5.1	6.7	0.436	-0.6	-0.1	5.6	6.2	0.474	-0.1	0.4
1970	LAN	37	132	16.0	16.0	0.499	0.6	1.9	15.8	16.2	0.494	0.4	1.8
1971	LAN	38	149	20.6	19.9	0.508	1.3	2.9	19.9	20.6	0.490	0.6	2.2
1972	LAN	39	71	3.4	4.9	0.412	-0.6	-0.3	3.3	5.0	0.394	-0.8	-0.4
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,942	251.6	236.4	0.516	12.0	31.8	244.0	244.0	0.500	4.4	24.2
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			21	2.5	2.2	0.535		0.4	2.3	2.4	0.490		0.2
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			1,963	254.1	238.6	0.516		32.2	246.3	246.4	0.500		24.4

Maury Wills had an excellent 1962 season, for which he won the National League MVP award in a very close vote against Willie Mays. Maury Wills set a major-league record that season (which has subsequently been broken) with 104 stolen bases. Perhaps even more impressive, he was caught stealing only 13 times, an extraordinary 88.9% stolen base percentage.

Maury Wills's 1962 season ranks as the second-best baserunning season for which I have calculated Player won-lost records, as ranked by baserunning wins over non-pitcher average. The top 10 such seasons are shown in the next table.

Top 10 Single-Season Baserunning Totals
(Wins over non-Pitcher Average)

	Player	Season	eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Maury Wills	1962	4.0	1.4	1.2
2	Rickey Henderson	1988	4.0	1.7	1.2
3	Ron LeFlore	1980	3.8	1.5	1.1
4	Rickey Henderson	1985	3.5	1.4	1.1
5	Tim Raines Sr.	1985	3.5	1.5	0.9
6	Willie Wilson	1980	3.0	1.2	0.9
7	Bobby Bonds	1972	2.5	0.7	0.9
8	Rickey Henderson	1983	3.4	1.6	0.9
9	Vince Coleman	1985	3.8	2.0	0.8
10	Bert Campaneris	1969	3.1	1.3	0.8

Positional Average excludes pitcher offense

Maury Wills led his league in stolen bases six (consecutive) seasons and stole 586 total bases in his careeer (still 20th all-time) at a respectable 73.8% success rate. Overall, Wills ranks among the top 40 players in career baserunning wins over non-pitcher average.

Top 40 Baserunners, ranked by Career Baserunning Wins over Non-Pitcer Average

		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Rickey Henderson	52.7	36.5	8.0
2	Tim Raines Sr.	34.6	20.9	6.5
3	Willie Wilson	27.6	15.9	5.9
4	Bert Campaneris	36.2	24.0	5.8
5	Davey Lopes	23.9	14.6	4.4
6	Paul Molitor	29.3	20.7	4.3
7	Joe L. Morgan	36.7	27.1	4.2
8	Luis Aparicio	30.9	21.8	4.0
9	Vince Coleman	26.2	17.7	3.9
10	Kenny Lofton	26.1	19.0	3.5
11	Lou Brock	41.3	33.2	3.4
12	Willie Davis	24.3	16.9	3.3
13	Johnny Damon	22.5	15.8	3.3
14	Ron LeFlore	19.6	13.1	3.2
15	Willie Mays	29.0	21.8	3.1
16	Otis Nixon	23.8	17.3	3.0
17	Mookie Wilson	18.4	11.9	3.0
18	Tommy Harper	21.9	15.3	3.0
19	Barry Larkin	21.6	15.0	3.0
20	Robin Yount	23.7	18.0	2.8
21	Jimmy Rollins	23.3	17.0	2.8
22	Mickey Mantle	18.6	12.4	2.8
23	Cesar Cedeno	27.7	21.3	2.8
24	Amos Otis	19.3	13.6	2.8
25	Rajai Davis	15.7	10.2	2.7
26	Eric Davis	16.3	10.5	2.7
27	Ozzie Smith	30.2	23.9	2.7
28	Maury Wills	28.6	22.5	2.6
29	Frankie Frisch	19.1	13.7	2.4
30	Ichiro Suzuki	24.7	19.8	2.4
31	Billy Hamilton	10.4	5.5	2.3
32	Roberto Alomar	23.8	18.9	2.3
33	Marquis Grissom	21.5	16.3	2.3
34	Mickey Rivers	17.3	12.6	2.3
35	Jacoby Ellsbury	14.1	9.4	2.3
36	Devon White	18.5	13.7	2.3
37	Carlos Beltran	18.8	14.0	2.3
38	Carl Crawford	18.2	13.6	2.2
39	Willie Randolph	22.2	17.6	2.2
40	Max Carey	13.9	9.1	2.2

Positional Average excludes pitcher offense

Maury Wills is undoubtedly most well known as a basestealer - and he was an excellent one in his prime. But Wills was also an excellent fielder, winning Gold Gloves in 1961 and 1962. Wills's defense rates very highly in Player won-lost records. The final table presents the top 20 fielding shortstops as measured by net fielding wins among all players for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records (all games since 1928, most games since 1916).

Top 20 Defensive Shortstops, ranked by Net Career Wins

		eWins	eLosses	Net Wins
1	Ozzie Smith	118.6	103.7	14.9
2	Pee Wee Reese	88.6	76.9	11.7
3	Lou Boudreau	71.6	60.6	11.0
4	Mark Belanger	76.6	66.5	10.1
5	Cal Ripken	92.8	84.8	8.0
6	Tim Foli	67.4	60.7	6.6
7	Alan Trammell	82.5	76.1	6.4
8	Andrelton Simmons	38.9	32.6	6.3
9	Rabbit Maranville	72.9	67.0	5.9
10	Eddie R. Miller	71.9	66.2	5.7
11	Jack Wilson	52.7	47.0	5.7
12	Dave Concepcion	90.5	84.8	5.7
13	Roy McMillan	86.6	81.1	5.5
14	Rey Sanchez	37.6	32.1	5.5
15	Phil Rizzuto	69.1	63.7	5.5
16	Dave Bancroft	76.4	70.9	5.5
17	Bud Harrelson	55.1	49.7	5.4
18	Omar Vizquel	102.8	97.4	5.3
19	Garry Templeton	84.9	79.7	5.2
20	Marty Marion	72.7	67.6	5.1

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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