Quote:
Originally Posted by Beechnut
It's been several weeks and so many questions left unanswered....where did this guy sign? Contract details? How is his career progressing? Any awards? Inquiring minds want to know! 
I'm also wondering where your league is based for a dude from Philly to be considered an international free agent. |
Interesting that you posted this today. It's now 1965 in my universe and McCormack just retired this year, so it's a good time for a career re-cap. (he hasn't played in the majors since 1962 though).
I was able to sign him (Cincinnati) and he won the MVP his first year. He'll certainly be a first-ballot hall-of-famer, finishing his career .337 / .403 / .610 with 79.8 WAR and OPS+ of 178 , 372 HRs and 3 MVPs in 16 years.
But he was injury-plagued his whole career. He rarely was able to come close to a full season. His second year he only played in 45 games and still posted 5.4 WAR! He was on pace for an 18+ WAR season if he had been able to keep that up. It's fun to speculate how his career would have played out had he remained healthy.
You asked about his contract: It was still the reserve-clause era when I signed him for $47,880 in 1946 (that was a sizable contract for that time, but with the reserve clause, his contract automatically renewed each year). In my alternate universe, free-agency took effect in 1953 and I locked him up as a 26-year-old for 7 years, $700,000 - a bit of a gamble for a brilliant but injury-prone player. But no regrets though, as he posted a string of productive seasons (4.0 - 7.8 WAR) until the final year (2.4 WAR). By then I had moved on to GM another team.
My league is a fictional alternate universe that parallels real MLB history. So, in the early years I had it set up so that so-called international free agents and international scouting discoveries are mostly from the US. I like to imagine armies of scouts scouring the country and maybe discovering a Walter Johnson pitching in Idaho, or in this case, Bonnie McCormack - perhaps tearing it up on his factory team in Philadelphia....