Leading Off For The 1927 Pirates

Lloyd Waner and the Leadoff Role

Leading Off For The 1927 Pirates

I can’t remember if it was on Twitter or on a message board. A few days ago somebody mentioned something to me about Lloyd Waner, known affectionately at the time as “Little Poison,” one of the star Waner brothers of the Pirates of the late 1920s and early 1930s. There was some question about when Lloyd started hitting leadoff for the Pirates, and the answer kind of surprised me.

Waner was only 21 years old when he joined the Pirates in 1927. Actually, he was signed by Pittsburgh in early 1926 at the behest of his older brother Paul (“Big Poison”):

From Lloyd Waner’s SABR Biography

And it’s no secret that Lloyd was good. 1926 issues of The Columbia Record, the newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina, are filled with articles about Lloyd’s batting feats, such as this:

From The Columbia Record (South Carolina), September 20, 1926, page 6

Interestingly enough, it seems that the fact that Waner had always belonged to the Pirates and was just being farmed down to Columbia was kept as a secret from the local fans:

From The Columbia Record (South Carolina), August 7, 1926, page 2

They also got Lloyd’s age wrong. As you can see, there is a note in the article that he was purchased initially by the Pirates before being farmed down. The idea that the Pirates then paid for him again is pretty funny.

If you’re curious — Roy Mahaffey pitched in 2 games for the 1927 Pirates. He then went back to the minors until he resurfaced with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1930 (and was rewarded with a National Pastime card, though I doubt he knew that). I have no idea who “Farr” is; he appears to have never made it to the major leagues.

Interestingly enough, the Pirates experimented with having Lloyd play second base during spring training in 1927, leading to headlines like this:

From The Pittsburgh Post, March 16, 1927, page 15

Waner was back in left field soon enough, however. He started hitting second at some point in time in early April, such as during this game at Beaumont:

From The Pittsburgh Post, April 5, 1927, page 13

Now, I’m not entirely certain why new manager Donie Bush was convinced that George Grantham should hit leadoff. Though he had a fairly good on base percentage and usually hit for average, he doesn’t seem to have been an exceptionally fast runner. In fact, he never hit leadoff during the 1926 season.

Grantham had that honor for all of April 1927:

I should note that Baseball Reference isn’t very clear when you’ve got two guys in the lineup with the same last name. Lloyd hit 2nd and Paul hit 4th.

Now, was the change worth it? Well, you be the judge.

Here’s how Grantham hit during that span, from game to game:

And, for the sake of comparison, here’s how Lloyd hit:

I guess you could say that Lloyd was hitting better, with a .313 batting average on April 30. Grantham “only” was hitting .296 at the time. Then again, those averages switched places on May 1 — and it wasn’t until May 3 that Lloyd got to hit leadoff.

But is it a huge difference? I mean, Bush should have been able to see that Grantham was getting on base more often.

It’s pretty clear that Lloyd was bunting frequently as well, which would have fit with the strategy of the time. He sacrificed himself 6 times in April, following that up with only 2 more sacrifice hits for the rest of the season.

One of the local newspapers mentioned the lineup change briefly:

From The Pittsburgh Post, May 4, 1927, page 15

I suppose it helped, since the Pirates gradually moved up from third place to eventually win the pennant that year. Lloyd remained leadoff hitter for the rest of the season, hitting leadoff in every game he appeared in. In fact, Lloyd kept the leadoff spot until the middle of the 1928 season, when the Pirates decided to stick Sparky Adams in there to shake things up again.

It’s pretty fascinating stuff, actually. I suppose lineups were never completely written in stone.