The 1950s are about two decades before my time, in terms of major-league baseball fandom. Obviously, I knew about the big names of the 1950s: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, etc. But I didn't really know much about players below that level. Gil McDougald earned his fair share of accolades when he was active. He was elected AL Rookie-of-the-Year in 1951, he was an All-Star in five seasons, and also received MVP votes in five seasons, with three top 10 finishes, finishing as high as 5th in 1957. But beyond being vaguely familiar with the name, I didn't really have a strong idea of exactly how good a baseball player Gil McDougald was.

So, I decided to take a closer look at Gil McDougald as his career appears via Player won-lost records.

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

Gil McDougald Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWin Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	eWins	eLosses	eWin Pct.	eWOPA	eWORL
1951	NYA	23	131	14.2	10.9	0.567	1.5	2.5	13.8	11.3	0.549	1.1	2.1
1952	NYA	24	152	19.9	16.8	0.542	1.4	2.9	19.0	17.7	0.517	0.5	2.0
1953	NYA	25	141	20.3	15.3	0.570	2.0	3.5	18.8	16.8	0.529	0.5	2.0
1954	NYA	26	126	15.3	11.2	0.577	2.1	3.2	14.4	12.1	0.544	1.2	2.3
1955	NYA	27	141	17.8	14.2	0.556	2.1	3.4	17.0	15.0	0.531	1.2	2.5
1956	NYA	28	119	18.3	12.2	0.601	3.5	4.7	16.8	13.7	0.551	1.9	3.2
1957	NYA	29	141	20.7	15.9	0.565	2.7	4.2	19.5	17.1	0.533	1.5	3.0
1958	NYA	30	138	18.1	15.0	0.547	2.0	3.3	16.8	16.3	0.508	0.7	2.0
1959	NYA	31	127	12.7	14.1	0.475	-0.6	0.5	13.1	13.7	0.489	-0.2	0.9
1960	NYA	32	119	11.0	9.7	0.530	0.6	1.5	10.8	9.9	0.521	0.4	1.3
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,335	168.4	135.2	0.555	17.3	29.6	159.9	143.7	0.527	8.9	21.2
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			53	6.7	5.9	0.533		1.0	6.6	6.1	0.519		0.8
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			1,388	175.1	141.1	0.555		30.6	166.5	149.7	0.527		22.0

Gil McDougald: Basic Bio

Most of what I know about Gil McDougald's career, I read in Bill James's New Historical Baseball Abstract.

James cites McDougald as one of the "three men who made Casey Stengel a genius" along with Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. Berra and Mantle's contribution to Stengel's "genius" are pretty obvious. McDougald's contribution was that he, in James's words, "could do anything", playing wherever Stengel put him and playing at a "Gold Glove" level.

McDougald retired at the relatively young age of 32 after being drafted by the Los Angeles Angels in the first expansion draft.

The other event for which Gil McDougald is somewhat remembered today is that he hit the line drive that derailed the career of Cleveland Indians pitching phenom Herb Score on May 7, 1957. According to Wikipedia's article on Herb Score, "McDougald ... ran to the pitching mound instead of first base to help Score.... [and] reportedly vowed to retire if Score permanently lost his sight in one eye as a result of the accident."

Baseball-Reference has a nice write-up of the basics of Gil McDougald's biography.

Utility Infielder Extraordinaire

Casey Stengel played Gil McDougald all over the infield. In his career, McDougald played 2,373.1 innings at shortstop, 3,885.0 innings at third base, and 4,701.0 innings at second base.

As a rookie in 1951, McDougald ranked 1st in second-base wins over positional average while playing only 55 games there. In 82 games at third base, he was good enough to rank 5th in wins over positional average there, too. In 1952, he again placed in the top 5 in wins over positional average at both second and third base.

In 1954 and 1955, he played 92 and 126 regular-season games at second base and finished 2nd and 1st in wins over positional average at the position.

In 1956, Gil McDougald made his first major-league appearance at shortstop in his age 28 season. In 1956 and 1957, he played 92 and 121 games at shortstop and led the American League in shortstop WOPA in both seasons. In 1958, he played only 19 games (160 innings) at shortstop and still managed to finish 4th in shortstop WOPA in the American League that year.

Wherever Stengel played him, McDougald was one of the best in the American League at his position. McDougald's Fielding won-lost record by position is shown in the next table.

Fielding Won-Lost Record (Context-Neutral, Teammate-Adjusted)
	Second Base			Third Base			Shortstop
Season	Wins	Losses	Win Pct.	Wins	Losses	Win Pct.	Wins	Losses	Win Pct.
1951	1.6	1.7	0.490	1.8	2.1	0.464
1952	1.3	1.4	0.476	3.9	3.6	0.517
1953	0.4	0.6	0.430	4.5	4.2	0.517
1954	3.0	2.7	0.526	0.7	0.7	0.529
1955	4.6	3.8	0.544	0.5	0.6	0.489
1956	1.0	0.8	0.553	0.2	0.1	0.602	3.8	3.2	0.544
1957	0.7	0.6	0.521	0.2	0.1	0.720	5.3	4.9	0.520
1958	4.2	3.9	0.516				0.8	0.8	0.521
1959	1.9	2.0	0.493	0.8	0.7	0.536	1.9	1.8	0.513
1960	1.1	1.0	0.542	2.4	2.1	0.535
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
Career	19.9	18.6	0.517	15.2	14.2	0.516	11.9	10.7	0.527

World Series Performance

Gil McDougald played 10 major-league seasons. In 8 of these seasons, his team, the New York Yankees, made the World Series. Overall, McDougald played in 53 World Series games in his career. Among players for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records, McDougald ranks in the top 5 in World Series player wins and in the top 25 in World Series pWORL.

