Mickey Mantle Awards Roll Call

 by JT 

Mickey Mantle's career honors and awards—

1974—Baseball Hall of Fame

1956—Associated Press Athlete of the Year Award

1956—Most Valuable Player Award (BBWAA)

1956—Sporting News Major League Player of the Year Award

1956—Sporting News Player of the Year Award

1956—Silver Bat Award (Bud Hillerich Award)

1957—Most Valuable Player Award (BBWAA)

1962—Gold Glove Award (American League Outfielder)

1962—Most Valuable Player Award (BBWAA)

1962—Sporting News Player of the Year Award

All-Star selections

1951—All-Rookie (TSN)

1952—All-MLB (TSN); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1953—MLB All-Star

1954—Second-team All-MLB (AP); MLB All-Star

1955—All-AL (UPI); Second-team All-MLB (AP); MLB All-Star

1956—All-MLB (AP, TSN); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1957—All-MLB (AP, TSN); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1958—All-MLB (AP); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1959—Second-team All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1960—Second-team All-MLB (TSN); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1961—All-MLB (AP, TSN); All-AL (UPI); MLB All-Star

1962—Second-team All-MLB (AP); All-AL (TSN); MLB All-Star

1963—MLB All-Star

1964—All-MLB (AP, UPI); All-AL (TSN); MLB All-Star

1965—MLB All-Star

1966—

1967—MLB All-Star

1968—MLB All-Star

Post-season honors: Mantle was an All-MLB pick six times, Second-team four times and All-American League nine times, and Second-team All-AL once. Note: 1954 there were no All-AL or All-NL teams.

In summary, Mantle got post-season honors in 11 of his 18 seasons, not counting the mid-season All-Star selections. 

MLB's Fastest Players in 1956

 By JT 

The Sporting News (TSN) would often post articles on baseball's fastest players out of the box to first base. A gentleman names Lou 'The Clocker" Miller apparently sat somewhere with a good vantage point from home to first and a stopwatch would time players and in 1952, then in 1956 published the times of MLB players. This is part of the 1956 article. 

Mickey Mantle tops the list, again showing no one has more speed than he did, though Bill White was a tenth of a second behind him from the left-side and Willie Mays was a tenth behind him from the right side. 

All the rest of the right-handers were two-tenths behind Mantle—Aparicio, Banks, Bauer, Clemente, and others.

The same is true for the next-in-line lefties, they were two-tenths behind Mantle at 3.5—Ashburn, Doby, and Virdon, etc.

In 1952 Mantle was even faster when he was 3.1 on bunts and 3.2 from the left side of the plate. Amazing. 

WIllie, Mickey and WAR

By JT

 Allen Barra is an excellent researcher and writer and I really enjoyed his book Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age. In my view, it was well researched and a great read.

However, to be honest, I had one problem with the book. In my view, it seemed to have a slight "Mickey Mantle is better" bias and it showed up in two ways. First, the term "Gold Glove" did not appear in the book. Mays won twelve and Mantle three. Second, in the two appendices, Barra used two baseball metrics that favored Mantle. One was Pete Palmer's player rating (TPR) and the other was Bill James's Win Shares (WS). There are other metrics, such as WAR and versions of it that are not so clear cut.

Thus, I've searched the Web and found all the metrics and put them into one chart so folks can take a look and make their own determination as to who have may have been better (if anyone really was).

Here are the various WAR with TPR and WS in a chart.
(click to enlarge)

With Plamer's total player rating, I added 2.5 to both to make the totals more similar to the WAR numbers, it could also be called TPR above average with 2.5 being average. I did the same for both players so this will still favor Mantle. Most analyses of the AL and NL in that era rated the average player higher in the NL than the Al due to better integration of the NL but I ignored that for TPR. Had a good analysis of what the average player in each league was, the 2.5 number I chose would be different. Perhaps 2.5 for NL and 2.2 for AL, for example.

With Bill James's Win Shares I divided it by 3.5 to make it come out to about the same as others so it would be weighted more evenly. Again, it still favors Mantle.

I also adjusted Mickey Mantle's 1963 to a full season, which helps him in the graphs down below, the 3-year, 4-year averages, etc.

You can click on links to go to the source for charts.

Key: TPR+2.5 Pete Palmer's version http://www.amazon.com/Total-Baseball-Official-Encyclopedia-League/dp/1930844018 WS ÷ 3.5 Bill James's version http://seamheads.com/baseballgauge/player.php?playerID=mayswi01 http://seamheads.com/baseballgauge/player.php?playerID=mantlmi01 BFW+3 retrosheet.org version http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/M/Pmaysw101.htm http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/M/Pmantm101.htm BR-WAR baseball-reference.com version http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mayswi01.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mantlmi01.shtml FG-WAR fangraphs.com version http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1008315&position=OF#advanced http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1008082&position=OF WARP baseballprospectus.com version http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=25672 http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=25475 BP-WAR baseballprojection.com version http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/m/maysw101.htm http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/m/mantm101.htm BG-WAR Baseballgauge version http://seamheads.com/baseballgauge/player.php?playerID=mantlmi01 http://seamheads.com/baseballgauge/player.php?playerID=mayswi01 DR-WARP Dan Rosenheck's version baseball think factory http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/discussion/willie_mays/P100 http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/discussion/ranking_the_hall_of_merit_center_fielders_discussion/P100 T-WAR My own version of WAR Uses Michael Humphrey's revolutionary new fielding statistic, called Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA)   DRA for defense, WPA/ LI for offense, and Smith's "holds" from Baseball refernce.com So, as you can see above there were peaks and valleys for both players. Here are some different averages for different periods of time. People can make up their own minds, as Coach TJ Troup, who saw both play, says, "Mantle was amazing power" and "Mays was sustained greatness". These charts show that those comments are true. (Click to enlarge)