Tony Perez

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Tony Perez

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Tony Perez

Tony Perez was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 9th year of eligibility, 2000, with 77.2% of the vote.

Five highlights of Tony Perez's career:

Tony Perez was named to seven All-Star teams in his career. He started the 1970 All-Star game for the National League at third base. Perez received MVP votes seven times with four top-10 finishes.

Perez had 90 or more RBI in a season twelve times (the first eleven consecutively from 1967 – 1977). His 954 RBI was the second-most RBI of the 1970s behind long-time teammate Johnny Bench.

Tony Perez was the MVP of the 1967 All-Star game. He hit a solo home run off Catfish Hunter in the top of the 15th inning to give the National League a 2-1 victory.

On July 16, 1970, Tony Perez hit the first home run in the history of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

Tony Perez was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 1998 and had his number, 24, retired by the Reds in 2000.

The first two tables below present Tony Perez'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
1964	CIN	22	12	0.3	0.8	-0.5	-0.5
1965	CIN	23	103	8.1	7.1	1.2	0.4
1966	CIN	24	97	7.1	7.9	-0.8	-1.6
1967	CIN	25	156	19.4	16.0	4.4	2.7
1968	CIN	26	160	20.3	18.6	3.0	1.1
1969	CIN	27	160	23.2	17.4	7.2	5.1
1970	CIN	28	158	23.5	16.2	8.5	6.5
1971	CIN	29	158	22.1	17.9	5.4	3.4
1972	CIN	30	136	16.2	11.2	4.8	3.4
1973	CIN	31	151	19.5	13.3	6.2	4.6
1974	CIN	32	158	19.1	15.3	3.7	2.1
1975	CIN	33	137	17.2	13.1	4.0	2.6
1976	CIN	34	139	15.3	12.8	2.4	1.0
1977	MON	35	154	17.1	14.7	2.6	1.0
1978	MON	36	148	14.5	13.3	1.2	-0.1
1979	MON	37	132	14.3	12.9	1.3	-0.0
1980	BOS	38	151	15.2	15.6	0.2	-1.3
1981	BOS	39	84	7.5	6.7	1.3	0.6
1982	BOS	40	69	4.8	4.4	0.9	0.3
1983	PHI	41	91	7.8	7.2	0.7	-0.1
1984	CIN	42	71	3.2	3.7	-0.2	-0.6
1985	CIN	43	71	6.4	4.8	1.8	1.3
1986	CIN	44	77	4.9	5.2	-0.2	-0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,773	307.1	256.0	59.1	31.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			47	5.9	4.9	1.0	0.5
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,820	313.0	260.9	60.1	31.5

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1964	CIN	22	12	0.5	0.7	-0.2	-0.3
1965	CIN	23	103	7.8	7.4	0.5	-0.3
1966	CIN	24	97	7.0	8.0	-1.1	-1.8
1967	CIN	25	156	18.9	16.5	3.4	1.7
1968	CIN	26	160	20.9	18.1	4.1	2.2
1969	CIN	27	160	23.1	17.5	7.0	5.0
1970	CIN	28	158	23.5	16.3	8.4	6.4
1971	CIN	29	158	21.1	18.9	3.2	1.2
1972	CIN	30	136	15.8	11.6	3.9	2.5
1973	CIN	31	151	18.9	13.9	5.0	3.4
1974	CIN	32	158	18.7	15.7	2.8	1.2
1975	CIN	33	137	17.0	13.3	3.6	2.1
1976	CIN	34	139	15.1	13.0	2.1	0.7
1977	MON	35	154	16.7	15.1	1.7	0.1
1978	MON	36	148	15.2	12.6	2.7	1.3
1979	MON	37	132	13.9	13.3	0.5	-0.9
1980	BOS	38	151	15.8	15.1	1.3	-0.2
1981	BOS	39	84	7.3	6.9	0.8	-0.0
1982	BOS	40	69	4.7	4.5	0.8	0.2
1983	PHI	41	91	7.5	7.5	0.1	-0.6
1984	CIN	42	71	3.1	3.8	-0.4	-0.8
1985	CIN	43	71	6.3	4.8	1.7	1.1
1986	CIN	44	77	4.9	5.2	-0.1	-0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,773	303.4	259.8	51.6	23.5
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			47	5.6	5.2	0.4	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,820	308.9	265.0	51.9	23.4

Tony Perez may be the only player in the Baseball Hall of Fame based primarily on his career RBI total (1,652, 32nd all-time). The first sentence on Perez's page at the Hall of Fame's website reads: "One of the national pastime's great run producers, Atanasio 'Tony' Perez Rigal was among the best when it came to driving in big runs for Cincinnati's 'Big Red Machine' clubs of the 1970s." His Hall-of-Fame plaque reads, "A clutch performer throughout an illustrious 23-year career, he tormented the opposition with his ability to consistently drive in runs...."

