Many Go; Few Understand

A former major leaguer, Kim Allen, read my W/K ratio piece the other day, and presented me with his 1981 Fleer baseball card to see what I thought. Normally, I don’t like doing things like this because I have to diplomatically say. “You sucked. What was your next career move?” The flip side of the coin is not pleasant either; if you tell a guy that he received the shaft, his bitterness often returns. With some trepidation, I looked at Allen’s card and saw:


Age Year Club      BA   G AB H 2b 3b HR SB BB SO
22 1975 Davenport .268  49 138 37 11 0 1 26 29 16
23 1976 Durango   .300  66 254 77 6 0 1 34 29 16
23 1976 Salinas   .308  39 120 37 9 0 0 19 25 17
24 1977 Salinas   .333  20 87  29 7 1 1 17 13 7
24 1977 Salt Lake .311 101 363 113 22 4 0 53 57 29
25 1978 Col/Roch  .288  68 208 60 11 2 2 25 48 17
25 1978 Salt Lake .217  15 46 10  3 1 0  4 8  6
26 1979 Maracaibo .311  32 119 37 4 2 0 15 -- --
27 1980 Spokane   .294 118 436 128 22 3 1 84 53 27
27 1980 Mariners  .235  23  51  12  3 0 0 10 8  3

The first thing that jumped out at me was his freakish W/K ratios 1.96. A W/K of 1.0 is excellent; 1.96 is almost beyond the pale. The second thing that stood out was the stolen base totals – 94 stolen bases in the 1980 season. The third thing was Allen’s lack of power – his Extra base Hit Rate was only 22%. Because of this lack of power, it would be easy to dismiss Allen’s numbers as those as a Punch and Judy (P&J) hitter. However, the numbers do not always tell us everything, which is why for the highest accuracy, visual reports must complement statistical analysis.

Because Allen’s W/K ratios were so freakish, I gave his stats more than a cursory look. Allen played college ball at the University of California Riverside, then signed with the Angels as an amateur free agent. Throughout the minors, Allen’s Hit Rate ([H-HR]/AB-HR-K) oddly remained consistently above 30%. Hitters without a great deal of extra base power usually see their hit rates drop significantly as they rise through the minors and face better pitching. Once the opposing team realizes the batter is a P&J, the hitter usually gets busted with fastball as the defenders adjust to take away the slap single.

However, Allen was a freak GB/line drive hitter who usually hit the ball very hard and used his speed to get on base. His incredible contact rates (over 91%) meant he put a great deal of ball in play that still found their way to be hits even after the defensive adjustment. How? Because Allen could rip the ball hard, outfielder could not play him too shallow, lest his screamer get by them for serious trouble considering Allen’s speed. Allen was a great bunter, and he used that skill to reach base. His bat speed allowed him to fight off fastballs, and his plate discipline allowed him to hold back on the slow stuff. The result was that Allen reached based 42% of the time through 1980, and once he was on base, he was terrorizing the basepaths.

Some of you might be saying, “J.P., we are talking about a guy whose minor league slugging% (.409) was lower than his minor league OBP (approx .425). You know damn well that is a serious red flag. It is the Alex Cole disease.”

Yes, it is a serious red flag because that usually means hit rates are going to drop as the walks drop. Using Alex Cole as an example, his Hit Rates had more skips and dips than a popcorn fart. Allen’s Hit Rates remained consistent, even as pitchers began changing their approach.

Would Allen have been a successful major leaguer? I don’t know – the numbers and visual scouting reports seem to indicate that he was a type of freak that could have experienced sustained success in the majors, but we can’t project for sure. Besides, there are plenty of other guys that had better numbers that were shafted, so we shouldn’t spend too much time lamenting Allen’s luck. However, we can learn a great deal about what was happening in the minors at the time in terms of career advancement from Allen’s anecdotal evidence. I will focus on that in Part II, The Human Element.

Yesterday, I examined the numbers of Kim Allen, a former player who fell between the cracks. While his “traditional numbers” like HRs, Slugging, etc. didn’t translate to major league success, his peripherals as well as visual scouting reports suggested that Allen could have been a contributor on a major league team. However, the sample sizes were often limited because Allen was constantly fighting for playing time, so we cannot say for certain what Allen might have become.

Allen’s statistical story isn’t exactly riveting drama. Yes, he had freakish W/K ratios and consistent Contact and Hit Rates, but the road to the majors is littered with guys who never made it to the show other than for a couple of call, even though they put up numbers that begged for them to get a chance in the majors. There is nothing novel in Allen’s statistical story; it is a tale that has been told many times with different names. However, when we look at the human element of Allen’s career, we see a story that is more than faceless numbers.

