My Favorite Players: Dan Wilson

In the waning Kingdome years and the early days of Safeco Field, Lorri, my wonderful wife took an interest in the Mariners.  Yeah, she’s kind of a bandwagon fan, but she would follow the game closely, whether we were in the ballpark or watching on television. She loved Little Joey Cora, Junior, The Bone and the Big Unit.  But if you asked her who her favorite player was, it was always the same.

Dan Wilson, the Mariners catcher. Why?  He was just really good.  The best player in baseball.  The best catcher who ever played the game.  Dan Wilson should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Know-it-all me would snort and shake my head and have another beer.

It wasn’t until after Dan Wilson retired that I came to appreciate what a wonderful ballplayer he was.  Here is something to consider. Dan Wilson’s first year in the majors was 1992 with the Reds.  He came to the Mariners in a trade that sent Erik Hansen and Brett Boone to Cincinnati for Wilson and reliever Bobby Ayala in 1994, and he was the starting Mariner catcher until 2004, when he tried to retire, but came back for 11 games in 2005.  So, 16 years since Wilson retired.  How valuable was he to the team?  These are the players who were the starting catchers since Wilson’s farewell:

• 2005  Miguel Olivo
• 2006  Kenji Johjima
• 2007  Kenji Johjima
• 2008  Kenji Johjima
• 2009  Rob Johnson
• 2010  Adam Moore, Rob Johnson
• 2011  Miguel Olivo
• 2012  Miguel Olivo, Jesus Montero
• 2013  Mike Zunino, Kelly Shopach, Jesus Montero
• 2014  Mike Zunino
• 2015  Mike Zunino
• 2016  Chris Ianetta
• 2017  Mike Zunino
• 2018  Mike Zunino
• 2019  Omar Narvaez, Tom Murphy

So, over 16 seasons, the M’s called on ten players to fill the role Wilson held for 14 years.  It’s not that the other players didn’t have good years, or didn’t have some aspect of their game that was good, they simply didn’t provide the consistency that Wilson offered throughout his career. Note: In the case of Jesus Montero, all parts of his game were bad.

So how good was Dan Wilson.  Usually when I think of catchers and break down their numbers, there are three things I look for: how well do they handle a pitching staff; how good are they defensively, and finally how good are they at the plate?

Let’s start with the latter, because it’s the easiest to quantify.  Dan Wilson played at a boom time in offensive stats.  Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds were setting home run records-with a little bit of help.  Even Brady Anderson hit 50 dingers in 1996.  Everyone was doing it. Dan Wilson, not so much.  Catchers weren’t expected to hit a lot, but Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez were stand-outs.  Wilson hit a pedestrian .262/.302/.382 career slash, and 80 career OPS+. Not terrible numbers, but below major league average for the time he played.  However, these numbers were pretty consistent throughout his career. And there was that May 3rd game in the Kingdome in 1998:

One of Wilson’s 88 career homers.

So if Dan Wilson didn’t have a blistering offensive career, how did he handle pitchers?  This is the hardest to measure.  There are no stats for how Wilson juggled a staff that included Randy Johnson (both the good Randy and the bad Randy,) Jamie Moyer, Bobby Ayala, Norm Charlton and Kazuhiro Sasaki.

After he was acquired from the Reds, manager Lou Piniella immediately held Wilson responsible for the success of the pitching staff.  If Randy Johnson or Chris Bosio were getting hammered, it must be the pitches Wilson was calling.  As we all know, Piniella wasn’t shy about his opinions, especially about pitching. Wilson quickly became a student of scouting reports and preparing pitchers for games. In Michael Emmerich’s “100 Things Every Mariners Fan Should Know,” Piniella characterized him as “a caring catcher.”  Chris Bosio said “He calls a good game. He can adapt to pretty much anybody’s style.” It’s probably no accident that Randy Johnson and Dan Wilson went in to the Mariners Hall of Fame together in 2012.

Today there are all kinds of newfangled statistics to measure catcher’s defense.  Pitch framing, stolen base runs saved are two to be sure, but they started measuring these at the very end of Wilson’s career.  One way we can calculate things is to look at wild pitches and passed balls in a career.  Wilson was grew up a hockey player and played goalie and he used these to his advantage to keep balls from getting through him.  It’s important, because if a pitcher has confidence the catcher can block balls in the dirt, then he’ll throw that splitter that explodes at the bottom of the strike zone, or the curve in the dirt a batter may swing and miss. How good was Dan Wilson at keeping balls in front of him instead of through him?

Two numbers-passed balls and wild pitches.  For his career, that’s 1281 games and 10,362.2 innings, Wilson allowed 42 passed balls, those are physical mistakes he made. Wilson also allowed 318 wild pitches, those are bad pitches over, under and around him by the pitchers he caught.  I often think these all occurred in one really bad game the Big Unit was having.

