The Major League Baseball Players Association has its offices on the 24th floor of a gleaming glass skyscraper at 12 E. 49th Street, in the heart of midtown Manhattan, just around the corner from the Commissioner’s offices on bustling Park Avenue. Spend some time lingering outside the Association’s steel-columned steps, and you’re likely as not to see just the folks you expect to see heading in and out of the building: old labor hands raised on tales tall and short of Marvin Miller’s legendary two decades as union boss, hard-bitten union attorneys trained in every detail of employee-side labor law brought on board during the Don Fehr era, and maybe even a few folks who joined the Association during Michael Weiner’s tragically short tenure at the top of the org chart.

What you won’t see, though, is much sign of Tony Clark’s signature hires as executive director of the Association. That’s because they’re at the ballpark.

The Association has always heavily involved players in its governance, of course — it is, after all, their union — but generally speaking only through the old player-representative/executive-subcommittee structure established in the 1960s, and not in the form of retired players actually on staff. Marvin Miller came from steel organizing, and the resumes of staff at the Association have, until recently, been populated heavily by previous work in the world of organized labor — folks coming out of the National Labor Relations Board or from other unions — and not necessarily work in baseball itself. Only in the waning days of Weiner’s leadership (with Clark as his deputy) did the Association really begin to seek out and hire former players to help advance and shape its work.

That process has accelerated significantly under Clark’s directorship. He is himself a former player, of course. If you glance around pretty much any spring-training camp these days — and a fair number of regular-season clubhouses besides — you may well see a broad-chested baseball man there off to the side, perhaps graying at the temples a little, taking some 23-year-old kid under his wing and teaching him the ways of the union. Bobby Bonilla. José Cruz. Steve Rogers. Javier Vázquez for international work. Phil Bradley, Jeffrey Hammonds, and Mike Myers, too. These are the men Clark has tasked with serving as the Association’s primary faces on the field, and its principal communicators with and to a membership that seems increasingly to have reason to be restive.

“They act kind of like a field organizer would in a typical union,” said a Players Association spokesman who declined to be named for this story. “Their job is to stay close in contact with all the guys on the 25-man roster [of the teams to which they’re assigned], and keep a constant communication going with them.” That’s an especially critical task for this union at this moment, because unlike most labor unions, this one doesn’t have a single factory floor or break room upon which to fall back as a natural meeting ground or organizing space. It just has its members, scattered far and wide at ballparks around the country. That presents obvious logistical difficulties.

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12:11

Kiley McDaniel: and in case you don’t follow me on twitter, here’s a Nick Gordon homer from last night   Kiley McDaniel @kileymcd   Doubled up prep RHP Cole Wilcox with a Double-A game in Chattanooga last night. Here’s FG’s 77th best prospect Twin… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 18 Apr 2018

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If you were to examine the relationship between the matters about which fans most complain and the relevance of those matters to actual wins and losses, you’d likely find that lineup construction produces the weakest correlation. Who starts and who sits matters a lot. Bullpen management can make a real difference on a club’s record. Generally, though, the precise location of a hitter in the batting order doesn’t amount to much.

Take the Cubs as an example. Chicago’s leadoff hitters batted .246/.324/.422 with a 94 wRC+ last year, which isn’t ideal production from one of the most important spots in the lineup. The team still managed to average more than five runs per game, though — and even if they completely optimized their lineup, it likely wouldn’t have netted the team much more than 10 extra runs over the entire course of the season.

Now, 10 runs isn’t nothing: over the course of the year, a close playoff race might turn on that margin. And while the Cubs might have left runs on the table, this actually probably isn’t a case where the manager — in this case, Joe Maddon — is actually to blame. Finding a leadoff hitter for the Cubs has proven to be a difficult proposition. Consider how the team performed last season by batting-order spot.

Kris Bryant mostly batted second, Anthony Rizzo mostly batted third, followed by a mix of cleanup hitters including Willson Contreras, Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, and a few others. Everywhere else, the Cubs were mostly average, especially if one regards the eighth and ninth spots as one given Maddon’s habit of sometimes batting the pitcher eighth.

