Lou Brock

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Lou Brock

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Lou Brock

Lou Brock was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 1985, with 79.7% of the vote.

Five highlights of Lou Brock's career:

Lou Brock was named to six All-Star teams. He was the starting left fielder for the National League in the 1967 and 1975 All-Star games.

Brock received MVP votes ten times with five top-10 finishes. His highest finish in MVP voting was in 1974, when he finished second to Steve Garvey. In 1974, Brock batted .306/.368/.381 with 105 runs scored and a then-record 118 stolen bases.

Brock scored 100 or more runs seven times and 90 or more runs a total of ten times. He led the National League in runs scored twice, in 1967 (113) and 1971 (with a career-high 126 runs scored).

Brock led the National League in stolen bases eight times (in nine seasons) and in doubles and triples once each (both in 1968 when he batted .279/.328/.418 with 46 doubles and 14 triples). He batted over .300 nine times and had 200 or more hits four times.

Lou Brock is one of only four players to ever hit a ball over the center-field fence at the Polo Grounds (reported distance: 483 feet). He did so on June 17, 1962.

The first two tables below present Lou Brock'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
1961	CHN	22	4	0.1	0.5	-0.4	-0.4
1962	CHN	23	123	11.4	14.0	-2.0	-3.3
1963	CHN	24	148	17.7	16.7	1.2	-0.5
+– 1964		25	154	22.3	19.1	3.6	1.5
	CHN		52	6.6	7.3	-0.6	-1.3
	SLN		102	15.7	11.8	4.2	2.9
1965	SLN	26	155	22.0	19.5	2.9	0.9
1966	SLN	27	156	22.4	20.2	2.5	0.5
1967	SLN	28	159	24.8	20.3	5.1	2.9
1968	SLN	29	159	25.9	19.2	7.3	5.0
1969	SLN	30	157	23.9	19.8	4.7	2.5
1970	SLN	31	155	20.7	22.1	-1.3	-3.4
1971	SLN	32	157	23.0	21.3	2.1	-0.1
1972	SLN	33	153	19.5	18.9	0.9	-1.0
1973	SLN	34	160	23.1	20.4	3.1	1.0
1974	SLN	35	153	23.2	20.5	3.0	0.9
1975	SLN	36	136	18.5	19.5	-0.4	-2.2
1976	SLN	37	133	15.7	16.8	-0.6	-2.2
1977	SLN	38	140	14.7	15.7	-0.7	-2.2
1978	SLN	39	92	7.9	11.3	-3.2	-4.1
1979	SLN	40	120	10.8	12.8	-1.8	-2.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,614	347.6	328.7	26.1	-7.4
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			21	3.3	3.2	0.2	-0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,635	350.8	331.8	26.3	-7.5

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1961	CHN	22	4	0.2	0.4	-0.3	-0.3
1962	CHN	23	123	12.4	13.0	0.0	-1.3
1963	CHN	24	148	18.0	16.4	1.9	0.2
+– 1964		25	154	21.9	19.5	2.9	0.8
	CHN		52	7.0	6.9	0.1	-0.6
	SLN		102	14.9	12.5	2.8	1.4
1965	SLN	26	155	22.4	19.1	3.7	1.6
1966	SLN	27	156	22.5	20.1	2.8	0.8
1967	SLN	28	159	24.7	20.4	4.8	2.6
1968	SLN	29	159	25.2	19.9	5.6	3.3
1969	SLN	30	157	22.8	20.9	2.3	0.1
1970	SLN	31	155	21.2	21.5	-0.2	-2.3
1971	SLN	32	157	23.4	20.9	3.0	0.8
1972	SLN	33	153	19.3	19.2	0.3	-1.6
1973	SLN	34	160	23.0	20.5	2.9	0.7
1974	SLN	35	153	23.3	20.4	3.3	1.2
1975	SLN	36	136	19.1	18.8	0.7	-1.1
1976	SLN	37	133	16.0	16.6	-0.2	-1.8
1977	SLN	38	140	14.1	16.3	-1.8	-3.3
1978	SLN	39	92	8.4	10.9	-2.3	-3.2
1979	SLN	40	120	11.8	11.8	0.3	-0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,614	349.5	326.7	29.8	-3.7
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			21	3.9	2.6	1.4	1.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,635	353.4	329.3	31.2	-2.6

