Post by The Vermont Bombers on May 19, 2014 8:52:26 GMT -5
It’s easy to tell from watching the Washington Senators that they've felt lost for most of the 1957 season.
Somewhere along the way their entire season went careening off of the tracks and they never quite figured out how to salvage the wreck that it had become. Coming off of a 1956 season in which the team had won 79 games, improving on their 1955 mark by eight games, they were certainly not about to break into spontaneous gymnastics in the clubhouse. There were no illusions amongst them that they were a World Series contender and yet it seemed realistic at the time to expect an 85 win campaign from the team. Their rotation had been solid, fronted by Don Newcombe and Chuck Stobbs, and buffered by the additions of rookies Camilo Pascual and Mark Freeman, they looked to have as solid a four man rotation as the team had had in years. The organization showed that they obviously believed this when they inked Newcombe to a massive 5 year, 67.5 million dollar extension through 1960.
So what happened ?
In March and April the entire team stumbled out of the gate, led by a rotation that went 4-15, surrendering 79 earned runs in 151 innings pitched. Suffice it to say, it’s hard to win many games when your team’s starting five is getting hammered on an almost nightly basis. Watching Washington play was like watching “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on an endless loop. It was scary enough the first time through, but after the fifteenth viewing it was just painful.
Don Newcombe, Washington’s newly minted Ace, looked like he’d left his pitching arm at home so that his contract would always be close at hand. His 1-5, 5.32 ERA showing was far and away the most putrid out of a collection of putrid starts. With each passing terrible start, Newcombe looked more and more flustered. Of course no one could blame him for feeling this way, it was hard not to feel sympathy for his struggles. When April ended, Washington’s ace looked like he’d already thrown in the towel on the season. Unfortunately for him and for Washington that wouldn’t do. They both needed for him to be Warren Spahn.
Instead, he was more like Warren Harding.
And equally as forgettable.
He was hardly the only culprit. The normally reliable Chuck Stobbs was just as bad. Stobbs had put up solid numbers in 1956, winning 12 of his 36 starts (he lost 13) with a shiny 3.14 ERA. (Please, no “pi” jokes). He looked like a solid #2 in the making, and with a couple of steps forward, like a potential ace. Unfortunately for Stobbs, it didn’t carry over into the beginning of the 1957 season, and when he pitched well (which wasn’t often enough), his offense let him down. During the remainder of his starts he was just plain bad. Stobbs must have breathed a sigh of relief when April ended and he could put his 0-6 record and correspondingly ugly 4.84 ERA behind him. “Surely May will be better”; he had to be thinking.
Regrettably while he pitched in May like the starter everyone expected to see, carrying the rotation with an ERA of 1.92, his team could only manage to help him win two of his six starts. Stobbs was definitely better than his 2-8 record indicated. He also had a snazzy looking strikeout to walk stat of 36 to 11, a ratio of almost four to one. While May was good, June was not. His ERA for the month jumped back up over 4.00 and of his five decisions, he won two and lost three. His record after June 30th sat at 4-11. Just like the rest of his team, his effort and results were badly out of synch.
For Mark Freeman his lack of sharpness was more forgivable. This was his first full season in the Major Leagues and some growing pains were a reasonable expectation. That fact didn’t make his first month any easier to watch. His results were only slightly less of an eyesore than Stobbs’ had been. By the time March and April were over, Freeman had a 2-2 record with an ERA of 4.50. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch, but it wasn’t as ugly as Newk and Stobbs starts had been. If nothing else his 31 strikeouts in 36 innings were encouraging signs of a future strikeout pitcher. Regrettably for Freeman his sophomore slump only deepened, as he finished May with two wins and three losses and an ERA for the month of 5.27. This put his overall mark at 4-5 with an ERA well above 5.00. June and July would be ugly too, as he went 1-3, 5.23 in June and 2-2 with a 4.79 ERA in July. His overall record sat at 7-10 with an ERA well north of 5.00.
For the most part the Bullpen could not be blamed. Taking a bad May by rookie Harley Grossman out of the equation, the bullpen, led by the recently traded Sonny Dixon, was spectacular from March through May. The same could not be said of the offense. If one fairly considered the Starting Rotation to be brutal, than Washington’s offense could easily be described with one word.
Embarrassing.