Such a disparity between the leadoff spot and hitters two through four is actually pretty common. MLB teams recorded a collective 99 wRC+ out of the leadoff spot last year while producing a 112 wRC+ in the next three spots. If suboptimal, it’s also not unusual. A year ago, we were discussing a new type of leadoff hitter in the Kyle Schwarber mold, but it didn’t really hold. It especially didn’t hold for Schwarber, who started slowly.

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This is Shakeia Taylor’s third piece as part of her April Residency at FanGraphs. Shakeia is an avid baseball fan and baseball history enthusiast. Her main interests include the Negro Leagues and women in baseball. She has written for The Hardball Times and Complex. She hosts an annual charity bartending fundraiser for Jackie Robinson Day, all of tips and raffle proceeds of which are donated to the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Though not from Baltimore, she’s still an Elite Giant. Shakeia can also be found on Twitter (@curlyfro). She’ll be contributing here this month.

Larry Doby entered the league 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson’s debut, making him the second Black player in Major League Baseball. Ever. The second person to do something is often forgotten. This past weekend, MLB’s 30 teams celebrated Jackie Robinson Day, marking Robinson’s debut in 1947. No such day is designated to celebrate Doby’s career. Indeed, Doby’s legacy has often been overshadowed by Jackie’s, but it is one that deserves to be remembered on its own.

Lawrence Eugene Doby was born on December 13th in Camden, South Carolina. As is common for many born in that time, it is unclear precisely in what year he was born, 1923 or 1924. His birthday is listed differently depending on the source. In what this writer would like to think was the universe acting on his behalf, Larry’s father, David, met his future wife, Etta, while playing baseball on the street in front of her home. During his early years, Doby spent much of his time with his grandmother due to his parents’ marital issues. When Larry was eight years old, his father died. Four years later, Etta and her young son moved to Paterson, New Jersey.

In Paterson, Doby was a multi-sport athlete, achieving success in baseball, basketball, football, and track. He even played baseball for the Smart Sets, a Black semi-pro team, during summer breaks from school. As a senior in high school, he accepted a basketball scholarship at Long Island University-Brooklyn. But before he enrolled, at age 17, he joined Abe and Effa Manley’s Newark Eagles.

Many speculated during his Negro Leagues career that it would possibly be Doby, and not Jackie, who would break the color barrier. Jackie bested him by three months, but Doby circumvented the minor leagues entirely. Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck finalized a deal for Doby with Effa Manley, the Eagles’ business manager, on July 3, 1947. He paid her a total of $15,000 — $10,000 for taking him from the Eagles and another $5,000 once it was determined he would stay with Cleveland for at least 30 days.

Doby was regarded as “a Negro good enough to play major league ball,” writes Dr. Louis Moore in an article titled “Doby Does It! Larry Doby, Race, and American Democracy in Post World-War II America” from the Journal of Sport History. On July 5, with Cleveland on the road in Chicago, he made his debut against the White Sox in the first game of a doubleheader. In his only at-bat of the game, he struck out. Though he started the second game of the double-header, he would not start another the rest of the season. While good play is no guard against a determined racist — Robinson enjoyed a successful debut and still received terrible treatment from fans and players — Doby’s struggles brought out white opposition. Like Jackie, Doby wasn’t allowed to stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants as his team. He was subjected to racial slurs from fans, opposing players, and even teammates. He was called “coon,” “jigaboo,” and “nigger.” Opposing players would spit in his face when he slid into second base.

Moore notes that,

[b]y the end of the year, his batting average dipped to a dismal .156, and many white fans claimed Doby did not have the goods. For whites, he became a symbol of the limitations of economic integration in post-World War II America. In other words, Doby took work away from a white man.

By all accounts, including his own, Doby took the racism he faced and channeled it into aggression on the field. He admitted that sometimes that aggression meant he swung too hard and missed a pitch. Despite his place in history, Doby felt lonely and isolated. “There’s something in the Bible that says you should forgive and forget,” Doby told the New York Post in 1999. “Well, you might forgive. But boy, it is tough to forget.” However, he was undeterred.

Doby went on to have a successful major-league career. In attempt to make Doby more comfortable in his second season, Veeck removed five players from the team who had been “discourteous” to him. Doby played the outfield full time and batted .301, becoming a major contributor to Cleveland’s pennant victory. He was the first African-American to hit a home run in the World Series, a series that Cleveland went on to win. Doby ultimately became a seven-time All-Star and put together five 100-RBI and eight 20-home-run seasons. In 1978, the same man who gave him his shot as a player in the major leagues hired him to manage his Chicago White Sox, making Doby just the second African-American manager in major-league history.

