Did the Robinson Deal Cost the Reds a Title?

After Cincinnati Reds owner Bill DeWitt traded Frank Robinson to the Baltimore Orioles on December 9, 1965 for Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun and Dick Simpson, the Reds won 13 fewer games in 1966 and fell to seventh place after finishing in fourth place in 1965. An eight-game deficit in ‘65 became an 18-game deficit in ‘66 and though the team began winning again in 1967 and jumped back into fourth place, its deficit remained in double figures (14 1/2 games out of first place in 1967 and 14 out in 1968).

Year	W	L	PCT.	Place	GB
1965	89	73	.549	4th	8.0
1966	76	84	.475	7th	18.0
1967	87	75	.537	4th	14.5
1968	83	79	.512	4th	14.0

Major League Baseball expanded in 1969, adding the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres to the National League and the Seattle Pilots and Kansas City Royals to the American League, which forced the leagues to split into divisions for the first time in history. The Reds were placed in the National League West with the Padres, Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Francisco Giants. The National League East was made up of the Expos, the N.L. champion St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies, and New York Mets.

The divisions were pretty evenly split. Based on their records in 1968, the N.L. East was slightly stronger, having won 410 of 810 games (.506), while the N.L. West won 400 of 810 (.494). The East boasted the champs as well as the league’s third, sixth, eighth and ninth-place teams, while the West had the second, fourth, fifth, seventh and last-place teams.

The Reds had come in fourth place in 1968, but would have taken second in the N.L. West and finished five games behind the Giants had the leagues split a year earlier. But because the league was still one 10-team league, the Cardinals ran away with the National League pennant on the strength of a 97-65 record, and Cincinnati finished in fourth place, 14 games out of first.

The Mets copped the 1969 National League pennant after they won the N.L. East division title with a record of 100-62, then swept the Braves in the NLCS. Had the leagues not split in 1969, the Reds would have finished fifth in a 12-team league, 11 games out of first place. But the leagues did split and the Reds, who went 89-73, took third in the N.L. West, finishing only four games out of first.

Team	W	L	W/L%	GB
Atlanta	93	69	.574
San Francisco	90	72	.556	3.0
Cincinnati	89	73	.549	4.0
Los Angeles	85	77	.525	8.0
Houston	81	81	.500	12.0
San Diego	52	110	.321	41.0

That begs the question: Had DeWitt not traded Robinson in 1965 and had he remained with the Reds, would he have made a large enough impact to have led the Reds to the 1969 N.L. West title?

In order to approach this properly we have to make a lot of assumptions. By reversing the trade we have to assume all the players involved would have remained with their respective teams. On the surface it would appear that only the Reds and Orioles were affected by the deal, but that’s not the case. Halfway through the ‘68 season the Reds sent Milt Pappas, Ted Davidson and Bob Johnson to the Braves for Woody Woodward, Tony Cloninger and Clay Carroll. Had the Braves not won the ‘69 N.L. West division title, we wouldn’t really care all that much that they made that deal. But because the Braves are the team the Reds were trying to catch, we have to take that into account.

Obviously we have to assume that had the Robinson deal not been made, the Pappas/Davidson/Johnson-for-Woodward/Carroll/Cloninger deal would never have happened either, since Pappas would have been with the Orioles and not the Reds. Therefore we had to reverse that deal as well. We also had to reverse the deal that sent Alex Johnson to Cincinnati in 1968 for Dick Simpson because, again, Simpson would not have been Reds property.

So, in our study, Robinson goes back to the Reds, Pappas, Baldschun and Simpson go back to the Orioles, Woodward, Carroll and Cloninger go back to the Braves and Johnson goes back to St. Louis. We don’t care about the Orioles since they’re in the American League and we don’t care about the Cardinals because they were in the N.L. East at the time. The only two teams we care about are the Reds and Braves. The Giants made moves as well, but none of their deals were affected by the Robinson trade.

Before we reverse those deals, let’s take a look at a nifty tool that will allow us to analyze each team’s lineup. The 1969 Reds led the N.L. in just about every offensive category and if they weren’t number one, they were pretty damn close. They easily paced the circuit with 798 runs and averaged 4.9 runs a game. The Pirates were a distant second with 725 and 4.48 respectively.

The batting order the Reds used most frequently looked like this:

Order	Player	POS	AVG	OBA	SLG
1.	Pete Rose	RF	.348	.428	.512
2.	Bobby Tolan	CF	.305	.347	.474
3.	Alex Johnson	LF	.315	.350	.463
4.	Tony Perez	3B	.294	.357	.526
5.	Lee May	1B	.278	.331	.529
6.	Johnny Bench	C	.293	.353	.487
7.	Tommy Helms	2B	.269	.296	.317
8.	Darrel Chaney/Woody Woodward	SS	.229	.307	.276
9.	Pitcher	SP	.162	.206	.246

Woody Woodward played slightly more at shortstop than Darrel Chaney, but the most common batting order included Chaney. The difference was so minute, I decided to produce a composite batting line for the two of them. Since they were being platooned it only made sense. The ninth spot in the order is a composite batting line of the pitchers who started the most games.

The above batting order would have been expected to produce 4.94 runs per game or 800 total runs over the course of a season. The Reds actually produced 798 runs at 4.89 runs per contest. It doesn’t get any closer than that.

