Why Did The Cubs Trade Hank Schenz?
The Real Life Transaction Dilemma
Why Did The Cubs Trade Hank Schenz?
As I’ve pushed ahead with this 1949 Diamond Mind Baseball replay, I noticed a problem.
The Cubs don’t have enough players in the middle of May.
It’s not a huge problem, of course. There are enough players to get by — well, sort of. I’m not sure about the quality of some of these players, but I’ll give the team the benefit of the doubt.
There are a few reasons for the low numbers in Chicago. There are a number of players temporarily out with injuries. But there’s also the fact that they decided to trade away Hank Schenz.
Schenz
The confusing part here is that Hank Schenz was an up-and-coming star.
I really mean that. Look at his career up to 1949:
He was old, I know — but that’s mostly because of the war. He was likely on his way to the top before the war intervened.
Sure, he wasn’t great with the Cubs in 6 games in 1946 — but that’s because of the small sample size. He clearly showed in Nashville in 1947 that he deserved a shot, and proved with the Cubs in 1948 that he could play at the big league level.
We can look at WAR if you like. Now, WAR calculations before 1989 or so need to be taken with a grain of salt, since the fielding stats are extremely iffy. Baseball Reference assigns Schenz 0.6 WAR for his 1948 efforts, putting him just a hair behind fellow second baseman Emil Verban, who was two years older than Hank. Of course, we need to remember that Verban didn’t join the Cubs until early August, and had already had injury trouble earlier in the season.
The other second baseman was Gene Mauch, who was awful with the bat.
I say this because it’s pretty clear that Schenz still had a chance in 1949. And he put up great numbers in the time he was given:
This is the part that I just don’t get.
Schenz appeared in 7 games for the Cubs in 1949, starting in 4. He had no plate appearances in his three substitute roles.
In those 4 games started, Schenz tore the cover off the ball, putting up a 146 OPS+ and hitting well over .400.
Now, I know it was an empty .400. He had no extra base hits — nothing but singles. Traditional fans will point out that he simply didn’t drive anybody home, which was probably his ultimate undoing.
But even still — the man was getting on base.
The Conundrum
And, well, that brings me to my conundrum.
This is what Schenz looks like in my replay:
Hank is hitting a cool 1.000. Sure, he has only 3 singles in 3 at bats. But, still, he’s playing extremely well, and is not the sort of player I’d want to release.
That leads me to ask a simple question: what do we do in a situation like this?
Is it realistic to release a man who has hit 1.000 for a team with severe offensive problems? At what point in time should we as replayers intervene and prevent this sort of thing from happening? If our replay were real life, would the Cubs really get rid of this guy?
As it turns out, Schenz was traded to Brooklyn in 1949. He never appeared with the Dodgers:
Schenz played for the Pirates in a utility role in 1950 and in the first part of 1951. He wound up on the Giants for the 1951 pennant campaign, where he made a few pinch running appearances. And that was the end.
Meanwhile, Bob Ramazzotti, who was also older than Schenz (lots of old men in the major leagues in 1949!), didn’t come close to hitting .200, and wound up having a lackluster career.
This all leaves me scratching my head, asking myself what could have been.