R.I.P. Tony Phillips
Tony Phillips passed away today, at the age of 56. Unlike some of the reporters sharing stories from their days covering him on Twitter — this one from Jeff Passan is great — I never had any interaction with him, and can’t share any personal stories in his memory. But what I can share is my memory of just how good Tony Phillips was at baseball.
Phillips really came into his own in 1990, when I was nine years old and getting seriously into baseball. And for the next decade, I must have watched Tony Phillips be the cause of my team losing on at least a half dozen occasions. He was never the other team’s best player, at least not according to the announcers, but he was one of those remarkably good role players that the good teams always seemed to have. And, with the benefit of some better ways of evaluating players these days, we can look back and say that Phillips just may have been his team’s best player on a number of occasions.
His peak ran about seven years, from 1990-1996. Here’s the position player leaderboard during that stretch.
That’s a who’s-who of the best players of the 1990s, and Phillips is square in the middle of that class. For that seven year period, he was essentially the equal of Craig Biggio. As J.J. Cooper put it:
RIP Tony Phillips. If you're too young to remember him, he was Ben Zobrist before there was Ben Zobrist.
— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) February 19, 2016
The comparison is apt, and if Phillips had played a couple of decades later, he’d be celebrated as one of the game’s most valuable players. While he wasn’t flashy, he didn’t hit a ton of home runs, and his positional versatility meant he was never considered an elite defender, his all-around game made Phillips a tremendous asset for his teams.
Rest in peace, Mr. Phillips.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I’m a Tiger fan. He was a favorite to watch. So competitive. RIP Tony.
He was the first guy I can recall thinking “wow, he does a lot of good things, walks a lot, can play anywhere, really cool player”.
As a Tiger fan, one of my all-time favorite players. Fond, fond memories of him in Tiger Stadium.
And such an odd peak. What could have been had he a 10-15 year peak instead and a little sooner in his career.
J.J. Cooper nailed it, he was Zobrist before Zobrist. One of my favorite players back in the day.
R.I.P.
as a yankees fan I remember hating seeing him come to the plate. The constant spitting during what was sure to be a 10 minute at bat, that was sure to end with him getting on base.
You nailed it…….that’s exactly what I remember most about ‘Tony the Tiger’, the constant spitting and adjusting of the batting gloves, while scanning the defense with a look like “what should I do here now”….. growing up a huge Detroit Tigers fan, he came to them right when the whole 1980’s thing was falling apart and all the stars of my youth like Sweet Lou and Tram were starting to getting old.
I’m not totally sure about this but I would love if someone could find out and post it but I would be shocked if Phillips didn’t lead all MLB players for most games ejected in Detroit especially it seemed in those later years (and I swear a few of those times happened real early in games like in the 1st inning). It was like he came out of the locker room with a football player’s mentality, I’ve never seen any MLB player like that before or after. Truly one of a kind!!!!
His rare versatility can be expressed countless ways, but my favorite came from Bill James in the Historical Abstract: “Tony Phillips in a spring training game when he was with the Tigers did something I wonder if anyone else has ever done. He played four positions in that game (RF, CF, 3B and 2B) and made brilliant defensive plays at all four positions. I certainly have never seen anyone else do that.”