Doby recalled in a 1997 New York Times interview:

When Mr. Veeck signed me, he sat me down and told me some of the do’s and don’ts. He said, ‘Lawrence’ — he’s the only person who called me Lawrence — ‘you are going to be part of history.’ Part of history? I had no notions about that. I just wanted to play baseball. I mean, I was young. I didn’t quite realize then what all this meant. I saw it simply as an opportunity to get ahead. Mr. Veeck told me: ‘No arguing with umpires, don’t even turn around at a bad call at the plate, and no dissertations with opposing players; either of those might start a race riot. No associating with female Caucasians’ — not that I was going to. And he said remember to act in a way that you know people are watching you. And this was something that both Jack and I took seriously. We knew that if we didn’t succeed, it might hinder opportunities for other Afro-Americans.”

In the summer of 2014, Cleveland unveiled a statue of Jim Thome before one was erected for Larry Doby. It was an act many Cleveland fans — and some baseball fans outside of Ohio — viewed as an injustice, not because Thome is undeserving, but because Doby’s should’ve come first. According to Moore, Doby was not just a symbol of hope for Clevelanders, or a good player, but a “reflection of the struggle for economic opportunities.” Black Cleveland residents were fighting for the passage of a Fair Employment Practice Committee law at the same time Doby joined the local ball club.

The FEPC was created after World War II by executive order. It was meant to be an organization in charge of ensuring that private companies that received government contracts for military work did not discriminate on the basis of color. But companies that failed to comply received relatively light penalties that only applied to military spending. Cleveland’s Black population had grown tremendously after the Second Great Migration, and the fight there centered around a desire for more FEPC legislation at federal, state, and local levels. After Doby was signed, local legislators agreed to support FEPC legislation and sent a letter to Veeck for his acquisition of the young outfielder. One could say Doby helped advance with the progress of civil rights in Cleveland both on and off the field.

An unsigned editorial that ran on page 14 of the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Friday, July 4, 1947 titled, “Pulling for Larry Doby” read:

President Bill Veeck of the Cleveland Indians made news again yesterday by buying the clever infielder, Larry Doby, from the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League. Veeck is the first American League owner to sign a Negro player. The Brooklyn Dodgers established the precedent by bringing up Jackie Robinson this year from Montreal. Manager Lou Boudreau, we believe, expressed the sentiments of Cleveland fans by saying that “creed, race or color are not factors in baseball success — ability and character are the only things that count. Negroes have risen to stardom in the other sports. If given the opportunity they will do so in baseball. Veeck deserves to be congratulated. The fans will be pulling for Larry Doby to make good.

“He said he never got booed in Cleveland,” Larry Doby Jr. told an interviewer. Not only was Cleveland important to Larry, but Larry was, and is, important to Cleveland.

Robinson broke the color barrier alone, but men like Doby joined the fight for acceptance and respect, and a place for those who would follow them. No telling of baseball’s story is complete until legacies like his are remembered. Larry Doby died of cancer in Montclair, New Jersey, on June 18, 2003. Despite being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, he still doesn’t get the credit he deserves. “Jack and I had very similar experiences,” Doby told the Times in 1997. “And I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want people to remember my participation.” It is essential to the health of major-league Baseball, even today, that we honor Doby’s wish.

It’s still a little early in the process to reach any firm conclusions, but with the field beginning to take shape, now seems like an appropriate time to update our preseason draft rankings. This list came together after speaking with dozens of scouts over the last few months and seeing most of the players ourselves either last summer or this spring. We went as deep as we felt was appropriate given the information on hand. In this case, that ended up being 55 players — or, most of the draft’s top two rounds. We’ve noted the prep players whom we’ve heard will be a challenge to sign (Adams, Banfield, Denaburg, Hoglund, Kloffenstein, Rocker, Thomas, and Wilcox), although typically, with players ranked this high, all but one or two of will end up reaching an agreement with a club.