When we subtracted Alex Johnson, Woodward and Cloninger from the lineup (remember we sent them back to St. Louis and Atlanta), substituted Robinson in the three hole and added Chico Ruiz to the shortstop platoon, this is what the order might have looked like:

Order	Player	POS	AVG	OBA	SLG
1.	Pete Rose	RF	.348	.428	.512
2.	Bobby Tolan	CF	.305	.347	.474
3.	Frank Robinson	LF	.302	.404	.557
4.	Tony Perez	3B	.294	.357	.526
5.	Lee May	1B	.278	.331	.529
6.	Johnny Bench	C	.293	.353	.487
7.	Tommy Helms	2B	.269	.296	.317
8.	Darrel Chaney/Chico Ruiz	SS	.217	.285	.254
9.	Pitcher	SP	.160	.207	.252

We adjusted Robinson’s stats using KJOK’s MLE spreadsheet to account for the fact that the National League’s “difficulty factor” was approximately four percent higher than the American League’s and to account for differing ballpark factors. The addition of Robinson and Ruiz and subtraction of Woodward and Cloninger resulted in a 0.15 runs per game boost, which added 27 runs to Cincinnati’s total. The above lineup would have scored 5.09 runs per game for a total output of 825.

In order to calculate Cincinnati’s expected win-loss %, we subtracted Cloninger from the Reds’ pitching staff and substituted a replacement level pitcher. According to Baseball Prospectus’ VORP scores, Cloninger was 16.9 runs worse than a replacement level pitcher would have been. The Reds surrendered 768 runs in 1969. Minus Cloninger that drops to 751. Using the Pythagorean Theorem we calculated the Reds’ expected win-loss% to be .547, which translates to a record of 89-73. That’s exactly how the Reds finished in 1969, so it would appear that Robinson’s absence made no difference.

However, the Reds record that year, based on the Pythagorean Theorem, should have been 84-78, which means they won five more games than they should have. This can be attributed to luck or a standard margin of error within the formula (or both). If we apply that five-game margin to the Reds’ “Robinson record,” we show a new mark of 94-68.

The Braves went 93-69, so it appears that had Cincinnati retained Robinson they should have won the NL West title by one game over the Braves. But not so fast. We still need to adjust Atlanta’s lineup to account for the presence of Woodward, Cloninger and Carroll and the absence of Pappas.

The Braves’ starting shortstop in 1969 was Sonny Jackson, who posted a starting lineup-worst OPS+ of 71. Gil Garrido platooned with Jackson and his OPS+ (42) was even lower. Woodward played more games at second base for the Braves than he did at shortstop, but Atlanta had Felix Millan at second and he was pretty good defensively. Besides Woodward played more career games at shortstop than he did at second, so we platooned Woodward with Jackson in our lineup analysis.

The actual Braves lineup looked like this:

Order	Player	POS	AVG	OBA	SLG
1.	Felipe Alou	CF	.282	.319	.345
2.	Felix Millan	2B	.267	.310	.345
3.	Hank Aaron	RF	.300	.396	.607
4.	Rico Carty	LF	.342	.401	.549
5.	Orlando Cepeda	1B	.257	.325	.428
6.	Clete Boyer	3B	.250	.328	.371
7.	Bob Didier	C	.256	.321	.307
8.	Sonny Jackson/Gil Garrido	SS	.231	.298	.273
9.	Pitcher	SP	.162	.188	.202

The above batting order was expected to produce 4.26 runs per game for a total of 691. That’s exactly how many runs the Braves scored.

After removing Pappas’ batting from the pitchers’ total and adding Cloninger and Woodward here’s the new lineup:

Order	Player	POS	AVG	OBA	SLG
1.	Felipe Alou	CF	.282	.319	.345
2.	Felix Millan	2B	.267	.310	.345
3.	Hank Aaron	RF	.300	.396	.607
4.	Rico Carty	LF	.342	.401	.549
5.	Orlando Cepeda	1B	.257	.325	.428
6.	Clete Boyer	3B	.250	.328	.371
7.	Bob Didier	C	.256	.321	.307
8.	Sonny Jackson/Woody Woodward	SS	.249	.324	.299
9.	Pitcher	SP	.163	.183	.196

Adding Woodward and Cloninger to the lineup only increased the Braves’ scoring by .033 runs per game, which comes out to five extra runs (696).

Now we need to look at the pitching. The Braves allowed 631 runs in 1969, which ranked fifth in the N.L. Reversing the Robinson trade means that we have to also reverse the trade that sent Pappas to the Braves for Woodward, Carroll, and Cloninger. By reversing that deal, we have Cloninger starting in place of Pappas and Carroll strengthening the Braves bullpen. Pappas had a VORP of 12.4 while Cloninger’s VORP was -16.9. That’s an additional 29 runs added to the Braves runs allowed total (660).

On the other hand, Carroll’s VORP was 10.8. We can’t just add Carroll to the staff, we need to replace another pitcher. Claude Raymond was the worst of the Braves’ regular relievers and he was eventually sold to the Expos later that season, so we replaced him with Carroll. Raymond’s Atlanta VORP was -8.9. Added to Carroll’s figure that comes out to 20 runs in Atlanta’s favor, which reduces their runs allowed total to 640.

Again, using the Pythagorean Theorem, we find that Atlanta should have had a winning percentage of .542, which translates to a record of 88-74. That matches their actual Pythagorean record as well, but, like the Reds, the Braves were five games better than that. When we tack on those five extra wins, we get a record of 93-69, which matches their actual record.

It’s impossible to know whether the Reds would have gone 94-68 and edged the Braves by one game in the chase for the N.L. West division title in 1969, but it’s apparent that a lineup that included Robinson would have given Cincinnati a better chance than their lineup without him.