Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - What If... The 1994 Strike Never Occurred?

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Back out on the road in the Gem State, D.C. examines some players who were putting together some potentially historic seasons at the time the 1994 MLBPA strike caused the remainder of the season to be cancelled and tries to project if they would have achieved their milestone numbers or not. He also then looks at the effect the '94 strike had on the career numbers of some Hall of Famers and potential Hall of Famers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thank you for tuning in to Locked-on Mariners, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Here's your host, D.C. Lundberg. Thanks, J.M. I am, in fact, D.C. Lundberg, the Locked-on Network's King of the Road, continuing the Locked-on Mariner's party in the Panhandle. Today, recording on location in Priest River, Idaho. Yes, Priest River, Idaho today, ladies and gentlemen. We are, of course, part of the Locked-on podcast network. brought to you by Built Bar. Also, please remember to download, rate, and subscribe to Locked-on Mariners on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast,

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Back to frivolities today, in a sense, going back to look at some more what-ifs, not necessarily in Mariners history. This is going to more encompass baseball as a whole. I've mentioned briefly a few times on this program the 1994-95 player strike. I'm going to go look back at some players and play with some numbers and see what would have happened if the 1994 and 1995 seasons had been played to completion. In the first half of the show, I'm going to focus on some individual players in 1994 who were going after some milestones, and then later on we're going to look at 94 and 95 as a

whole to see what it would have done to some career numbers of some Hall of Famers and some not Hall of Famers. And I'm not really going to try to go into team performance and whatnot. It's kind of a little above my pay grade, and it's been done many times before. And about the World Series, I will just say, Vively Expos. The player I'm going to talk about first is the late Tony Gwyn, who was hitting 394 when the season was suspended and ultimately canceled. In his final 10 games of the season, Gwyn's batting average went from 385 to 394. That's a huge jump.

And over those 10 games, he hit 475. In his final 25 games, he hit 417. The season was called after the Padres had played 160. 17 games, with Gwyn playing 110 of those games, or 94%. The Padres had 45 games remaining on the schedule, and if Gwyn had played 94% of those, he would have appeared in 42 more games. I'll play with the numbers a few different ways to see if he could have it 400 as he was kind of gearing up to do.

First, I will simply take his final 42 games of the 1994 season and duplicate them to simulate what he may have done over the final 42 games if the strike had never happened. In those 42 games, he went to bat 161 times, those are only at bats, not played appearances, and accumulated 65 hits. In real life, he ended 1994 with 165 hits in 419 at bats. So, with these totals added to mimic an additional 42 games played, he would wind up with 230 hits in 580 at bats and a 397 batting average. Not quite 400, but still very impressive and better than the 394 average he wound up with. Of course, that's like saying that a chicken fried steak at Frank's diner is better than the pizza at Mamma Mia's.

Can't go wrong with either one. Just a little Spokane humor for y'all and a couple of plugs for some great local restaurants. Anyways, back to Gwynne. Next, I'll take his final 21 games, double those statistics to make 42, and add those to his real-life season total. In this situation, he would add 162 at bats and 70 hits, so now he has 235 hits in 581 at bats. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a batting average of 404. In addition, in 1993, 1993, 1995, and 1996, his batting average during the last couple months of each season were about 20 points higher than his season ending batting average. So he had a history of finishing strong during this time frame.

So he had a very legitimate chance to wind up with a batting average of 400 or better. There were a few players who were in pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home run race. record as well. Two of them played for the San Francisco Giants, Matt Williams and Barry Bonds, before his HGH days. We'll begin with Bonds. The Giants had played 115 games when the strike was called in August to end the season. To that point, Bonds had hit 37 home runs. I will do the simple thing first. I'll take those 37 home runs, divide that by the 115 games the Giants had played to find an average games per home run, and then multiply that by 162. The number we wind up with is 52.

If I do the same for Matt Williams, who had 43 in those 115 games, he winds up with 60 home runs, one short of Roger Maris. However, I will do a similar thing with these gentlemen than I did with Tony Gwynn. See what kind of pace they were on when the strike was called. First, Bonds. Of the Giants, 115 games, he played 112 of them, or 97%. And he had not missed a game since May. If he were to play in 97% of the Giants' remaining 47 games,

the math comes out to just over 45 and a half games, and I'll round that up to 46 for a couple of reasons. Over Bond's final 23 games, he hit 10 home runs. So if we double that to mimic 46 games, even I can do that math in my head, it's 20. If we add those 20 home runs to the 37 he hit in real life, he ends the season, with 57 home runs. Over the course of the final 46 games, though, he hit 22 home runs, but when added to his real-life total of 37, he ends up with 59, too short of tying the record.

