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Originally posted by OldGiants
No! No! No! Exactly the opposite. I said keep him out because his teammates were very good and his team still couldn't win with him in the lineup.
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Gotcha. He did lead the team in OPS 4 times tho.
If you want to know, in all seriousness, why the Cubs didn't win in the 60's (actually the last several years of Santo's career they had winning records, but I digress) take a look at the team runs allowed:
1960 - 4.97 last
1961 - 5.13 2nd last
1962 - 5.10 2nd last
1963 - 3.57 2nd (Cubs have a winning record)
1964 - 4.47 3rd last
1965 - 4.41 4th last
1966 - 4.99 last
1967 - 3.85 4th last (Cubs lead the league in runs scored and end up having a winning record anyway)
1968 - 3.75 2nd last (Cubs finish 2nd in runs scored and end up with a winning record anyway)
1969 - 3.75 5th (Cubs win 92 games)
Now if a team with Fergie eating up 300 innings a year is doing that badly in the runs allowed department, I think you can figure out quickly why this team never won anything. In 1966, when they went 59 and 103, their rotation consisted of Dick Elllsworth, Ken Holtzman, Bill Hands, Ernie Broglio, and a 37 year old Curt Simmons.
Despite Santo hitting .312/.412/.538 and winning a gold glove, the team finished last in runs allowed and also hit just .254/.310/.380. You can look through every other year of his career and see a similar discrepancy between Santo's performance and that of his team.
I'm not saying you're wrong when you say that he had some good teammates (Williams and Fergie were both fine players, and Ernie could hit homeruns if nothing else) but I can't see any evidence that he played on a good team, even in the years when the Cubs had winning records.
From 1962 to 1969 Santo was the best all around third baseman in baseball. In 70 and 71 he slipped a bit (to about 3rd best) but in 72 he again had the best season of any third baseman. In 73 some guy named Schmidt came along and Santo was pretty much done.
To put the icing on the cake, as it were, Win Shares rates him as a better defensive third baseman than Robinson in 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1971.
Jason