Fantasy Freestyle: Yogi Berra the Fantasy Star

Last Wednesday, most of us woke up to news that the larger-than-life Yogi Berra passed away, leaving behind one of the greatest on- and off-field legacies in baseball history. In the past week, you might have read about Yogi’s remarkably consistent production, the output of the quote machine residing between those big ears, the amazing fact that he caught both ends of a doubleheader 117 times, or the accomplishment of winning a World Series ring for all 10 of his gnarled fingers. As when any great, admired person leaves us, we honor him or her by gathering, recounting achievements, telling stories, and remembering the ways they touched our lives. It seems we could do that forever with Yogi.

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There are four days left in 2015’s regular season and there’s not much I can tell you at this point that will help you win your fantasy league, so it’s time to have a little fun.

Yogi Berra was major-league regular from 1947-1963, so while he snuck in to the earliest versions of Strat-o-Matic, nobody had the pleasure of owning him in a roto league. While I can’t offer you that satisfaction, I can take a look back to see how Berra would’ve stacked up if fantasy baseball were a thing six decades ago.

I’ll spare you the ins and outs of how I valued the players because this is supposed to be a fun piece not a #gorymath one, but it’s probably necessary to know that I assumed a 12-team league with a $260 budget, 13 starting hitters, and nine starting pitchers. It’s probably also instructive to appreciate some of the major contextual differences between Yogi’s era and today. For example, if you could only pitch one inning you couldn't even make the league in the 1950s, much less publicly assault your team's best player. More relevant for this exercise, the number of players who appeared in a major league game was far fewer, primarily because there were far fewer teams. When Yogi came up in 1946, there were 16 clubs and it stayed that way for most of his career, expanding to 18 in 1961 and 20 in 1962.

To put some numbers on it, 310 non-pitchers made a plate appearance in 1948 (Yogi’s first full season), 365 did in 1961 (the first expansion during Yogi’s career), and 398 did in 1962 (second expansion). To date in 2015, 633 players have come to the dish. As a result, the player pool for mid-20^th century, mixed-league purposes would have been much shallower than today’s. The roster depth and valuations took on something much closer to what an NL- or AL-only league feels like today.

That’s enough context, let’s look at some numbers. Here are the relevant stats:

Year	G	AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1947	83	293	41	11	54	0	0.280
1948	125	469	70	14	98	3	0.305
1949	116	415	59	20	91	2	0.277
1950	151	597	116	28	124	4	0.322
1951	141	547	92	27	88	5	0.294
1952	142	534	97	30	98	2	0.273
1953	137	503	80	27	108	0	0.296
1954	151	584	88	22	125	0	0.307
1955	147	541	84	27	108	1	0.272
1956	140	521	93	30	105	3	0.298
1957	134	482	74	24	82	1	0.251
1958	122	433	60	22	90	3	0.266
1959	131	472	64	19	69	1	0.284
1960	120	359	46	15	62	2	0.276
1961	119	395	62	22	61	2	0.271
1962	86	232	25	10	35	0	0.224
1963	64	147	20	8	28	1	0.293

And here are how those translate to 5×5 return and rankings among catchers and all hitters:

Year	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
1947	5.99	5	109
1948	16.30	1	37
1949	14.57	2	45
1950	25.86	1	7
1951	19.32	2	27
1952	22.70	1	19
1953	18.01	2	35
1954	20.73	1	24
1955	16.15	2	37
1956	18.70	1	26
1957	12.46	1	60
1958	11.27	1	61
1959	11.71	3	60
1960	9.08	3	78
1961	7.75	4	84
1962	-2.97	23	185
1963	-0.60	17	167

A 22-year-old Berra broke camp with the Yankees in 1947 and split catching duties with a veteran Aaron Robinson, himself coming off a season in which he earned some marginal MVP consideration. Robinson made the All-Star game in ’47 and caught Game Seven of the World Series for the Yankees that year, but Berra was far superior offensively, finishing as fantasy’s fifth-best catcher despite being a part-timer.