The top 25 players in career World Series pWORL are shown next.

	Top Career World Series Performers (Measured by pWORL)
	pWins	pLosses	pWORL
Lou Gehrig	6.5	2.3	2.2
Whitey Ford	9.7	8.8	1.6
Red Ruffing	6.2	4.4	1.5
Bob Gibson	5.4	3.5	1.5
Mariano Rivera	3.7	1.5	1.5
Mickey Mantle	9.1	7.0	1.5
Allie Reynolds	5.9	4.4	1.4
Madison Bumgarner	3.2	1.1	1.4
Joe DiMaggio	7.5	5.6	1.3
Frankie Crosetti	5.1	3.2	1.3
Yogi Berra	8.5	7.3	1.3
Babe Ruth	5.8	3.7	1.2
Herb Pennock	3.5	1.6	1.2
Reggie Jackson	4.3	2.4	1.2
Sandy Koufax	3.8	2.5	1.1
Monte Pearson	2.8	1.1	1.1
Rollie Fingers	3.3	1.8	1.1
Lefty Gomez	3.5	2.0	1.0
Tommy Bridges	3.4	1.9	1.0
Derek Jeter	5.5	4.6	1.0
Charlie Keller	3.8	2.0	1.0
Scott Brosius	3.1	1.5	1.0
Ed Lopat	3.3	1.9	1.0
Harry Brecheen	2.9	1.4	1.0
Tim McCarver	3.0	1.4	1.0

Gils of the 1950s

So, putting everything above together, how good was Gil McDougald? For his career, 1951 - 1960, including postseason games, McDougald ranked 16th in pWOPA and 13th in pWORL. On the pWORL list (linked in the previous sentence), he sits right between Stan Musial and Ted Williams: pretty nice company. Of course, Stan Musial won 3 MVP awards in the 1940s while Gil McDougald was a teenager, and Ted Williams won 2 MVP's and 2 Triple Crowns before McDougald debuted (and missed most of two seasons covered by the table linked above).

One other player who shows up very close to McDougald on the leaderboards of the 1950s shares a first name with McDougald, as well as a home city for most of this time period: Gil Hodges. I think they make for an interesting comparison, which is made in the table below (note: I am missing play-by-play data for Hodges's one-game appearance in 1943). The numbers below include World Series games.

	Gil McDougald						Gil Hodges
Season	Games	pWins	pLoss	Win Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	Games	pWins	pLoss	Win Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL
1947							29	1.5	1.6	0.483	-0.0	0.1
1948							134	11.3	11.6	0.492	-0.1	0.8
1949							161	20.0	15.4	0.566	2.1	3.5
1950							153	17.8	13.2	0.574	1.5	2.7
1951	137	15.8	11.4	0.581	2.1	3.1	158	19.9	14.1	0.585	2.5	3.8
1952	159	20.6	17.8	0.537	1.3	2.8	160	18.6	12.7	0.594	2.2	3.4
1953	147	20.8	15.7	0.571	2.1	3.6	147	19.6	12.3	0.614	3.2	4.5
1954	126	15.3	11.2	0.577	2.1	3.2	154	21.2	14.3	0.597	2.8	4.3
1955	148	18.6	15.0	0.553	2.1	3.4	157	19.2	14.4	0.571	1.7	3.1
1956	126	18.9	12.9	0.595	3.4	4.7	160	19.4	14.6	0.569	1.5	2.9
1957	148	21.4	17.0	0.557	2.5	4.1	150	18.9	14.4	0.568	1.5	2.9
1958	145	19.4	15.7	0.553	2.3	3.7	141	11.1	12.1	0.478	-1.0	-0.1
1959	127	12.7	14.1	0.475	-0.6	0.5	129	14.8	10.3	0.591	1.8	2.8
1960	125	11.5	10.5	0.524	0.5	1.4	102	6.0	5.6	0.516	-0.1	0.4
1961							109	6.1	5.2	0.541	0.1	0.6
1962							54	3.3	3.9	0.459	-0.5	-0.2
1963							11	0.6	0.6	0.496	-0.0	0.0
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER RECORDS	1,388	175.1	141.1	0.554	17.8	30.6	2,109	229.2	176.3	0.565	19.3	35.7
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER RECORDS (common rows)	1,388	175.1	141.1	0.554	17.8	30.6	1,458	168.6	124.9	0.574	16.1	28.0

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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