Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Enos Slaughter

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Enos Slaughter

Enos Slaughter was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee in 1985.

Five highlights of Enos Slaughter's career: The first two tables below present Enos Slaughter's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
Value Decomposition
Season Team Age Games pWins pLosses pWORL pWOPA
1938SLN22
112
13.614.20.1-1.3
1939SLN23
149
22.817.95.73.5
1940SLN24
140
19.814.75.94.1
1941SLN25
112
16.111.65.03.6
1942SLN26
152
26.517.110.27.9
1943-27
-
----
1944-28
-
----
1945-29
-
----
1946SLN30
156
25.918.48.36.0
1947SLN31
147
21.018.62.80.9
1948SLN32
146
24.018.76.03.8
1949SLN33
151
24.119.25.43.1
1950SLN34
148
19.218.81.3-0.7
1951SLN35
123
14.813.62.00.5
1952SLN36
140
21.916.76.24.2
1953SLN37
143
18.615.93.61.7
1954NYA38
69
4.13.51.00.6
39
118
8.97.32.21.3
40
115
10.010.20.3-0.8
1957NYA41
96
8.26.62.01.2
1958NYA42
77
4.54.60.3-0.2
43
85
3.54.5-0.6-1.1
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
CAREER (reg. season)
2,379
307.4252.167.838.4
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
PostSeason (career)
27
4.23.01.41.0
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
COMBINED
2,406
311.6255.169.239.4


Expected Player Won-Lost Records
Value Decomposition
Season Team Age Games eWins eLosses eWORL eWOPA
1938SLN22
112
13.814.00.5-0.9
1939SLN23
149
22.817.95.53.4
1940SLN24
140
18.815.73.71.9
1941SLN25
112
15.112.63.01.5
1942SLN26
152
25.118.57.55.2
1943-27
-
----
1944-28
-
----
1945-29
-
----
1946SLN30
156
24.919.46.34.0
1947SLN31
147
20.119.51.1-0.9
1948SLN32
146
23.419.24.92.7
1949SLN33
151
22.820.43.00.7
1950SLN34
148
19.019.01.0-1.0
1951SLN35
123
14.913.52.30.8
1952SLN36
140
21.017.64.42.4
1953SLN37
143
17.616.91.8-0.1
1954NYA38
69
3.93.70.70.3
39
118
8.97.22.31.4
40
115
10.49.71.30.2
1957NYA41
96
7.77.01.00.2
1958NYA42
77
4.84.20.90.4
43
85
3.84.2-0.0-0.5
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
CAREER (reg. season)
2,379
299.1260.451.121.7
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
PostSeason (career)
27
4.13.11.30.9
------ ------ ------ ------ ------
COMBINED
2,406
303.3263.552.322.6


It is somewhat difficult to get a good feel for exactly how good a player Enos Slaughter was. Slaughter suffers from a couple of minor issues, one general to the time period in which he played and one more specific to Slaughter. First, Slaughter was 31 years old when MLB first integrated, so his prime years were in either completely segregated or at least mostly segregated leagues.

Second, when Enos Slaughter first came to the Cardinals he was teammates with fellow Hall-of-Famers Joe Medwick and Johnny Mize. And then, just as Medwick and Mize moved on, up came Stan Musial. As a result, Enos Slaughter falls into an extremely rare category: a deserving Hall-of-Famer who was probably never the best player on his own team.

Finally, and most significantly, like most players of his generation, Enos Slaughter missed three full major-league seasons - his age 27, 28, and 29 seasons - while he served in the U.S. Air Force.

The next table tries to get a better handle on exactly how good Enos Slaughter was controlling for at least the last of these issues by calculating the 10 most similar players to Enos Slaughter in career value, excluding ages 27 - 29, as measured by Player won-lost records. Seasons have been normalized to 162 games and missing games are extrapolated for players for whom Retrosheet is missing some data.

Most Similar Players to Enos Slaughter in Value
Excluding Ages 27 - 29
(Seasons normalized to 162 games, missing player games extrapolated)
Wins over Baseline
Player Games pWins pLosses pWOPA pWORL Bat Run Field
Enos Slaughter
2,379
320.6263.040.0
70.7
31.00.59.4
Dave Winfield
2,545
337.8290.232.1
63.6
33.11.78.6
Dwight Evans
2,195
277.9229.437.9
63.0
34.01.89.5
Paul Waner
2,100
309.7257.033.3
62.8
29.72.611.2
Adrian Beltre
2,485
303.7265.833.6
61.8
22.20.313.3
Goose Goslin
1,859
386.9330.435.1
71.8
34.60.117.2
Carl Yastrzemski
2,828
359.9312.726.3
60.6
37.0-1.510.0
Billy Williams
1,997
266.1221.526.5
51.4
34.10.77.9
Tris Speaker
1,431
293.8234.047.1
74.4
30.81.211.5
Joe Cronin
1,772
256.1216.545.9
70.5
25.10.39.6
Al Simmons
1,806
291.0251.225.1
53.0
20.00.912.8


It is, of course, impossible to know exactly what Enos Slaughter might have done in 1943, 1944, and 1945, were it not for World War II.

But setting those seasons aside, eight of the ten most similar players to Enos Slaughter are in the Hall of Fame, a ninth is in the Hall of Merit, and the tenth is likely to be a first-ballot inductee into both Halls when he becomes eligible in 2024.

That would seem to be a strong endorsement of Enos Slaughter's Hall-of-Fame credentials.

Article last updated: November 8, 2020



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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