We will publish an early mock draft later this week with some player/team connections we’ve been hearing, but it won’t be the whole first round since most teams in the top 10 are still unsure of who will be on the board or what their asking prices will be. In a hard-slotted, bonus-dependent world, these prices dictate most of the first round and almost all of the picks outside of the top ten.

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A favorite question of the baseball audience is, when does a small sample start to have meaning? There are a few general rules of thumb, but in large part it’s still a question, I think, because there is no perfect answer. It can be a gut thing, or it can be a matter of magnitude. I don’t care if a batter starts out 6-for-10 with three home runs. I’d care a lot more if a batter were to start out 8-for-10 with six home runs. Some performances over small samples are so very good — or so very bad — that there almost has to be signal. Even over a short amount of time, it’s hard for a player to fluke his way into the extremes.

Over the winter, the Rockies invested heavily in their bullpen. You could argue they invested *too* heavily, but, well, this is the bullpen era, and you’d figure the Rockies, of all teams, might need to keep theirs both deep and refreshed. It’s a bullpen with plenty of interesting arms, but the most important reliever might be Adam Ottavino. In the past, Ottavino has been genuinely dominant. Last season, he came off the rails, with a walk rate of 16%. With a bad Ottavino, the Colorado bullpen might not be a strength. With a good Ottavino, it would go four or five deep.

It’s early. But, as early as it is, Ottavino has faced 34 batters, and he’s struck out 22 of them. He’s walked one guy, he’s allowed one run, and he’s given up two hits. Nearly half of all swing attempts against Ottavino have missed. Nearly half of all swing attempts against Ottavino pitches in the strike zone have missed. Only Josh Hader might rival what Ottavino has done. This is a small sample that’s so good, it’s crying out to be investigated.

The results are almost unbelievable. It turns out Ottavino also has an exceptional process.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a slider in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the fourth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Andrew Cashner, Drew Pomeranz, and CC Sabathia — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Andrew Cashner (Orioles) on His Sinker

“I got cut with a knife in 2013, in the offseason. I cut the flexor tendon in my right thumb. That was when I really learned a sinker. After I got cut, I had to learn a new pitch.

“My slider wasn’t the same pitch after that. I had a hard time getting extension with it, getting out front. The cut healed, but the tendon was tight. I think it just took time for the tendon to lengthen. It’s a feel pitch and it just never felt the same. It took a long time, but I’ve got [the slider] back now.

“The good thing is that I gained another pitch. And the sinker isn’t just arm-side run. Once you can learn to locate it back-door, it’s almost like a reverse slider for s lefty. You throw it at the hip and it comes back.”

Drew Pomeranz (Red Sox) on his Curveball

“It would have to be my curveball. Everybody I play with is like, ‘How the hell do you throw that?’ That’s because I flick it forward. I don’t turn my wrist like a normal person does.

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Before the season began, I noted some possible concerns regarding the Cardinals rotation — namely, that the team might have better, more talented starting pitchers in Triple-A than those on their major-league roster. At the time, the issue was only a potential problem: the season had yet to start. The potential became a reality even sooner than I expected, however.

A brief timeline:

• On March 28, the Cardinals place Adam Wainwright on the 10-Day DL retroactive to March 26. Wainwright had injured his hamstring running sprints.
• On April 3, Jack Flaherty, taking Wainwright’s place in the rotation, pitches five innings, giving up one run while recording nine strikeouts and just one walk.
• On April 5, the Cardinals rush back Wainwright for the Cardinals’ home opener even though the latter hasn’t pitched in a competitive game since March 14, when he went five innings. Wainwright struggles in his debut, recording more walks than strikeouts, failing to finish the fourth inning, and losing more than 5 mph on his fastball during the game.
• On April 11, Jack Flaherty strikes out 11 batters with no walks in seven innings, giving up just one run.

Wainwright alleviated some fears in his second start, pitching seven innings and maintaining decent velocity throughout his appearance. That’s a positive development, but that doesn’t really address the entirety of the problem. Jack Flaherty is sitting down in Triple-A right now despite having a possessing a better projection than Miles Mikolas, Michael Wacha, or Wainwright himself. It seems wasteful to let Flaherty keep pitching in the minors; at the same time, none of the Cardinals’ five starters is an obvious candidate for demotion. It’s an issue in need of a creative solution — namely, a six-man rotation.