Sabermetricians tend to disdain RBI's as a valid statistical measure of "value", arguing that RBI's are merely a function of (a) general hitting ability, which is better measured by other statistics (e.g., Perez's career batting line of .279/.341/.463), and (b) opportunity, which is outside of the control of a player. Perez, for example, batted 4th (and occasionally 5th) in his career, which tend to provide maximum RBI opportunities within a typical major-league lineup, and Perez tended to bat behind Pete Rose and Joe Morgan, who both finished in the top 5 in the major leagues in times on base every season from 1972 through 1977, which gave Tony Perez lots of baserunners to drive in.

There is definitely something to this. But there is value in actually driving in runs, and Tony Perez did drive in a lot of runs.

Sabermetricians are also naturally skeptical when players are designated as "clutch" hitters. I evaluated the possible persistence of "clutch" hitting (and baserunning, pitching, and fielding) in my first book. My findings mirror many, if not most, sabermetricians. There may be some ability to hit better in the clutch, but it's an extremely tiny "skill" that is very hard to identify.

That said, Perez did hit better over his career with runners in scoring position - .284/.364/.470 - than with the bases empty - .265/.322/.442. He also hit better in high-leverage situations for his career - .300/.359/.491 - than in either medium- or low-leverage situations (.277/.341/.456 and .269/.331/.456, respectively). In late and close situations, Perez batted .300/.370/.490 for his career. In extra innings, Tony Perez batted .352/.427/.552. Was Tony Perez's "clutch performance" a skill? Maybe. Was Tony Perez's "clutch performance" real? Of course. The runs Perez drove in really scored and those runs contributed to real wins for Perez's teams.

When I looked at clutch performance, I defined "clutch" as the difference between context-neutralized player win percentages and player win percentages put into inter-game context. Inter-game context corresponds to leverage and forms the basis of Win Probability (e.g., WPA).

The next table shows the top 25 players in the difference between batting wins over non-pitcher batting average (WOPA_b) in inter-game context and context-neutral WOPA_b from 1961 (the first season of the 162-game schedule) through 1999 (the last season before Perez was elected to the Hall of Fame).


		Top 25 Clutch Hitters, 1961 - 1999
		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA	Additional Clutch Wins
1	Willie McCovey	229.6	161.1	62.4	13.6
2	Eddie Murray	280.2	233.8	44.0	13.1
3	Hank Aaron	235.6	162.6	67.2	9.6
4	Tony Taylor	113.6	119.7	-10.6	9.1
5	Harold Baines	218.5	193.4	25.0	8.8
6	Harmon Killebrew	206.2	143.2	58.1	8.5
7	Ben Oglivie	132.1	117.5	14.3	8.0
8	Don Lock	65.1	55.0	8.0	7.4
9	Billy Williams	230.3	180.8	43.0	7.0
10	Dante Bichette	116.4	108.6	4.8	6.8
11	Willie Mays	181.4	122.3	54.2	6.4
12	Eric Davis	126.4	98.6	24.6	6.2
13	Tony Phillips	157.1	145.4	11.5	6.1
14	Sandy Alomar Sr.	77.3	95.6	-20.9	5.1
15	Jeff Burroughs	134.5	112.1	20.8	5.0
16	Amos Otis	159.7	145.7	12.5	5.0
17	Tommy Helms	87.0	100.2	-17.0	5.0
18	Ron Fairly	170.4	146.2	19.2	4.9
19	Cliff Johnson	100.0	81.0	18.1	4.9
20	Tony Perez	237.2	198.4	32.1	4.9
21	Darrell Porter	126.3	111.9	12.9	4.8
22	Kirby Puckett	159.4	142.1	17.2	4.8
23	Leroy Stanton	55.7	53.2	2.2	4.8
24	Mike Ivie	61.4	55.6	3.9	4.8
25	Orlando Merced	76.5	69.7	4.6	4.8

Did Tony Perez have a "skill" for clutch hitting? Maybe. Was Tony Perez a clutch hitter? Yes.

Article last updated: April 7, 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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