Remember those numbers 42 and 318.  How do you compare.  Well, I started with Baseball Reference because they have career lists of everything, including career passed balls.  It starts with Pop Snyder  who played mostly in the American Association from 1873-91 with 763.  Remember, no fancy gloves or shin guards in those days, so Snyder probably also was on the career lists for most bruises. The list ends with Tom Dowse, 45.  Dowse played three seasons! To be clear, in 1997, a year in which Wilson caught all or part of 144 games, he had one passed ball. Let’s compare to some guys you might recognize.

• Johnny Bench     17 seasons               94 passed balls   446 wild pitches
• Cary Carter          19 seasons              84 passed balls    464 wild pitches
• Mike Piazza         15 seasons              102 passed balls  356 wild pitches
• Ivan Rodriguez   21 seasons              127 passed balls  830 wild pitches
• Jorge Posada        17 seasons              142 passed balls  501 wild pitches
• Yadier Molina      16 seasons               86 passed balls   476 wild pitches

To be fair, each of these catchers, the first four in the Hall of Fame, caught more innings than Wilson, Rodriguez over 20,000 innings. but the numbers still speak for themselves. It’s not that Johnny Bench was a bad defensive catcher, it’s that Wilson was just really good at this aspect of the game.

Just one more quick snapshot.  At the beginning I made a list of all the starting catchers the M’s had after Wilson’s retirement.  How good has Mariners catching been in just this area since Wilson’s retirement?

• Miguel Olivo                                                         2005    7 passed balls       28  wild pitches
• Kenji Johjima                                                        2006-8 22 passed balls   102 wild pitches
• Rob Johnson                                                          2009     9  passed balls     32 wild pitches
• Rob Johnson/Adam Moore                                 2010  16  passed balls    53 wild pitches
• Miguel Olivo                                                          2011  11  passed balls    59 wild pitches
• Miguel Olivo/Jesus Montero                               2012 15 passed balls      45 wild pitches
• Jesus Montero/Kelly Shoppach/Mike Zunino   2013  8  passed balls      52 wild pitches
• Mike Zunino                                                      2014-15 14 passed balls    110 wild pitches
• Chris Iannetta                                                         2016   6 passed balls      34 wild pitches
• Mike Zunino                                                      2017-18   20 passed balls    90 wild pitches
• Omar Narvaez/Tom Murphy                                2019   6 passed balls     75 wild pitches

So let’s just summarize and compare.

• Dan Wilson                                  14 seasons   42 passed balls         318 wild pitches
• All Mariner starting catchers  16 seasons   134 passed balls        680 wild pitches

Okay, one more defensive nugget. Baseball Reference lists fewest errors by a catcher.  The lowest number is 45.  That’s the number of errors made by Dan Wilson.  Except his name isn’t there, it’s J.C. Martin, a mostly part time catcher with a bunch of teams but notably the Miracle Mets in 1969.  His 45 errors occurred in 4553 innings or a little more than one third of Wilson’s. Dan the Man was good.

One final story.  I began by telling how much my wife loved Dan Wilson.  It seems this was not uncommon.  Married women loved Dan Wilson.  Larry Larue commented on this in his book, “Major League Tales.”  Wilson, self-effacing as always, shrugged this off. Lorri admired his work with adoptive children, smiled when Dan and his wife Annie were able to adopt Sofia from Bulgaria, and smiled even wider when Annie became pregnant.

One Christmas, I don’t know how many years ago, Wilson was signing Christmas ornaments and other bits for one of his favorite charities.  I decided Lorri needed to have one of these for the tree.  I drove up to University Village in Seattle, some 40 miles from my house.  I got in the surprisingly short line, as Wilson and Sofia, moved the line along.  When it was my turn I smiled and shook his hand, and told him how much my wife admired his play.  His only response was a weary “Really,” as though he’d heard it a thousand times before. maybe that day.

All statistics from FanGraphs and Baseball Reference.com

My favorite players: Mike Cameron

Note: on Monday the Athletic began sharing favorite players by all the columnists.  I thought it was a super idea and no way better to write something about baseball than talking about the guys you love.  I started writing this on Tuesday.  But I’m not a fast writer, and damned if Corey Brock didn’t post his favorite player, Mike Cameron on Wednesday.  So here is mine on Thursday. 

As the 1999 season wrapped up with the M’s out of the playoffs, the Mariner brass did what any major league front office would do, and that’s open negotiations with it’s franchise-best-ever-player for a contract extension.  But Ken Griffey, Jr. was having none of it.  After a year in which he hit 48 homers and slashed .285/.384/.576, good enough to place him 10th in MVP voting, Junior wanted out of Seattle.  He wanted to be closer to his home in Cincinnati.  When the M’s thought they had a deal with the Mets for the future Hall of Famer, Griffey, a 10-5 player,  nixed the idea, and demanded a trade to the Reds.

