Cesar Cedeno and the Spirit of Baseball
In a recent discussion about David Wright, the Primates were seeking comparable players. All manner of names were suggested: Frank Robinson, Bob Horner (Bob Horner?), Jim Ray Hart, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Keltner, Eddie Mathews, Cesar Cedeno… just all over the map.
“Russ,” a Baseball Think Factory poster, cut through some of the clutter and confusion with this comment:
At age 22, Jim Ray Hart had a 94/47 K/BB ratio and almost zero speed. The comparison is not even close … the Cedeno comparison was a lot closer, but then again Cedeno might be the most comprehensively screwed over player in HOF arguments. He played for a bad team most of his career, during an offensively depressed era, in a stadium that kept scoring to historically low levels (and even worse, in a division that had two of the other historically nasty stadiums). He had a very long peak period without any historically outstanding seasons. He had many skills but at no point was he the best player in the league at any single one of them. Every single bias that can go against someone getting into the HOF works against Cedeno.
I don’t know that Cedeno was a HOFer (I’m a small hall guy), but there were a lot of things that worked against his candidacy that he had very little control over.
I thought that this seemed a very reasonable thing for Russ to say. I also thought that it would be interesting, maybe even useful, to move Cedeno’s career from the 1970s and early 1980s to the late 1920s and the 1930s. This would give us lots of Hall of Famers to compare him to, and get Cedeno out of the low-offense era he played in.
It will also take him out of the Astrodome, and we will instead put him in … oh, let’s say we’ll put him on the Cardinals, who he also played for (briefly). We’ll put him in St. Louis, followed by stops in Cincinnati, Boston and Brooklyn. We will shift his career exactly 45 years back, so he would have started in St. Louis in 1925.
Coincidentally, that 1925 Cardinal ballclub really could have used a Cesar Cedeno in centerfield, since they split the center field position among a diverse group of kids and low-talent journeymen. One of those players, Taylor Douthit, took over the job in ’26 as the Cardinals won the World Series. I have no doubt that Cedeno would have certainly been as good a player as Douthit and the Cards would have won just as often with him in there.
Later on St. Louis had Pepper Martin and Ernie Orsatti in center field before finally coming up with Terry Moore, who finally displaces Cesar in 1937. In our imagined scenario, Cesar then moves to a very poor Cincinnati team that does gradually improve, and then finishes his career with the Braves and Dodgers.
I’ll resist the temptation to rename him “Cesare Cerone,” given the color-line implications a Dominican ballplayer would have created in that era. We will give Cesar 95% of his actual plate appearances and games in each season, to compensate for the shorter seasons, and adjust all the statistics to account for the different leagues and parks.
So without further ado, I give you Cesar Cedeno Between The Wars. Remember, this is a five-time Gold Glove centerfielder…
Cesar Cedeno, Inter-War Version, Park-Adjusted and League-Adjusted
Year Ag Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG
+----------------+---+----+----+----+---+--+---+----+---+--+---+---+-----+-----+-----
1925 19 STL NL 86 343 54 124 26 7 5 50 16 4 11 25 .362 .380 .522
1926 20 STL NL 153 578 106 175 49 11 6 101 20 9 21 48 .303 .325 .457
1927 21 STL NL 132 531 127 198 46 14 12 101 53 20 45 29 .373 .423 .580
1928 22 STL NL 132 496 99 177 41 4 16 81 48 13 36 38 .357 .406 .552
1929 23 STL NL 152 582 131 186 38 9 25 140 46 14 54 53 .320 .375 .545
1930 24 STL NL 124 480 142 171 43 6 17 96 30 10 49 30 .356 .418 .577
1931 25 STL NL 143 556 114 191 37 8 16 106 29 8 46 30 .344 .392 .525
1932 26 STL NL 134 517 109 162 45 11 10 84 26 6 34 27 .313 .362 .501
1933 27 STL NL 48 187 35 58 9 3 5 26 9 1 11 13 .310 .345 .471
1934 28 STL NL 125 457 72 137 33 5 5 68 11 5 50 33 .300 .364 .427
1935 29 STL NL 130 482 94 169 38 10 10 96 16 5 54 44 .351 .415 .533
1936 30 STL NL 78 296 54 89 21 0 4 43 4 2 20 20 .301 .340 .412
1937 31 CIN NL 131 472 53 139 34 2 5 59 6 4 38 27 .294 .348 .407
1938 32 CIN NL 93 320 40 75 16 0 5 39 4 3 28 30 .234 .296 .331
1939 33 CIN NL 105 360 63 104 25 3 6 49 6 1 23 31 .289 .328 .425
1940 34 TOT NL 105 285 39 84 15 1 6 51 6 3 21 25 .295 .345 .418
1941 35 BRO NL 35 75 6 19 2 1 0 7 0 0 7 7 .253 .310 .307
+----------------+---+----+----+----+---+--+---+----+---+--+---+---+-----+-----+-----
7017 2258 95 1197 108 510 .322 .371 .488
1906 1338 518 153 330 548
Would this proto-Cedeno already be in the Hall of Fame? It is, to my mind, very difficult to imagine circumstances in which he would not be a Hall of Famer, even with the real-life difficulties the real Cesar Cedeno went through. The fact that Inter-War Cedeno hit .322 for his career is in itself probably enough to get him in. The only man to hit .315 and play 1500 games who is not in the Hall of Fame is Babe Herman, who was one of the worst percentage players of his time. Cedeno, instead was viewed as one of the best outfielders and also a fine baserunners, and he was comfortably over both the .315 average and over 1500 games.