On The Bernie Miklasz Show last week, Miklasz and co-host Michelle Smallmon discussed this very topic. (Go to 34:45 of the 7 am hour to listen to their conversation.) Smallmon noted Flaherty’s success, as well as Mike Matheny’s penchant for demanding eight relievers despite never having much use for the eighth reliever. The pair discussed the Cardinals’ bullpen depth which would help with a six-man rotation and Miklasz stated that, “Every pitcher has some sort of vulnerability or reason to be careful with their innings.” He then went down the list of Cardinals starters providing reasons why a six-man rotation might be beneficial.

• Adam Wainwright: “Old… question of whether he can maintain his velocity over a full season.”
• Luke Weaver: “Good pitcher, but I know they don’t want him throwing 200 innings this year.”
• Michael Wacha: “Runs out of gas every year.”
• Miles Mikolas: “In Japan, shorter season.”
• Carlos Martinez: “He pitched 205 innings. He can do it, but again, do you really want to keep pushing him too hard?”
• Jack Flaherty: “Twenty-two years old. They aren’t going to want to ride him too hard. They definitely want to limit his innings.”
• Alex Reyes: “The plan is to have him be in the rotation, maybe not right away, but you know they are going to limit his innings.”

Smallmon pushed back on Carlos Martinez, making the argument that losing Carlos Martinez starts wouldn’t be a positive and Miklasz noted that, when the Cardinals had considered a six-man rotation three years earlier, the players strongly objected. Before getting to potential player objections, let’s first evaluate Miklasz’s — and presumably the Cardinals’ — logic for wanting to add an extra pitcher to the rotation.

We can start with Wainwright, who is — in baseball years, at least — relatively old. The 36-year-old pitched poorly and faded badly due to injuries last season. As noted, his velocity was poor in his first start of the season but better in the second. The difference between those two? The latter followed five days rest as opposed to the normal four. His start tonight will also be on extra rest. 

While in Japan, Miles Mikolas started 62 games over three years. Last year, Mikolas made 27 starts during a 26-week season, getting roughly six days off between appearances. In 2016, Luke Weaver made 21 starts and pitched 119.1 innings between the majors and minors. In 2017, he made 25 starts and pitched 138 innings between between Triple-A Memphis and the big club. He’s going to blow past that right after the All-Star Break at his current pace. Jack Flaherty made 23 starts and pitched 134 innings in High-A during the 2016 season and upped that to 30 starts and 170 innings last year between Double-A, Triple-A, and the majors. The Cardinals might not want to push too much beyond that this season. Alex Reyes is coming back from Tommy John surgery, so limiting innings and providing more rest seems self-explanatory.

As for Wacha, here’s how he has pitched the last three seasons through July compared to August and September:

Wacha did pitch well last September, but it was also after a poor August. To top it off, his velocity has been down so far this season, which raises concerns about his health.

With Carlos Martinez, I tend to side with Smallmon’s argument against giving him extra rest. As Miklasz noted, he pitched 205 innings last year. Since the beginning of the 2016 season, Carlos Martinez’s 426 innings is sixth in MLB behind only Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Rick Porcello, and Corey Kluber. His 7.1 WAR during that interval is 17th in baseball and his 9.9 RA9-WAR (which uses run allowed and not FIP as the main input) is eighth. He’s just not a guy for whom the Cardinals should be limiting starts.

I went through the St. Louis schedule and kept the Cardinals’ five pitchers on a normal schedule to see how many starts they were scheduled to receive before the All-Star Break under the present schedule. I also noted the number of days off between starts the pitchers were set to receive.

When we hear about objections to a six-man rotation, it is often related to a pitcher’s routine and normal schedule. That was Cole Hamels‘ main point of contention this spring:

“I know that’s the new analytical side of trying to reinvent the wheel, but I was brought up in the minor leagues on the five-man [rotation], and that’s what I’m designed and conditioned for.”

What is striking about the table above is that there really is no typical routine. In two-thirds of the starts above, pitchers are pitching on five or six days rest, with only one third of the starts on the supposedly normal every fifth day. Due to the rainout on Monday, the next time Michael Wacha will pitch, he will be on seven days rest because the team preferred to have the emerging Luke Weaver pitch against the Cubs rather than the struggling Wacha.