Allen had a very successful college career then was signed as an outfielder by the California Angels in 1975. The Angels didn’t feel that Allen’s arm was up to snuff to reach the majors as an outfielder, so in 1976, they began converting him to a second baseman. After hitting .308 in High A ball that year, Allen spent the winter in instructional leagues working on his defense at second base. Allen fully expected to move up to AA the following year. Unfortunately, the Angels called him into the office and told him he would start the 1977 campaign in High A ball again to master second base.

One thing of note that happened to Allen in A ball: the Angels found out that Allen had a black father. Up until that point, the Angels thought he was white. At the time, the Angels’ policy was that black players roomed only with black players. When the Angels found out, Allen’s father was black, they immediately switched his rooming assignment.

In spring camp, Allen found himself at DH and could read the writing on the wall: the Angels had no real plans for him and his career would probably be over very soon. He decided to play without abandon and enjoy every moment since it could be his last. He stole 17 bases in 20 games, then was called into the office. He feared the worst, but was shocked to learn that he was being promoted to AAA. His manager had strongly suggested to the Angels that Allen be promoted to AAA, skipping AA entirely, and the Angels listened. At 24 years of age, Allen found himself at AAA and back on track to the majors. He hit .311 in the PCL and stole another 53 bases while playing second base.

Things were looking bright for Allen except Bobby Grich was playing second for the Angels while Joe Rudi and Lyman Bostock were free agent signing blocking his way in the outfield. Back to AAA Allen went for the 1978 season, but his manager from the previous year, Jimy Williams was gone. His new manager had little use for Allen, and to complicate matters, the Angels were weak in the knees about a twentyone year old second baseman named Jimmy Anderson. Allen quickly found himself rotting on the bench.

The Angels sold Allen to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who put them in their lineup in AAA Columbus at second base. Allen did well at the plate and decently in the field, but irritated his coaches with what they called,  ”the inability to make instinctive plays.” On June 28th, Allen went four for four against Rochester, the Oriole’s AAA team. However, Allen failed to turn a routine double play when the advancing runner deked him by simply stopping in the basepaths. The Pirates cut him that night, citing they needed an experienced second baseman and promptly brought in a thirty seven year old journeyman. On June 30th, Rochester, still smarting from Allen’s 4-4 performance, signed him. Allen’s time in Rochester was turbulent as both Allen and management knew he was not part the Oriole’s long term plans.

The next spring, Allen was invited to camp, but was called into the Orioles’ office before the team broke camp to be told this was the end of the line. While Allen was receiving the bad news, the phone rang. Luis Aparicio, who was helping to start a new Venezuelan league, was on the line, looking for a base stealer. Allen jumped at the chance to continue to play and flew to South America. He did well there until he was injured, then shortly after that, the league folded.

Allen thought his career was over, but that winter, bumped into Maury Wills at the beach. Wills was coaching in the Mariners’ system and offered Allen a tryout the following season. Allen made the AAA, where he began making a large name for himself when he began challenging Joe DiMaggio’s PCL consecutive game hitting streak. Many of his teammates didn’t like the attention Allen was getting during his hitting streak. On a contact play, Allen suffered a back injury. Some of his teammates accused him a faking an injury, which is ludicrous as guys on hot streaks want to play, not sit. Allen played through the injury, which severely limited his speed. The hitting streak ended at thirty- five games when the opposing pitcher walked Allen during his last three plate appearances rather than yield a hit to allow the streak to continue.

When I asked Allen about his teammate’s reaction to his injury, Allen replied, “If you were black and got hurt, you were treated differently than a white player. Because you were black, it was assumed you were faking it. Even my manager, Rene Lacheman, called me in to read me the riot act.”

The player “faking the injury” went on to steal 84 bases in AAA that year, then ten more in the Major Leagues. The next year, Allen started the season in Seattle as a pinch runner, where he earned the nickname “Herb”, after Olympic sprinter Herb Washington who had been signed by the A’s a few years before. The Mariners soon realized they didn’t need the luxury of a pinch runner and sent Allen back to AA, where he was able to play while the big leaguers were on strike. He received another call up at the end of the season, but spent most of the time on the bench. The next spring, the Mariners informed him he should go to Japan to play baseball if he wanted to continue to play professionally, so Allen did just that for two years before he hung up his cleats for good and returned to college to finish his degree.

Allen now teaches English at an impoverished middle school in San Bernardino, California. He doesn’t have any regrets about his baseball career, as he feels it prepared him for his true calling, teaching. Many players’ careers are facsimiles of Allen’s, but most don’t have the same solid ending. For years, baseball fed Allen’s soul; now he is able to give back to young ones.

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