Lou Brock's Hall-of-Fame case essentially has three components:

(1) Brock finished his career with 3,023 hits
(2) Brock held the single-season and career stolen base records at the time of his retirement (118 and 938, respectively)
(3) In 21 World Series games, Brock batted .391/.424/.655, batting over .400 in both the 1967 and 1968 World Series.

This article focuses on the last two of these, putting them into the context of Player won-lost records.

Lou Brock's Baserunning

Lou Brock was one of the best basestealers, and, extending beyond that, one of the best baserunners in the history of major-league baseball. The top 25 baserunners for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records, measured by baserunning eWins over non-pitcher average, are shown in the next table.

		Top 25 Players, Baserunning Wins over Average
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Rickey Henderson	55.7	38.5	0.591	17.0
2	Tim Raines Sr.	35.8	21.5	0.625	13.7
3	Willie Wilson	28.6	16.6	0.633	12.0
4	Bert Campaneris	37.3	25.0	0.599	11.7
5	Davey Lopes	24.8	15.0	0.623	9.3
6	Paul Molitor	31.3	22.0	0.587	9.3
7	Joe L. Morgan	36.7	27.0	0.576	8.7
8	Luis Aparicio	31.3	21.9	0.588	8.6
9	Vince Coleman	27.9	18.8	0.598	8.5
10	Willie Davis	25.4	17.4	0.593	7.3
11	Lou Brock	41.7	33.1	0.557	7.3
12	Willie Mays	31.0	22.9	0.575	7.2
13	Kenny Lofton	26.5	19.2	0.580	7.1
14	Johnny Damon	23.2	16.1	0.590	7.0
15	Max Carey	26.5	18.9	0.583	7.0
16	Ron LeFlore	20.7	13.8	0.599	6.8
17	Tommy Harper	22.3	15.5	0.590	6.3
18	Barry Larkin	21.8	15.0	0.593	6.3
19	Mookie Wilson	18.6	12.0	0.609	6.3
20	Otis Nixon	24.6	18.1	0.576	6.2
21	Robin Yount	24.9	18.9	0.569	6.1
22	Cesar Cedeno	27.0	20.3	0.571	6.0
23	Mickey Mantle	19.3	12.9	0.600	6.0
24	Jimmy Rollins	23.4	16.9	0.580	5.9
25	Amos Otis	19.4	13.6	0.588	5.6

Positional Average excludes pitcher offense

Lou Brock's World Series Performance

Lou Brock played in three World Series: in 1964, 1967, and 1968. Across these three World Series, Brock batted .391/.424/.655 (1.079 OPS) with 4 home runs, 14 stolen bases, 13 RBI, and 16 runs scored in 92 plate appearances. As shown in the first table of this article, this translates into a (context-neutral) Player won-lost record of 3.9 eWins and 2.6 eLosses, a winning percentage of 0.602.

The next table shows all players for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records with a career eWin winning percentage of .600 or greater in the postseason (minimum 3 postseason eWins) since 1947.

		Postseason Record > 0.600: eWins (sorted by eWinPct., min. 3.0 career postseason eWins)
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWORL
1	Mariano Rivera	11.4	5.0	0.695	7.7
2	Cliff P. Lee	6.2	3.7	0.624	3.4
3	Hank Aaron	3.2	2.0	0.622	1.4
4	Lenny Dykstra	4.7	2.9	0.620	2.1
5	Kirk Gibson	3.9	2.4	0.620	1.7
6	Stephen Strasburg	4.0	2.5	0.618	2.2
7	Kenley Jansen	3.3	2.1	0.610	1.7
8	Albert Pujols	11.6	7.5	0.605	4.2
9	Lou Brock	3.9	2.6	0.602	1.4

Article last updated: October 27, 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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