To modify the schedule, I left Martinez’s starts as is and inserted Flaherty into the rotation just ahead of the first start currently scheduled to be on four days’ rest (in this case, Adam Wainwright’s on April 29). Here’s how many starts each pitcher would get as well as the number of rest days in between starts through the All-Star Break.

Just as with the current, more traditional arrangement, two-thirds of the starts here would be made on five or six days of rest. The starts with four days rest before — just five or six per starter before the break — are now replaced by seven-day periods. The non-Martinez starters miss just two or three starts apiece and Jack Flaherty gets to prove he belongs in the majors. We don’t know that this approach would lead to better health or performance, but given the makeup of the Cardinals rotation and the desire to limit innings, this setup makes a lot of sense. If a starter gets injured before June, the typical five-man rotation will make more sense. Once the end of May arrives, the Cardinals will have another candidate for the rotation in Alex Reyes.

The scheduling for this rotation is a little difficult to pull off due to the desire to keep Martinez on somewhat normal rest, but it is certainly not impossible. St. Louis doesn’t actually need an eighth pitcher in the bullpen, and never actually use one when they have an extra guy. They might as well do everything they can to maximize the talent they have available to them in Memphis and St. Louis. That means getting Jack Flaherty back to the majors and getting creative with a rotation that can make the most of a sixth man.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared at FanGraphs on April 17, 2018 to mark the 71st anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking major league baseball’s color line.

Sunday was Jackie Robinson Day around the majors, commemorating the anniversary — the 71st, this year — of the fall of baseball’s color line via Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But just as Robinson’s immeasurable courage in confronting racism and the immense talent he showed while playing at the highest level deserve more than a single day for paying tribute, so too is it worth remembering the black players who bravely followed in his footsteps and ensured that baseball’s great experiment would not be a one-off. In the two decades following Robinson’s arrival, the influx of talent, first from the Negro Leagues and then the sandlots and high schools whose players previously could not have dreamt of such an opportunity, radically transformed the National League, in particular.

Led by president and general manager Branch Rickey, the Dodgers, of course, got the jump. During Robinson’s major-league career, which lasted from 1947 to 1956, the Dodgers won six pennants as well as their lone Brooklyn-era championship in 1955. In addition to becoming a pioneer of tremendous importance, Jackie himself was the game’s third-most valuable player over that span according to WAR (57.2), behind only Stan Musial and Ted Williams. While the Dodgers had a great supporting cast of white players such as Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider, those teams also got great work from two Negro Leagues graduates whom Rickey had signed before Robinson even reached the majors — namely Roy Campanella, who debuted in 1948 and went on to win three NL MVP awards, and Don Newcombe, who debuted in 1949, won Rookie of the Year honors that season, and would later win a Cy Young and an MVP award.

Though Rickey lost a power struggle to Walter O’Malley and was forced to sell his share of the team following the 1950 season, the Dodgers furthered their dominance over the NL in part by continuing to sign talented black players. Under Buzzie Bavasi as general manager and Fresco Thompson as director of minor-league operations, the organization added right-hander Joe Black (1952 NL Rookie of the Year), infielder Jim Gilliam (1953 NL Rookie of the Year), outfielder Sandy Amoros, second baseman Charlie Neal, catcher John Roseboro, shortstop Maury Wills (1962 NL MVP), and outfielders Tommy Davis and Willie Davis (no relation), among others.

Amoros, Black, and Gilliam would augment the Dodgers’ Robinson-era core, and the latter remained a vital lineup cog through the transitional phase that included the franchise’s 1957 move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and their return to powerhouse status behind the one-two pitching punch of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Neal, Roseboro, and Wills would each spend at least half a decade in the minors and/or as understudies awaiting their shots before contributing to the team’s 1959 pennant and championship, with the latter two becoming more central alongside the two Davises as the team won championships in 1963 and 1965, and added one more pennant in 1966, Koufax’s final year. Tommy Davis, a left fielder, won back-to-back NL batting titles in 1962 and -63, while Willie Davis, a center fielder, was the position’s best defender this side of Willie Mays (his three errors in Game Two of the 1966 World Series to the contrary).

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