Phillies History: Top Five Seasons by a Phillie According to WAR
The advent of wins above replacement allow us to take a look back on the best seasons for any player in a Phillies uniform. We’ll look at the best five seasons in Phillies history according to WAR.
The Phillies have played 131 seasons in their long, storied history. Numerous players have come and gone. Some were great; many were not.
For a majority of baseball’s life, there was never one, end-all, be-all statistic that could wrap up how good a player was in one nice little package. Batting average and OPS for hitters and ERA and win-loss records for pitchers were the main stats used to determine a player’s effectiveness. Even then, comparing how valuable a pitcher was compared to a hitter was near-impossible to do because there was no stat that could evenly compare the two.
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Wins above replacement has slowly but surely started to take over the baseball world in the last several years. Alex Remington of Yahoo!’s Big League Stew explains that WAR is “a single number that attempts to quantify a player’s worth by looking at his offense, defense (or pitching), defensive position, and the context of the year and league.” In many ways, it has done just that, helping to define the “valuable” in “Most Valuable Player”.
Fangraphs, with their extensive database of baseball statistics, has retroactively calculated the WAR for nearly every season in MLB history. I will use their version of WAR in these rankings.
No. 5: Pete Alexander’s 1917 Season
There was a three-way tie for the fifth-best Phillies season between Pete Alexander‘s 1917, Lenny Dykstra‘s 1990, and Mike Schmidt‘s 1980 season. I used Baseball Reference’s WAR to break the tie, with Alexander coming out on top. If you don’t like it, sue me.
Pitchers from the early 20th century have a distinct advantage in this form of list because WAR is a volume stat rather than being averaged out. Alexander appeared in 45 or more games and pitched more than 300 innings each season he was a Phillie (excluding his return to Philadelphia in his age-43 season).
Alexander posted nine wins above replacement in 1917 to lead all pitchers that year. He didn’t lead all players as Ty Cobb had 11.5 fWAR and Rogers Hornsby had 9.5 that same year. It wasn’t called the Golden Era of baseball for nothing.
Alexander dominated the leaderboards in 1917. He led the league with 30 wins, a 1.83 ERA, eight shutouts, 200 strikeouts, and a 3.57 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He did this all while appearing in 45 games – starting 44 – and hurling a league-leading 388 innings.
Despite his dominant performance on the mound, Alexander could not and did not receive the Most Valuable Player award that year because there simply wasn’t one. The first MVP award, the Chalmers Award, only lasted from 1911 to 1914, and the next MVP award wasn’t handed out until 1922. Alexander would have likely been one of the contenders, but Cobb or Hornsby would likely have beaten him out.
No. 4: Mike Schmidt’s 1977 Season
1977 was the second of three straight division crowns for the Phillies, and Mike Schmidt played no small part in winning the division. Schmidt led all players with 9.2 wins above replacement that year, as he was truly valuable both on offense and defense.
Schmidt brought the lumber in 1977, smacking 38 home runs and driving in 101 runs. He also came around to score 114 times, making the work easier for his teammates by stealing 15 bases. Across 154 games and 667 plate appearances, posted a .274/.393/.574.
Schmidt’s defense also helped raise his WAR. His fielding was worth 20 runs – two full wins – according to Fangraphs, posting a career-high 2.5 defensive wins above replacement according to Baseball Reference.
Schmidt won the Gold Glove and was an All-Star in 1977, but he finished tenth in NL MVP voting. He received just 14% of the total possible votes. The award went to Cincinnati’s George Foster, who hit 52 home runs and drove in 149 runs. He was worth 8.9 fWAR, so he certainly had a strong case for the award.
No. 3: Mike Schmidt’s 1974 Season
For as good as Schmidt was in 1977, it wasn’t even his best season according to Fangraphs. It was instead three years earlier when Schmidt was still just 24 years old. He was worth 9.4 fWAR that year as he played in all 162 games.
Prior to 1974, Schmidt did little to impress the Philly faithful. He played in just 13 games in 1972, then managed a meager .697 OPS the next year.
Schmidt first looked like the best third baseman in team history when 1974 rolled around, as he led the league with 36 home runs and a .546 slugging percentage. He also tallied 116 RBI, a .941 OPS, and 23 stolen bases.
That year was Schmidt’s second-most valuable defensive season with 2.4 dWAR. He did make 24 errors, which prevented him from winning a Gold Glove. Schmidt still made the All-Star team that year with ease.
Even though Schmidt led all players in WAR yet again, he finished sixth in MVP voting. Los Angeles’s Steve Garvey took home the award with a 80% share of the votes, but he was only worth 3.8 fWAR compared to Schmidt’s 9.4. It likely didn’t help that the Phillies finished 80-82 while the Dodgers won the NL pennant.
No. 2: Pete Alexander’s 1915 Season
Alexander’s 1917 season seems rather pedestrian when you compare it to his season two years earlier. He racked up 9.6 fWAR in 1915, besting any other pitcher by a full win.
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Alexander appeared in 49 games that year, making 42 starts. He topped the leaderboards in wins (31), ERA (1.22), complete games (36), shutouts (12), strikeouts (241), and strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.77). Alexander also led the league in WHIP (0.842), hits-per-nine innings (6.1), and strikeouts-per-nine (5.8). He also made three saves just for funsies.
Thanks in part to Alexander’s stellar pitching, the Phillies appeared in their first World Series in 1915. Unfortunately, they fell to Babe Ruth’s Red Sox and fans had to wait another 65 years for the first Phillies World Series win.
Once again, Alexander did lead all pitchers in fWAR, and once again Ty Cobb topped him in the overall rankings as he earned 9.8 fWAR in 1915. As mentioned earlier, the short-lived Chalmers ceased to exist in 1914, so we will never know who would have been picked as the more valuable player.
No. 1: Steve Carlton’s 1972 Season
The Phillies traded All-Star pitcher Rick Wise to the Cardinals in exchange for Steve Carlton in February of 1972. The swap seemed fair at the time as it involved two of the best pitchers in the game, but the deal looks incredibly lopsided in hindsight.
Carlton was utterly dominant in 1972. He led the league with 27 wins, a 1.97 ERA, 30 complete games, and 310 strikeouts. Carlton was the paradigm of a workhorse, starting 41 games as he tossed 346.1 innings. He was the unanimous Cy Young winner as he took home his first of four.
Carlton’s season just looks even better when you view it through the lens of WAR. He racked up 11.1 fWAR in 1972; the only season better was Pedro Martinez’s 1999 season where he had 11.6 fWAR. Overall, just eight pitchers since 1900 have had ten or more wins above replacement.
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Overall, Carlton ranks ninth among all pitchers in MLB history in fWAR. He is easily one of the best pitchers of all time, and he had the best season of any Phillie, and one of the best of any pitcher, across of MLB history.