Thurman Munson
2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot: Thurman Munson
The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2020 Modern Era ballot. One player on the ballot is former New York Yankees catcher, Thurman Munson.
Five highlights of Thurman Munson's career:
- Thurman Munson was named to seven All-Star teams. He was the American League's starting catcher in three All-Star games.
- Munson was voted American League Rookie of the Year in 1970 when he batted .302/.386/.415. He won three Gold Gloves and received MVP votes seven times.
- Munson won the American League MVP award in 1976. That season, Munson batted .302/.337/.432 with 17 home runs and 105 RBI in 152 games and the New York Yankees won their first American League pennant in 12 years.
- In 1976, Thurman Munson was named captain of the New York Yankees. He was the first Yankee captain since Lou Gehrig.
- The Yankees made the playoffs three times during Munson's career, winning the American League pennant all three times and the World Series twice. In 30 career postseason games, Munson batted .357/.378/.496 with 22 RBI and 19 runs scored in 135 plate appearances.
The first two tables below present Thurman Munson's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.
Thurman Munson is the only player on the 2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame ballot about whom I have not written previously. I find it a little difficult to get a good handle on Thurman Munson's Hall-of-Fame case. Partly, I'm not sure what to do about his tragic early death. Should he even get extra credit or is it just the ultimate career-ending injury? And if he deserves some extra credit, how much? His offense took a dip in his last two seasons - he batted .309/.352/.441 from 1975 thru 1977, which dipped to .297/.332/.373 in 1978 and .288/.340/.374 in 1979 - and age-32 can be on the old side for a catcher. But .288/.340/.374 in 1979 was still an above-average batting line for a catcher.
I also find it difficult to rate catchers in general. Catchers play fewer games than other position players, both by season and over their careers, so their career numbers (pWins, pWOPA, pWORL) are lower than other positions. My Player won-lost records also do not include any measure of game-calling or pitch framing. I have tried to estimate such effects but not to my own satisfaction yet. I have thought that perhaps one could tease out an estimate of a catcher's impact on his team's pitching by looking at the difference between his pWins (which tie to team wins) and eWins (which measure expected wins) - and Munson does well by that measure. But the value of a good pitcher in terms of game-calling or pitch framing isn't really unmeasured value, it's value that is, instead, being attributed to his battery-mates.
Anyway, what I'm left with is, I think, to compare catchers mostly to other catchers.
Thurman Munson was named to the American League All-Star team seven times in eight years between 1971 and 1978. He started three of these games. His closest rival for the title of best American League catcher of the 1970s was Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, who was named to six All-Star teams between 1971 and 1978 (actually, between 1972, when Fisk won the Rookie of the Year award, and 1978), starting three of them. Fisk and Munson combined to start six consecutive All-Star games from 1973 through 1978 and their teams combined to win four consecutive American League pennants from 1975 through 1978.
Carlton Fisk went on to play until he was 45 years old, set a major-league record for games caught (which has subsequently been broken by Ivan "the other Pudge" Rodriguez), and be elected to the Hall of Fame in his second year of eligibility in 2000. Obviously, a big part of Fisk's Hall-of-Fame resume was his incredible durability into his late 30s and early 40s. But most of Carlton Fisk's best seasons came while Thurman Munson was still alive.
The next table, then, compares the careers of Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk, as measured by Player won-lost records. Fisk and Munson were both born in 1947, although Munson was a little more than six months older and, given the aging convention used in baseball (age as of July 1st), Munson was one "baseball year" older than Fisk.
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Thurman Munson
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Carlton Fisk
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| Age |
Games |
pWins |
pLosses |
pWOPA |
pWORL |
Games |
pWins |
pLosses |
pWOPA |
pWORL |
1969 | 26 | 3.0 | 2.3 | 0.8 | 1.0 | 2 | 0.0 | 0.1 | -0.1 | -0.1 |
1970 | 132 | 14.3 | 11.5 | 3.0 | 4.3 | | | | | |
1971 | 125 | 12.2 | 11.2 | 1.3 | 2.5 | 14 | 1.1 | 1.2 | -0.1 | 0.0 |
1972 | 140 | 13.2 | 12.9 | 0.6 | 1.9 | 131 | 14.8 | 10.6 | 4.4 | 5.7 |
1973 | 147 | 16.1 | 13.4 | 3.4 | 4.8 | 135 | 13.7 | 12.7 | 1.7 | 3.0 |
1974 | 144 | 15.4 | 13.3 | 2.7 | 4.1 | 52 | 5.8 | 4.4 | 1.6 | 2.1 |
1975 | 157 | 20.2 | 14.9 | 5.8 | 7.5 | 79 | 8.4 | 6.5 | 2.2 | 2.9 |
1976 | 152 | 18.5 | 15.3 | 3.7 | 5.4 | 134 | 12.5 | 12.8 | 0.4 | 1.6 |
1977 | 149 | 16.6 | 14.6 | 2.5 | 4.1 | 152 | 18.4 | 12.0 | 6.8 | 8.3 |
1978 | 154 | 16.2 | 14.7 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 157 | 18.4 | 13.0 | 6.0 | 7.6 |
1979 | 97 | 8.9 | 9.0 | 0.2 | 1.1 | 91 | 7.3 | 6.6 | 0.8 | 1.6 |
1980 | | | | | | 131 | 12.6 | 11.1 | 1.9 | 3.1 |
1981 | | | | | | 95 | 9.5 | 9.3 | 0.6 | 1.5 |
1982 | | | | | | 135 | 13.1 | 12.4 | 1.3 | 2.5 |
1983 | | | | | | 138 | 15.4 | 11.4 | 4.6 | 5.9 |
1984 | | | | | | 102 | 8.0 | 9.4 | -0.9 | -0.0 |
1985 | | | | | | 153 | 17.7 | 13.4 | 4.9 | 6.4 |
1986 | | | | | | 125 | 11.0 | 14.3 | -3.0 | -1.7 |
1987 | | | | | | 135 | 13.1 | 12.2 | 1.8 | 3.0 |
1988 | | | | | | 76 | 7.5 | 6.9 | 1.1 | 1.8 |
1989 | | | | | | 103 | 10.8 | 9.4 | 2.0 | 3.0 |
1990 | | | | | | 137 | 14.5 | 10.7 | 4.4 | 5.6 |
1991 | | | | | | 134 | 12.8 | 12.8 | 0.7 | 2.0 |
1992 | | | | | | 62 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 0.6 | 1.1 |
1993 | | | | | | 25 | 0.7 | 1.4 | -0.7 | -0.6 |
| ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ |
|
| CAREER RECORDS | 1,423 | 154.5 | 133.1 | 26.0 | 40.4 | 2,498 | 251.9 | 219.3 | 43.0 | 66.2 |
CAREER RECORDS
(thru age 1979) | 1,423 | 154.5 | 133.1 | 26.0 | 40.4 | 947 | 100.5 | 80.0 | 23.7 | 32.7 |
The last row compares their careers through 1979. To that point, Munson rates the clear edge. Is that enough to merit electing Munson to the Hall of Fame? I'll leave that as a decision for the reader.
2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot
Article last updated: August 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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