ZiPS Time Warp: César Cedeño

Everyone likes to compare young, phenom centerfielders to Willie Mays and/or Mickey Mantle. Mike Trout is, of course, the most deserving, but people have also made those comparisons to Ken Griffey Jr., Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto, Andruw Jones, Josh Hamilton, and many others.

In many cases, these types of comparisons are either early, ambitious, or downright wild. Josh Hamilton was only Mickey Mantle in terms of his personal struggles; Ed Rogers was just a bit worse than Alex Rodriguez. At one point, though, the Mays/Mantle comparisons were fresh, and long before it became a cliche, a young outfielder named César Cedeño was compared to Mays by by future Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher.

Durocher was not one to be overly sentimental; Cedeño’s early performances did evoke Mays. At age 21, Cedeño broke out for the Astros, hitting .320/.385/.537 (wRC+ of 163) while winning a Gold Glove as a center fielder, his first of five. Rather than falling prey to the dreaded regression to the mean, he basically did that again the following season, hitting .320/.376/.537 (wRC+ of 155). There were obviously no wins above replacement stats to look at in 1972, FanGraphs and other sites like it being decades away from existence, but we can look back at Cedeño’s phenom years with even more certainty about his place in baseball’s pantheon than they could at the time.

During his age-21 and 22 seasons, Cedeño accumulated 14.9 wins. As you might expect, this compares very favorably to players throughout the game’s history; that WAR figure is seventh all-time among position players, and no player overtaking it until Mike Trout, four decades later.

This is not a list with any flashes-in-the-pan. Of the 19 other players in the top 20, 14 have made the Hall of Fame, almost all with the informal “inner-circle” label. Joe Jackson would absolutely be in the Hall of Fame if not for the Black Sox scandal, and Mike Trout and Albert Pujols are absolute locks. That leaves only Andruw Jones and Sherry Magee, and I’d argue that Jones ought to be in the Hall and Magee should at least merit consideration on the border.

Cedeño landed on the ballot in 1992, got two votes, and fell off the ballot and largely, historical attention.

So, what happened? As is common in situations like this, it wasn’t one event that derailed Cedeño’s career; he wasn’t Joe Mauer suffering a concussion. The first thing was Cedeño’s own fault, a night of drinking and playing with a firearm that left Altagracia de la Cruz dead at just 19. Because the gun was registered and there was confusion as to whether Cedeño actually fired the weapon (de la Cruz apparently held the gun based on a postmortem paraffin test), the prosecutor recommended dismissal and Cedeño paid a $100 fine.

Cedeño was always haunted by the events of that evening, an unsurprising reaction give that his actions, at a minimum, heavily contributed to the death of another person. In 1981, Cedeño was ejected from a game after going after a fan in the crowd who called him “killer.” Astros hitting coach Deacon Jones discussed the impact of the incident with Peter Gammons later in the 70s:

“He’s at a crossroad,” says Batting Coach Deacon Jones. “Either he’s going to learn from this year’s horrible experience and go one way, or he’s going to be another ‘could have been.’ Remember Tommie Agee? Adolfo Phillips?”

It irks Cedeno that people talk about him in terms of potential. “No matter what I do, they think I had a bad year,” he says. He is one of the best outfielders in the National League, with five gold gloves on his left hand already. He is a dangerous offensive player; he gets on base, getting hit by pitches and normally batting in the .265 to .295 range, and his stolen bases (55, 56, 57, 50, 58 the last five years) demonstrate that he is one of the top stealers.

Teammate Bob Watson felt similarly:

Cedeno himself said the incident never affected his play. Bob Watson, another teammate, also had a theory. “He was so young, so proud, that I think he tried extra hard to prove to everyone that it never bothered him. He had a good season [in 1974], but he altered his swing trying to hit homers. After that, maybe pitchers adjusted, and he hasn’t readjusted himself.”

Cedeño first injured his knee in winter ball after the 1972 season, but it didn’t hamper him in 1973, that second megastar season. In 1974, Cedeño played in the most games of his career, 160, but his numbers came down to earth as he hit .269/.338/.461, enough for 5.6 wins. That was still star-level, but didn’t match the lofty heights of 1972 or ’73. Still just 24 for the 1975 season, Cedeño had plenty of time to turn things around.

Now, of course, we know that he didn’t. He only had two four-win seasons and two 140-game seasons remaining in his career. By the age of 26, he had two bad knees and two bad ankles. He then completely tore a ligament in his knee in 1978 and lost 14 pounds in 1979 due to a case of hepatitis. After a broken ankle in the 1980 playoffs, Cedeño was done as a legitimate starter, before his 30th birthday.

So, what could have been? Let’s start after 1973 and give alternate universe Cedeño a blank slate. Here’s what ZiPS has for Cedeño, projecting him after 1973, even without undoing later Astrodome fence changes that affected his numbers:

ZiPS is all-in on Cedeño and sees him as being on a definite Hall of Fame trajectory. ZiPS isn’t super-optimistic about his playing time based on his career through 1973, but with a more normal aging curve, he could have stayed a tremendous, all-around star for a long time. The career WAR is definitely Hall of Fame worthy and while wooing voters is always a tricky, 765 stolen bases from a player who nearly hit 300 home runs, who probably had eight to 10 All-Star appearances and a few more Gold Gloves, probably gets him inducted.

There’s a curious memory-hole that the 1960s and 1970s Astros, before Nolan Ryan and Mike Scott, seem to reside in. Houston’s past is full of players almost lost in the popular version of baseball history, players like Jim Wynn, Larry Dierker, Bob Watson, Don Wilson, and Jose Cruz. Even the Astro most definitely not forgotten, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan, is primarily associated for his years with the Reds, not with Houston. Of all the Astros time forgot, César Cedeño may have been the very best one, if history had been kinder.