Maybe everyone expected too much, too soon out of an offense that consists of a lot of young guys. Across the infield, the most experienced player on the diamond is Catcher Carl Sawatski. “Swats”, as his teammates call him, is in his 9th year in the League and is hitting like a veteran. First Baseman Bill “Moose” Skowron is in his fourth full year in the league. His power and RBI production are steadily improving, which is encouraging for the offensively anemic Senators. Conversely, the Bill Skowron who batted .281 last season is nowhere to be seen. In his place is the Skowron of old, sporting an unimpressive .230 batting average. Needless to say, Washington needs the .280 hitting Skowron if they’re going to have a chance at improving next season.
“Moose” isn’t the only player that has taken a step back this season. Both Shortstop Pete Runnels and Third Baseman Yo-Yo Davalillo have regressed so badly that they’d probably be riding the pine as reserves for most of the teams in the league. In Davalillo’s defense, this is only his second year in the league and he doesn’t have a lot of protection in the Washington lineup. As a result, Davalillo has been pressing, swinging at pitches that he didn’t swing at last year. This has caused his batting average to plummet down to nearly .200. There are encouraging signs for him, however. He barely ever strikes out, logging only 38 punch outs in 516 at bats this season and he steals bases. Davalillo currently has 24 stolen bases and could finish the season with almost 30. If Davalillo could put up the .280 to .300 batting average rates that he hit in the Minor Leagues, he could steal 40. Those are all encouraging signs for the future.
For now, it’s just a faint glimmer of hope for a season that has been lost since the end of May.
The team has taken steps to improve the team, acquiring Pitcher Joe Presko on July 15th of last year and Carl Furillo on July 30th of this year. Presko came with Relief Pitcher Ralph Beard and prospect Reliever Bob Blaylock. Presko has been dynamite since joining the Senators and is the team’s current leader in wins with 16, an ERA at 2.98, a WHIP of 1.17,he’s tied for third in strikeouts with 145, Quality Starts with 23 and Quality Start percentage with a rating of 74.2%. In order for the Senators to have any chance next year, Presko has to build on what has been a fantastic season. Beard must do the same and continue to be a trustworthy arm out of the bullpen if the Senators stand any chance of having a better 1958.
The addition of veteran Outfielder Carl “The Reading Rifle” Furillo could either go down as a smart acquisition or an unrequited failure, depending on how Furillo ages during this coming off season. Washington signed the veteran outfielder to a three year extension and in order for it to be at all valuable, they need to get at least one good season out of the veteran, preferably two. Although Washington needs for Furillo to be a potent middle order bat and protection for young up and coming slugger Harmon “Killer” Killebrew, they need him to be a team leader and a mentor to Killebrew even more. If Furillo ages significantly, the Senators will have badly invested 25.5 million dollars going forward and next season could be as painful to watch as this season has been.
The Senators have a big mountain to climb in 1958 and they can’t afford to get lost again.
To be fair it hasn’t been a lack of effort that has doomed this team. They team always plays hard, sometimes too hard and ends up making mental and physical mistakes that doom them to defeat. While it’s easy to see that this team doesn’t have the build of a powerhouse, it does have the build of a team that could win 85 next year. The team still has some substantial needs, amongst them a full time third baseman so that they could move Davallio to Second and the light hitting Earl Weaver to Short. Runnels is a decent player, but he’s not a good defensive Shortstop.
The Senators also need Don Newcombe to rediscover his immense talent and pitch like the arm that they’re paying him to be. Neither he nor the Senators can afford for him to have another season like this one. If he can rediscover the pitcher he’s been through September and October of this year, a stretch in which he posted a record of 3-1 with an ERA of 2.38, both he and the City of Washington will be a lot happier. He can’t go 10-20 with an ERA over 5.00 again. The same goes for Mark Freeman. He needs to take a large step forward in his sophomore season and improve on his 9-16, 4.83 season. Even if Freeman is the third or fourth starter, those numbers aren’t going to cut it. He needs to shave at least a run off of his ERA in order for the team to improve next season. He has the talent to, he just needs to relax and let it take over. No one is expecting or asking him to be an Ace. They don’t need that from him. He just has to be reliable.
In the long term the Senators are going to need to address a lot of issues and that can start next season with a good draft and a couple of good Free Agent signings. For now though, they need to stand back, consider the season as a whole and learn the hard lessons that it should teach them. If they can do that, while congratulating themselves for rebounding in the second half and making a somewhat tolerable season out of the mess that it had become, they will look like a completely different team in 1958.