I was a Ken Griffey, Jr. fan. I saw his first home game, his first home run.  Still have the ticket stubs. I couldn’t believe he’d put my beloved Mariners in this position.  Not only did the best player in the world want to leave town, but he effectively put the M’s in an impossible quandry.  Keep an unhappy Junior until the end of 2000 and let him walk.  An unhappy Junior is definitely not something you want on your team.  Or trade Junior to the Reds, with the Cincinnati manager Jim Bowden holding all the cards. In the end, new general manger Pat Gillick negotiated a trade-and-sign deal that sent Griffey to Cincinnati in return for pitcher Brett Tomko, outfielder Mike Cameron, a highly rated shortstop prospect Antonio, and minor league pitcher Jake Wood.

The trade was widely regarded as a bust for the Mariners, forced on them by their departing superstar.  In reality, Junior’s departure to the Reds signaled a precipitous decline, his eight years in the Blue Chip City littered with injury and disappointment. By shedding his salary, Gillick was able to add free-agent talent to the team that shaped the 2001 Mariners including Brett Boone, Jeff Nelson, and Ichiro Suzuki.

Mike Cameron was the player who staked out Griffey’s center field pasture for his own room to roam for four years in Seattle. Cammie couldn’t be Junior, among the most popular athletes in the world. Jim Bowden called him “The Michael Jordan of baseball.”  Cameron never hit more than 30 home runs in a season.  He didn’t wear his hat backwards, though it always seemed curiously askew.  He didn’t have Junior’s movie star good-looks or his quick sense of humor.  And he didn’t have that swing, that beautiful swing, that rivals only Ted Williams as an icon of baseball at its most basic.

Though Cameron said he never felt the pressure to “be” Ken Griffey, Jr., one way to win a crowd over (remember, the Mariners were drawing nearly 3 million fans a year in 1999) is to give them something to talk about.  On April 7th, his fourth game at Safeco field, Cameron went over the center field wall to rob Derek Jeter of a home run, He had me at hello.

Cameron was a great center fielder, by the numbers, one of the best of all time. While Griffey, received the plaudits with winning ten Gold Gloves, the numbers suggest he was an average center fielder. In his 2011 book Wizardry on the best fielders of all time, Michael Humphries ranks Cameron second behind Andruw Jones from the contemporary era (note: pre-Mike Trout.) Brandon Warne in his 2012 farewell article for FanGraphs ranked Cameron as the eighth best defensive centerfielder of all time. What is clear from watching him play a shallow center field, is that he could take away a lot of base hits, while still making the big plays over his head.

While he couldn’t be a Ken Griffey, Jr. at the plate, Cameron was no slouch.  His OPS+ for his four years in Seattle was 108, 123, 109, and 108, with 100 being average. That’s adjusted for park and position. His wRC+ is likewise above average at 110, 120, 113, 110.  Yes, Cameron could absolutely strike out with the best of them, leading the league with 176 in 2002, but he could also hit the ball of the park and steal a base when it was needed.

He had his moments at the plate. Remember his homer off former Mariner Jeff Fassero in the 19th inning to beat the Red Sox 5-4 on August 1, 2000?

What about his four homer game against against the White Sox May 2, 2002?

And maybe the best part is that Cameron enjoyed it all so much.  He always played the game with a ton of energy and a huge smile that endeared him to fans and teammates.

I could never figure out why Bill Bavasi was in such a hurry to usher Cammie out of town after the 2003 season. Of course, I could never understand most of Bavasi’s moves.  He was followed in center field by Randy Winn, the ever injured Jeremy Reed, Willie Bloomquist, nice guys all, but never Cameron’s equal.  Until Franklin Gutierrez’s miracle season of 2009, they struggled to fill that position. It was hard to see him go when it was clear he really wanted to be in Seattle.

Cameron left to play for the Mets, signing a three year $19.5 million deal.  The following year the Mets brought in all-star center fielder Carlos Beltran, and moved Cameron to right. Both players were badly injured on August 11, 2005 when Beltran and Cameron collided while diving for a ball in no-man’s land. Beltran suffered a concussion.  Cameron also was concussed but also had multiple facial fractures.

Mike was traded to the Padres the following November, which meant he’d play the Mariners in interleague games.  Remember, they’re our rivals.  In his first game back during the 2006 season, Mike Cameron received a standing ovation.  I was thrilled to see him sign a minor league contract with the M’s for one day in 2012, so he could retire as a Mariner.  One of my favorites.