So it would have been exciting, but he may have just fallen short. Barring injury, he would have come very close, though, so who knows. Now for the Gold Glove third baseman. Williams also played 112 of the Giants 115 games, so we will use the exact same methods for guessing about where his home run total would have wound up as we did for bonds. Over his final 23 games, he also hit 10 home runs. So to get to 46 games, that's an easy double to 20. He ended the real 94 season with 43 home runs.

And when that's added to 20 in this particular scenario, he winds up with 63 home runs, which beats Roger Maris's record by 2. Over the last 46 games, he hit 20, which is the exact same pace he was on. during his final 23 games, so that also means a total of 63 home runs. So again, it would have been very close, but who knows? There's one more player I will speak about who was on his way to trying to catch Maris when the 1994 season was called. And it's a Mariner.

Yes, the supremely talented Mariners outfielder Brian Tarang. No, no, no, no, no. Of course I'm talking about the one and only Ken Griffey Jr. He hit 40 home runs in 1994 after hitting 45 in 1993. The Mariners ended the 1994 season after playing 112 games, with Junior playing all but one of them. So there are 50 games missing at the end of the season. In junior's final 50 games in 94, he hit 14 home runs.

If he were to duplicate that over his next 50 games, he would have ended with 54. Over his final 25 games, he hit seven home runs. If we duplicate that twice to mimic the missing 50 games from the Mariner's schedule, you get the exact same total of 54. Remember in 1998, when he, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa were all chasing Maris once again, Junior was keeping pace for most of the season, but dropped off late and ended with 56. So it's not really unheard of for his power to betray him as the season wore down. We'll talk about some more players and focus on what the strike did to their career statistics.

in the second half of the show. But first, the Mariners trivia question. Talking about the 1994 season, the Mariners finished the truncated season with an 8-to-1 victory in Oakland to cap off a six-game winning streak. Who threw the final pitch of that year? Answer, following a word from Bilt Bar.

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He tossed a complete game, 8 to 1 victory in the Oakland Coliseum, and the final batter of the game, Ernie Young, struck out swinging against the big unit. The unit struck out 15 A's that day, scattered four hits, allowed a walk, and that lone run. More Locked-on Mariners from Priest River, Idaho, after the following.

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as the Locked-on Mariners party in the Panhandle continues. In the first half of the show, we looked at some individual players who were chasing some pretty major accomplishments in 1994, and what may have happened had the 94 season been played to completion. In the second half, we will look at what it did to some players' career statistics. First, we'll look at Tony Gwynn, simply because I'm curious, what his career batting average would have been? In his illustrious career, he went to bat 9,288 times and collected 3,141 hits for a 338 average. I will add the at-bat and hit total. I will add the at-bat and hit totals from the scenario where he would have hit 404 that we covered in the first half of the show

to his career numbers, and he winds up with a batting average of 340, two points higher than his real-life average. But I can hear you out there, even though I'm recording this on Tuesday. DC, you're forgetting about the 1995 season. It was also shortened. Oh, ye of little faith. For I have also taken this into account, the 1995 season was 144 games, 18 fewer than the regulation 162. So I'll take the first 18 games of his actual 1995 season and add those

to the beginning to mimic an extra 18 games. And in those 18 games, Gwen played all of them, had 69 at bats and 28 hits for a 404 batting average, which is the exact same average from the what-if scenario we're using right here. Anyways, if I add those 28 hits and 69 at bats to the total I got above after adding the make-believe end of the 1994 season, he still has a 340 average, 3,239 hits in 9,519 at bats. Today he ranks 21st on the all-time hit list, one hit behind Brewer's Great Robin Yount. If he would have ended with 3239 instead, he would move all the way up to number 15, four hits behind Naplajui. Next, I'll go to Harold Baines, and he has two strikes to contend with.

1981 is going to be interesting since that strike occurred in the middle of the season. His White Sox played a total of 106 games, so there are 56 games missing. I'm going to take the team's 28 games prior to the strike and the team's 28 games after the strike to mimic the 56 missing games in June, July, and August. Beginning with the 28 games preceding the strikes, Baines played 20, 26 of them accumulated 27 hits in 97 at bats. In the 28 games following the strike, Baines played 18, but it looks like he missed a week and a half due to injury.

