For example, the 1963 St. Louis Cardinals received more plate appearances from its starting four infielders than any other team in National League history, with 2,777 PA from their infielders. (Minor note: this number might be a hair off the actual one. When I collected the data neither Baseball-Reference.com nor Retrosheet listed player PA on team pages. I added SF, SH, HBP, BB, and H. It works well enough).
It's nice that the 1963 Cards come in first, but that's not terribly interesting in and of itself. After all, someone has to be in first. Why not them? After all, they had Bill White at first, Julian Javier at second, Dick Groat at short, and Ken Boyer at third. That is an extremely solid quartet. They also played in a 162 game schedule, giving them an advantage over most of baseball history. So why not them?
Here's why not: 1963 wasn't in a very high offensive era. Most teams near the top of this heap played in a high scoring era. The AL champ (and overall MLB leader) was the 2003 Rangers with 2,849 PA. The 1963 NL averaged 3.81 runs per game, quite a bit less than the 2003 AL's 4.86.
Only that Ranger squad tops the 1963 Cards, but right after them are the 1936 Indians, then 2000 Indians, 2004 Orioles, and so on. In fact, the top dozen teams consist of teams from the current Silly Ball Era, the high-scoring 1930s AL - and the 1963 Cardinals. No other NL starting infield quartet was within 300 PA of the Cards, and they rest of the league averaged barely over 2,000 PA from their foursomes.
(In fact, the 1964 Cards had the 21st most PA by any starting four infielders in MLB history. The 1963-64 Cards rank second most in a two-year period, behind the 2004-2005 Rangers).
First baseman White started every game. Javier appeared in every game but one, Boyer missed three, and Groat had the most days off, with four. St. Louis led the league in scoring, giving them more trips to the plate. What's more, Groat-White generally batted two-three-four in the order and Javier led off for a third of the season.
The downside
Still, there's a potentially seemy underbelly to this. I mentioned the 1963 Cards PA in a post at THT Live last month, and a reader pointed out an interesting fact: the team collapsed down the stretch.
After sweeping the Milwaukee Braves in a doubleheader on September 15, the Cards were 91-61, just one game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the homestretch, St. Louis dropped 10 of their last 12 to finish six games back. It was actually a little worse than that, as they won their last game after dropping 10 of 11 when they most needed to win.
The problem was offense. A team that averaged 4.78 runs per game through the first 152 contests suddenly floundered, crossing the plate a grand total of 20 times in those disastrous dozen affairs. Ten of those runs came in two games, while they were thrice shutout completely and twice held to one run.
Looks bad, doesn't it? A team relies heavily on their infielders and then the offense wears out down the stretch. Let's look at how the fearsome foursome did in that period.
Julian Javier was never much of an offensive threat, but he went an anemic 4-for-36 during St. Louis death spiral. His AVG/OBP/SLG line was .111/.111/.139. An average of .250 would be acceptable from a middle infielder in 1963, but an OPS? Yoikes.
The hard-hitting Ken Boyer would win an MVP the next year and was an All-Star in 1963. But in the final days of 1964, he was scarcely better than Javier at the plate, going .150/.209/.275 for an OPS of 484.
Dick Groat was a former MVP, who was one of the best hitting shortstops of his day, but his bat also vanished at the end, with a .195/.233/.317 mark in the collapse.
Bill White was the infield's big offensive threat in this period, as he was the only one to clear the Mendoza Line - but only barely. He hit .211/.286/.211 in the final days.
Overall, the infielders hit .168/.213/.239 in 164 PA. That's futile by any standard. No wonder St. Louis couldn't score runs.
Postscript
While it's easy to say that cost them the title, the reality is a bit more complex. The Dodgers were in first place when this all began, after all - and LA went 8-4 down the strech (including a three-game sweep of the punchless Redbirds).
More interestingly, it would be better to say this offensive shutdown didn't cause a flop as much as it prevented one of the greatest comebacks in MLB history. Immediately before this period, the Cards won a staggering 19 out of 20 games, in which they scored 120 runs in all.
They scored six or more runs in eight straight games - and the stretch ended when they plated "only" five runs on September 6. I don't have the time/inclination to look it up, but I'll tell ya right now teams almost never score six or more runs in eight straight games.
Before the stretch began, the Cards were 7 games behind the Dodgers with a month to play. LA actually won two-thirds of its remaining games - yet here I am talking about a possible St. Louis collapse?
Actually, let me finish by noting that St. Louis' death spiral began with LA's sweep of them. Imagine that series from the point of view of the Dodgers. They'd been playing well, but constantly losing ground to the hottest team since forever.
The Dodgers had to leave their comfy pitchers park to face the Baseball Freakin' Demi-Gods playing before the home crowd in the best hitters' park in the league. St. Louis has the most fearsomely effective offense in the league and it's been impaling pitchers with linedrives day-in, day-out for three week straight.
And the Dodgers came in the first pair of games held the Cards to one run on seven hits. (They won the last game 6-5). That friends is some mighty clutch pitching.
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