They can’t afford to look lost again.
Somewhere along the way their entire season went careening off of the tracks and they never quite figured out how to salvage the wreck that it had become. Coming off of a 1956 season in which the team had won 79 games, improving on their 1955 mark by eight games, they were certainly not about to break into spontaneous gymnastics in the clubhouse. There were no illusions amongst them that they were a World Series contender and yet it seemed realistic at the time to expect an 85 win campaign from the team. Their rotation had been solid, fronted by Don Newcombe and Chuck Stobbs, and buffered by the additions of rookies Camilo Pascual and Mark Freeman, they looked to have as solid a four man rotation as the team had had in years. The organization showed that they obviously believed this when they inked Newcombe to a massive 5 year, 67.5 million dollar extension through 1960.
So what happened ?
In March and April the entire team stumbled out of the gate, led by a rotation that went 4-15, surrendering 79 earned runs in 151 innings pitched. Suffice it to say, it’s hard to win many games when your team’s starting five is getting hammered on an almost nightly basis. Watching Washington play was like watching “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on an endless loop. It was scary enough the first time through, but after the fifteenth viewing it was just painful.
Don Newcombe, Washington’s newly minted Ace, looked like he’d left his pitching arm at home so that his contract would always be close at hand. His 1-5, 5.32 ERA showing was far and away the most putrid out of a collection of putrid starts. With each passing terrible start, Newcombe looked more and more flustered. Of course no one could blame him for feeling this way, it was hard not to feel sympathy for his struggles. When April ended, Washington’s ace looked like he’d already thrown in the towel on the season. Unfortunately for him and for Washington that wouldn’t do. They both needed for him to be Warren Spahn.
Instead, he was more like Warren Harding.
And equally as forgettable.
He was hardly the only culprit. The normally reliable Chuck Stobbs was just as bad. Stobbs had put up solid numbers in 1956, winning 12 of his 36 starts (he lost 13) with a shiny 3.14 ERA. (Please, no “pi” jokes). He looked like a solid #2 in the making, and with a couple of steps forward, like a potential ace. Unfortunately for Stobbs, it didn’t carry over into the beginning of the 1957 season, and when he pitched well (which wasn’t often enough), his offense let him down. During the remainder of his starts he was just plain bad. Stobbs must have breathed a sigh of relief when April ended and he could put his 0-6 record and correspondingly ugly 4.84 ERA behind him. “Surely May will be better”; he had to be thinking.
Regrettably while he pitched in May like the starter everyone expected to see, carrying the rotation with an ERA of 1.92, his team could only manage to help him win two of his six starts. Stobbs was definitely better than his 2-8 record indicated. He also had a snazzy looking strikeout to walk stat of 36 to 11, a ratio of almost four to one. While May was good, June was not. His ERA for the month jumped back up over 4.00 and of his five decisions, he won two and lost three. His record after June 30th sat at 4-11. Just like the rest of his team, his effort and results were badly out of synch.
For Mark Freeman his lack of sharpness was more forgivable. This was his first full season in the Major Leagues and some growing pains were a reasonable expectation. That fact didn’t make his first month any easier to watch. His results were only slightly less of an eyesore than Stobbs’ had been. By the time March and April were over, Freeman had a 2-2 record with an ERA of 4.50. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch, but it wasn’t as ugly as Newk and Stobbs starts had been. If nothing else his 31 strikeouts in 36 innings were encouraging signs of a future strikeout pitcher. Regrettably for Freeman his sophomore slump only deepened, as he finished May with two wins and three losses and an ERA for the month of 5.27. This put his overall mark at 4-5 with an ERA well above 5.00. June and July would be ugly too, as he went 1-3, 5.23 in June and 2-2 with a 4.79 ERA in July. His overall record sat at 7-10 with an ERA well north of 5.00.
For the most part the Bullpen could not be blamed. Taking a bad May by rookie Harley Grossman out of the equation, the bullpen, led by the recently traded Sonny Dixon, was spectacular from March through May. The same could not be said of the offense. If one fairly considered the Starting Rotation to be brutal, than Washington’s offense could easily be described with one word.
Embarrassing.