So I'm going to add 10 more games to that to mimic Baines not getting injured in what would have been the strike. Baines will play 24 games and collect 25 hits in 81 at Bats. So if the 1981 strike never happened, I've given him 52 more hits in 1.1. 178 more at bats. He ended his career with 2,866 hits, so those 52 more give him 29-18. And now to deal with the 1994-95 strike. Baines' Orioles played 112 games in 1994, so there are 50 games to account for. Baines played in 94 of those 112 games, or about 84% of them.

84% of 50 is 42, so we'll say he played 42 more games. his final 42 games of the 1994 season. He went to bat 146 times and gathered 45 hits. That brings his career hit total to 2963 and raises his career batting average by one point. Now for the 18 games at the beginning of 1995. Still with Baltimore, in his first 18 games, he collected 16 hits in 57 at bats. That would bring his career hit total to 29, 79, 29 hits away from 3,000. I'm going to fudge the end of the 1994 season a little bit more, as I did with Gwynne, Bonds, Williams, and Griffey Jr. I'll take his final 21 games, double those numbers, and see what I get. So removing the make-believe end of the 1994 season I laid out above, but keeping the make-believe

middle of 1981 and beginning of 1995, he's got 2934, meaning he needs 66 hits to reach that 3,000 threshold. Let's see what happens. In those final 21 games of 1995, he went to bat 68 times and got 21 hits. Double that's only 42 hits in 136 at bats, giving him 2,976 hits, three fewer than the previous scenario. So either way he misses out. I had said for years now that if the two strikes never happened,

that Baines would have gotten 3,000 hits. I'm not quite sure that's the case anymore. He was very consistent, and he would have had to go on some sort of hot streak at some point during the missing games in 19, He comes close for sure, and either total I came up with moves him up from number 46 on the all-time hit list all the way to 34 just ahead of Hall of Famer Sam Crawford and behind Hall of Famers Sam Rice. That would also have given him more career hits than Frank Robinson, Willie Keeler, Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott, and Babe Ruth. All of them, no doubt, Hall of Famers.

Honestly, I've wanted to do that math for a long time, but I'm kind of disappointed that he doesn't get to 3,000 hits. Again, he comes close, though. I'm going to examine one more player before wrapping up for the day, Fred McGriff, not his all-time hit total, but his home run total. He has just the 1994 strike to contend with. His career concluded with 493 home runs. I'll look at his batting average just for laughs also.

He ended his career with a two-eastern, 84 batting average, the exact same batting average Ken Griffey Jr. wound up with, and 2,490 hits. His Atlanta Braves played 114 games in 94, leaving 48 of them unplayed. The crime dog appeared in all but one of his team games, and that was towards the end of the season. So let's say that he plays all remaining 48 games for the sake of using even numbers. I'll split two ways, just like I did with the others. First, simply take his final 48 games of 90s. and pretend those would be his stats for the remaining 48 games. In those games, he gathered 61 more hits and 179 at Bats, including 16 home runs.

So he's already over 500 home runs at this point, and we haven't even gotten to 1995 yet. He started all 18 games to begin 95, so we'll take those 18 games and have those mimic the missing 18 games at the beginning of the season. In 66 at Bats, he collected 16 hits, including four home runs. These phony 1994 and 1995 numbers added to his career numbers give him 513 career home runs, 2,567 hits, and his batting average goes up a whopping one point to 285. His current 493 home runs ties him with Lou Gehrig for 28th all time. But this fictitious 513 moves him up to 23rd, right ahead of Ernie Banks and Eddie Matthews, who both hit 512.

A head of the Crime Dog would have been Ted Williams, Willie McCovey, and Frank Thomas, who all hit 521. This is elite company. Well, gang, I had so much fun doing this, and there are more players I want to look at who were affected by the 94th strike, that I'm going to continue this on tomorrow's program,

as I find yet another city in the gem state in which to record. Please remember to download Raiden and subscribe to Lockdown Mariners on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, whichever podcasting app your brainhead can think of, follow the show on Twitter at L.O. underscore Mariners. Follow me on Twitter as well, if you would please. I'd appreciate it at D.C. underscore Lundberg. I hope you enjoyed today's program,

since tomorrow's will be more of the same. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, have a great day. And happy birthday, Jacqueline. This is Joey Martin, speaking for Locked-on Mariners, part of the Locked-on podcast network. Ask your smart device to play Locked-on fantasy baseball upon the conclusion of this program.