ZiPS Time Warp: Jim Fregosi

There’s a kind of depressing infamy that comes with being a player on the losing end of a lopsided trade. Players like Glenn Davis, Ernie Broglio, and Larry Andersen are more famous for the players they were traded for than anything they did in their own careers. It’s an unfair bit of notoriety, too; there’s not much cosmic justice involved when Harvey Kuenn, who played in 10 All-Star games, is remembered more for a decision to trade Rocky Colavito he didn’t make rather than being a .314/.360/.426, 23.5 WAR hitter in seven full seasons with the Detroit Tigers. Jim Fregosi is another star who’s a member of this unfortunate club.

In the case of Fregosi, his run as an elite shortstop might actually be a distant third in the ol’ memory banks. If you asked a random baseball fan in 2021 what they know about him, at least one who isn’t an Angels fan, you’d likely get one of two responses: his status as the player traded for Nolan Ryan or his 15-year post-playing career as a manager for four teams, most famously those notorious misfits, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies. But when Mike Trout blew through the Angels record for the most career WAR for a position player, the previous holder wasn’t Tim Salmon or Brian Downing or Darin Erstad or Bobby Grich. It was Jim Fregosi.

Fregosi’s success with the Angels wasn’t just a local phenomena. Going into 1971, Fregosi was coming off an age-28 season in which he hit .278/.353/.459 for 129 wRC+ and 6.8 WAR. That last number was good enough for fifth in baseball, behind four Hall of Famers: Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, and Willie McCovey. If the 129 wRC+ isn’t enough to demonstrate that Fregosi’s WAR isn’t just a case of modern defensive estimates loving an old player in hindsight, he had already made six All-Star teams, voted on and selected by fans and managers long before wins above replacement was an actual thing. Receiving MVP votes in eight consecutive seasons is an accolade that even Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr. failed to muster! Here’s how he staked up versus other players at the position through their age-28 season:

Through age 28, Fregosi stood among the great shortstops in MLB history, ranking fifth all-time in WAR among players who played at least 50% of their games at the position. At the time, was even more impressive; three of the four players ahead of him in the ranks came after Fregosi’s playing career was over, leaving him looking up only at Arky Vaughan after 1970.

From 1963 to 1970, Fregosi played in 1,253 games, the fourth-most in baseball. Of the top eight players, he’s the only one who didn’t end up in the Hall of Fame. Fregosi never played in 110 games in a season after 1970. The first culprit was a case of Morton’s neuroma in his right foot, a mass of nerve tissue in the ball of the foot commonly referred to as a benign tumor. (In one of those odd ways that history likes to repeat itself, this was the exact same injury that Mike Trout required surgery for in 2019.) Fregosi played through this injury on-and-off for two months, and by the time he went under the knife in July, his line stood at .192/.274/.295 in 60 games, suggesting the Angels didn’t manage the situation particularly well.

Returning a month later, Fregosi played at his normal levels, though his usual moderate power was missing; his .286/.369/.364 line post-injury was more than respectable. Encouraged by his recovery, the Mets acquired him in December of 1971 for four players. I don’t imagine I need to introduce Nolan Ryan, but at the time of the trade, he was still a very raw talent, more wild pyromancer than The Ryan Express. Leroy Stanton was the team’s starting right fielder for four seasons, and Don Rose was part of the chain of trades that brought the Angels Ed Figueroa, Bobby Bonds, and eventually Brian Downing. The last player, Frank Estrada, didn’t make a splash in his one game in the majors, but he went on to play in the Mexican League up until 1994, when he was still hanging on as a player-manager; he made both the Mexican and Caribbean Hall of Fames.

Fregosi played both first and left field for the Angels in his final season in California, and the Mets intended to play him at third base as Bud Harrelson, the team’s incumbent shortstop, was coming off a Gold Glove season. Fregosi’s offense was hampered by both a thumb injury and falling out of shape due to, by his own admission “leading the good life.” Stardom never returned, and Fregosi was traded to the Rangers before finishing his second season with the Mets. He spent the next several seasons as a role player in steep decline before retiring in 1978 as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So, let’s dial the ZiPS time machine to 1970. Gone is the foot injury — sure, that’s impossible, but we’re already using a time machine here, so it’s a little late to object — and in this timeline, the high-achieving Fregosi finds it easier to keep his body in check when not enduring significant professional setbacks.

After 1970, ZiPS projects four more four-win seasons from Fregosi, and three or four more after that as a solid starter. If we give him four additional All-Star seasons for that run, Fregosi gets to double digits. Of the eligible players who made a decade’s worth of All-Star contests, only two without a PED black mark, Bill Freehan and Steve Garvey, aren’t in the Hall. A rest-of-career projection gets him to 70 WAR and just under 3000 hits, a comparable career to Jeter’s. If this version of Fregosi didn’t get into the Hall of Fame, I expect that he’d be one of the current causes célèbre of the analytics community, along with players like Lou Whitaker.

I’m not even sure that the actual Jim Fregosi shouldn’t be in the Hall. He edges out Luis Aparicio and Maury Wills in the 1960s shortstop WAR ranks despite playing in 300-400 fewer games than either, so you can argue that he was the best shortstop of the decade. That’s usually a solid argument for having a Hall of Fame peak. He’s 21st in my colleague Jay Jaffe’s JAWS leaders, so it’s not like he’s a galaxy away if you fold entire careers into the mix. While I’m not sure I’d actually vote for Fregosi to make the Hall, it’s not preposterous. Jim Fregosi was an important player in MLB history, and he should be remembered for that, not for an unfortunate trade that pops up on various Worst Ever lists.