This Inter-War Cedeno also had the good fortune of playing for some very fine teams; his Cardinals teams won the pennant five times and the World Series three times, and would almost certainly have won seven pennants if they had had Cesar Cedeno in centerfield in 1927 and 1935. In addition, his Dodger team of 1941 for which he would have played sparingly won a pennant as well (mirroring the real Cedeno’s last hurrah with the 1985 pennant-winning Cardinals).
At times in the history of baseball, players have been stuck in situations where their skills, though considerable, can’t be effectively used by the teams they played on. As a consequence, such players are not remembered as the true greats that they are. Ironically, Cesar Cedeno doesn’t fit that pattern. His skills (outfield defense, good on-base skills, excellent basestealing) were a perfect match for the needs of his teams, and he was an extremely effective player.
Why ironic? Because Inter-War Cedeno’s skills don’t match up with his era as well. Inter-War Cedeno’s home run power and speed are mostly wasted in a singles-and-doubles game with big ballparks where line-drive hitters with .350 batting averages are in the ascendancy. Yet Inter-War Cedeno would have been remembered as an all-time great, while the memory of the real player is already slipping away from us.
Hopefully the growth in popularity of sabermetrics, as it enters the mainstream of baseball thinking, will enable more fans and more members of the press to appreciate the players they see on the field for what they can do, instead of what some columnist says about him, or whether he had 90 RBI or not. It is perhaps odd that a way of thinking in which numbers are so important can be the one to highlight a player’s true value behind the numbers.
A sabermetrician will look at Cesar Cedeno, and will see him utterly differently thanks to park and league adjustments and a willingness to cast aside language barriers, off-the-field problems, and preconceived notions of his “potential.” That sabermetrician will see a remarkable player who could beat you in innumerable ways. Cedeno could beat you with a single, a double, a home run. He could beat you by stealing a base, beat you by drawing a walk. He could beat you with his stellar outfield play too, with a catch or a throw.
Sabermetrics is often criticized for taking the spirit out of the game, by disregarding personalities and “intangibles” and focusing on data. But the data, as a record of what happened on the field, always takes us back to the things that happen between the white lines. The ballgames: that’s where the spirit of baseball truly resides.
Let there be no more neglected Cedenos!
The Real Cesar Cedeno
Year Ag Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG
+----------------+---+----+----+----+---+--+---+----+---+--+---+---+-----+-----+-----
1970 19 HOU NL 90 355 46 110 21 4 7 42 17 4 15 57 .310 .340 .451
1971 20 HOU NL 161 611 85 161 40 6 10 81 20 9 25 102 .264 .293 .398
1972 21 HOU NL 139 559 103 179 39 8 22 82 55 21 56 62 .320 .385 .537
1973 22 HOU NL 139 525 86 168 35 2 25 70 56 15 41 79 .320 .376 .537
1974 23 HOU NL 160 610 95 164 29 5 26 102 57 17 64 103 .269 .338 .461
1975 24 HOU NL 131 500 93 144 31 3 13 63 50 17 62 52 .288 .371 .440
1976 25 HOU NL 150 575 89 171 26 5 18 83 58 15 55 51 .297 .357 .454
1977 26 HOU NL 141 530 92 148 36 8 14 71 61 14 47 50 .279 .346 .457
1978 27 HOU NL 50 192 31 54 8 2 7 23 23 2 15 24 .281 .333 .453
1979 28 HOU NL 132 470 57 123 27 4 6 54 30 13 64 52 .262 .348 .374
1980 29 HOU NL 137 499 71 154 32 8 10 73 48 15 66 72 .309 .389 .465
1981 30 HOU NL 82 306 42 83 19 0 5 34 12 7 24 31 .271 .321 .382
1982 31 CIN NL 138 492 52 142 35 1 8 57 16 11 41 41 .289 .346 .413
1983 32 CIN NL 98 332 40 77 16 0 9 39 13 9 33 53 .232 .302 .361
1984 33 CIN NL 110 380 59 105 24 2 10 47 19 3 25 54 .276 .321 .429
1985 34 TOT NL 111 296 38 86 16 1 9 49 14 6 24 42 .291 .347 .443
1986 35 LAD NL 37 78 5 18 2 1 0 6 1 1 7 13 .231 .294 .282
+----------------+---+----+----+----+---+--+---+----+---+--+---+---+-----+-----+-----
17 Seasons 7310 2087 60 976 179 938 .285 .347 .443
2006 1084 436 199 550 664
References & Resources
The inspiration for today’s article came from “Russ” at Baseball Think Factory.
Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for much of the data used in compiling this piece as well as the “look and feel” of stat presentation.