Ernie Lombardi

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Ernie Lombardi

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Ernie Lombardi

Ernie Lombardi was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee in 1986.

Five highlights of Ernie Lombardi's career:

Ernie Lombardi was selected to the National League All-Star team eight times, including 1945 when no game was played. He was the starting catcher for the National League three times.

Lombardi was named National League MVP in 1938. That season he batted .342/.391/.524 with 19 home runs and 95 RBI.

Lombardi led the league in batting average twice, in 1938 and 1942 (.330). He batted over .300 ten times and finished with a career batting line of .306/.358/.460.

Lombardi had both an on-base percentage over .350 and a slugging percentage over .470 in a season eight times. Only two catchers in major-league history have done so more often: fellow Hall-of-Famers Mike Piazza and Bill Dickey.

Lombardi was the catcher for both of Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters in June of 1938.

The first two tables below present Ernie Lombardi's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1931	BRO	23	72	4.9	4.6	1.1	0.5
1932	CIN	24	118	12.0	11.9	1.7	0.5
1933	CIN	25	106	9.4	10.0	0.7	-0.3
1934	CIN	26	132	8.7	10.8	-0.7	-1.7
1935	CIN	27	120	8.9	8.1	1.9	1.0
1936	CIN	28	121	10.4	10.1	1.8	0.7
1937	CIN	29	120	9.7	9.6	1.5	0.4
1938	CIN	30	129	14.5	10.2	5.9	4.6
1939	CIN	31	130	13.1	11.0	3.8	2.5
1940	CIN	32	109	11.4	8.7	4.1	3.0
1941	CIN	33	117	10.8	10.5	1.9	0.8
1942	BSN	34	105	9.3	8.8	1.9	1.0
1943	NY1	35	104	8.3	8.0	1.4	0.6
1944	NY1	36	116	8.9	9.7	0.7	-0.3
1945	NY1	37	115	10.9	8.5	3.8	2.8
1946	NY1	38	88	7.1	6.0	2.1	1.4
1947	NY1	39	48	2.8	2.9	0.4	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,850	161.1	149.5	34.1	17.6
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			6	0.3	0.5	-0.1	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,856	161.4	150.0	33.9	17.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1931	BRO	23	72	4.8	4.7	0.9	0.4
1932	CIN	24	118	12.9	11.0	3.6	2.3
1933	CIN	25	106	9.8	9.7	1.4	0.4
1934	CIN	26	132	9.7	9.8	1.4	0.4
1935	CIN	27	120	9.3	7.8	2.6	1.6
1936	CIN	28	121	11.0	9.5	3.0	1.9
1937	CIN	29	120	10.5	8.9	3.1	2.0
1938	CIN	30	129	13.8	10.9	4.5	3.2
1939	CIN	31	130	12.2	11.8	2.3	1.0
1940	CIN	32	109	11.3	8.9	3.9	2.8
1941	CIN	33	117	10.6	10.6	1.6	0.5
1942	BSN	34	105	10.1	8.1	3.4	2.4
1943	NY1	35	104	8.6	7.7	2.1	1.2
1944	NY1	36	116	9.3	9.3	1.4	0.4
1945	NY1	37	115	10.7	8.6	3.5	2.5
1946	NY1	38	88	7.3	5.8	2.5	1.8
1947	NY1	39	48	2.9	2.8	0.5	0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,850	164.8	145.9	41.5	25.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			6	0.4	0.4	-0.0	-0.0
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,856	165.1	146.3	41.5	25.0

Ernie Lombardi was a great hitter. He won two batting titles with a career batting line of .306/.358/.460 with 190 home runs in 6,352 plate appearances. That last number is quite low for a Hall-of-Famer although this was largely due to Lombardi's defensive position, catcher.

In his prime, Lombardi was a great hitter, with no qualifications needed. Lombardi was an especially great hitter, however, for a catcher.

One somewhat remarkable feature of Ernie Lombardi's career, as shown above, is that, as measured by eWins (i.e., controlling for context), Ernie Lombardi never had a below-average season. Another somewhat remarkable thing, not shown above, is that Ernie Lombardi never played a defensive position other than catcher. In his career, he played in 1,852 games, of which he played 1,543 games at catcher. In the remaining 309 games of his career, Lombardi was simply a pinch hitter.

Putting these two features together, Ernie Lombardi was an above-average catcher for all 17 seasons of his major-league career as measured by eWins over positional average (eWOPA) earned exclusively as a catcher.

The next table shows all catchers for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records who were above average by this same measure for 13 or more consecutive seasons.

Player	#	Seasons

Catchers with 13 or more consecutive above-average seasons (measured by eWOPA, C only)
Yogi Berra	18	1946 - 1963
Gabby Hartnett	17	1923 - 1939
*Ernie Lombardi*	17	*1931 - 1947*
Bill Dickey	16	1928 - 1943
Johnny Bench	16	1968 - 1983
Carlton Fisk	15	1971 - 1985
Ivan Rodriguez	14	1993 - 2006
Mike Piazza	14	1993 - 2006
Gene Tenace	13	1970 - 1982
Ted Simmons	13	1971 - 1983
Mickey Cochrane	13	1925 - 1937
Gary Carter	13	1974 - 1986

Players in bold never had a season in which they were below average as a catcher. There's very little bold in the above table - and none since Lombardi's retirement.

Article last updated: October 22, 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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