Maybe everyone expected too much, too soon out of an offense that consists of a lot of young guys. Across the infield, the most experienced player on the diamond is Catcher Carl Sawatski. “Swats”, as his teammates call him, is in his 9th year in the League and is hitting like a veteran. First Baseman Bill “Moose” Skowron is in his fourth full year in the league. His power and RBI production are steadily improving, which is encouraging for the offensively anemic Senators. Conversely, the Bill Skowron who batted .281 last season is nowhere to be seen. In his place is the Skowron of old, sporting an unimpressive .230 batting average. Needless to say, Washington needs the .280 hitting Skowron if they’re going to have a chance at improving next season.
“Moose” isn’t the only player that has taken a step back this season. Both Shortstop Pete Runnels and Third Baseman Yo-Yo Davalillo have regressed so badly that they’d probably be riding the pine as reserves for most of the teams in the league. In Davalillo’s defense, this is only his second year in the league and he doesn’t have a lot of protection in the Washington lineup. As a result, Davalillo has been pressing, swinging at pitches that he didn’t swing at last year. This has caused his batting average to plummet down to nearly .200. There are encouraging signs for him, however. He barely ever strikes out, logging only 38 punch outs in 516 at bats this season and he steals bases. Davalillo currently has 24 stolen bases and could finish the season with almost 30. If Davalillo could put up the .280 to .300 batting average rates that he hit in the Minor Leagues, he could steal 40. Those are all encouraging signs for the future.
For now, it’s just a faint glimmer of hope for a season that has been lost since the end of May.
The team has taken steps to improve the team, acquiring Pitcher Joe Presko on July 15th of last year and Carl Furillo on July 30th of this year. Presko came with Relief Pitcher Ralph Beard and prospect Reliever Bob Blaylock. Presko has been dynamite since joining the Senators and is the team’s current leader in wins with 16, an ERA at 2.98, a WHIP of 1.17,he’s tied for third in strikeouts with 145, Quality Starts with 23 and Quality Start percentage with a rating of 74.2%. In order for the Senators to have any chance next year, Presko has to build on what has been a fantastic season. Beard must do the same and continue to be a trustworthy arm out of the bullpen if the Senators stand any chance of having a better 1958.
The addition of veteran Outfielder Carl “The Reading Rifle” Furillo could either go down as a smart acquisition or an unrequited failure, depending on how Furillo ages during this coming off season. Washington signed the veteran outfielder to a three year extension and in order for it to be at all valuable, they need to get at least one good season out of the veteran, preferably two. Although Washington needs for Furillo to be a potent middle order bat and protection for young up and coming slugger Harmon “Killer” Killebrew, they need him to be a team leader and a mentor to Killebrew even more. If Furillo ages significantly, the Senators will have badly invested 25.5 million dollars going forward and next season could be as painful to watch as this season has been.
The Senators have a big mountain to climb in 1958 and they can’t afford to get lost again.
To be fair it hasn’t been a lack of effort that has doomed this team. They team always plays hard, sometimes too hard and ends up making mental and physical mistakes that doom them to defeat. While it’s easy to see that this team doesn’t have the build of a powerhouse, it does have the build of a team that could win 85 next year. The team still has some substantial needs, amongst them a full time third baseman so that they could move Davallio to Second and the light hitting Earl Weaver to Short. Runnels is a decent player, but he’s not a good defensive Shortstop.
The Senators also need Don Newcombe to rediscover his immense talent and pitch like the arm that they’re paying him to be. Neither he nor the Senators can afford for him to have another season like this one. If he can rediscover the pitcher he’s been through September and October of this year, a stretch in which he posted a record of 3-1 with an ERA of 2.38, both he and the City of Washington will be a lot happier. He can’t go 10-20 with an ERA over 5.00 again. The same goes for Mark Freeman. He needs to take a large step forward in his sophomore season and improve on his 9-16, 4.83 season. Even if Freeman is the third or fourth starter, those numbers aren’t going to cut it. He needs to shave at least a run off of his ERA in order for the team to improve next season. He has the talent to, he just needs to relax and let it take over. No one is expecting or asking him to be an Ace. They don’t need that from him. He just has to be reliable.
In the long term the Senators are going to need to address a lot of issues and that can start next season with a good draft and a couple of good Free Agent signings. For now though, they need to stand back, consider the season as a whole and learn the hard lessons that it should teach them. If they can do that, while congratulating themselves for rebounding in the second half and making a somewhat tolerable season out of the mess that it had become, they will look like a completely different team in 1958.
They can’t afford to look lost again.