The Yanks traded Robinson in the offseason and with full-time catching duties all to himself, Berra finished as a top-four fantasy backstop the next 14 seasons, including a first- or second-place finish in 11 consecutive years. His best fantasy season was 1950, which was amazingly not one of the three times he won an MVP award. Berra finished behind Phil Rizzuto (fine) and Billy Goodman (indefensible) in the MVP voting but may well have been fantasy’s MVP. Only Duke Snider, Sam Jethroe, Stan Musial, Earl Torgeson, Dom DiMaggio, and Larry Doby out-earned Berra among hitters in 1950 and given that they all played relatively rich positions, you could make a case for Yogi as fantasy’s most valuable hitter.

Berra won the real life MVP in 1951, 1954, and 1955 but was fantasy’s second best catcher two of those three years. While it’s fun to simply marvel at Yogi’s numbers, the thing that struck me most about the first half of his run was the back and forth between he and Roy Campanella, who also won three MVP awards in the 1950s.

Have a look at this seasonal comparison from 1949-1955, which excludes 1954, a year in which Campanella was plagued by a wrist injury:

1949
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	70	14	98	3	0.305	14.57	2	45
Campanella	65	22	82	3	0.287	16.49	1	40
1950
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	116	28	124	4	0.322	25.86	1	7
Campanella	70	31	89	1	0.281	14.90	2	46
1951
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	92	27	88	5	0.294	19.32	2	27
Campanella	90	33	108	1	0.325	22.97	1	16
1952
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	97	30	98	2	0.273	22.70	1	19
Campanella	73	22	97	8	0.269	20.69	2	28
1953
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	80	27	108	0	0.296	18.01	2	35
Campanella	103	41	142	4	0.312	29.08	1	7
1955
Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	$	C Rank	Hitter Rank
Berra	84	27	108	1	0.272	16.15	2	37
Campanella	81	32	107	2	0.318	20.84	1	22

Yogi or Campy finished first among catchers every year from 1949-1955 but neither one went back-to-back. These two men would have certainly been ranked first and second in some order in any preseason ranking during that span, but speculative rankings made in spring almost never hold year after year for seven straight seasons. The fact that only a wrist injury, and not one single out-of-nowhere season —Smoky Burgess’ fringe top-50 1955 season came closest—interrupted their reign is remarkable.

It’s hard to pick a winner. Campanella out-earned Berra in those six seasons by a combined $8.36 and his peak-season earnings were a few bucks higher than what Berra delivered at his own peak level. However, Berra finished first among catchers in 1954, the year I excluded above. Over the course of their full careers, Berra wins in a landslide, of course. Campanella was tragically paralyzed in 1958 but his 1956 and 1957 seasons showed significant decline. Meanwhile, Berra was already fantasy’s top catcher when Campy arrived in 1949, then continued producing at a high level into the 1960s.

Retrospective fantasy value obviously isn’t the way to measure a baseball player’s on-field legacy but so many of us follow baseball partially through the lens of fantasy that I think it’s interesting to investigate how one of the game’s greats would have been treated as a fantasy commodity. What I found, unsurprisingly, is that Berra would have been highly desirable on the terms of his production alone.

That said, some of what makes fantasy enjoyable for me is winning with players who are fun to follow, injecting some humanity into what is otherwise a game that can be played with a spreadsheet. Going the extra dollar to squeeze additional enjoyment out of Manny being Manny, Fernando-mania, Wade Boggs drinking his 64^th beer, or Josh Hamilton breaking the Home Run Derby is well worth it, in my opinion. I can’t think of a player I’d rather have won with than Yogi Berra. Not only was the box score always full, so were the laughs of anyone who heard him speak, and seemingly, the hearts of anyone he encountered. And for all of Berra’s absurd wisdom, he was wrong when he said, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” When you’re as accomplished and beloved as Yogi, it ain’t ever over. RIP.