Real Life Equivalent Players

[Curtis]

This is probably not the right place to post this, but I can't think of a better one.

I'm creating a couple of players for a dynasty, and I'd like to know whether they have any real life equivalents — sort of like doing a BBRef comparison.

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The first is a pitcher; he's a righthander, but I'm guessing his nearest equivalent would be a soft-tossing lefty. My first thought was the Randy Jones who had his best years for the Padres in the '70s.

My guy has a wide variety of pitches, but the fastball is not among them. (He likes to claim that he has no fastball, but he does have five speeds on his changeup; he tops out around 85 mph.) He has a ridiculous — probably bogus — grounder:flyball ratio of 3:1. To nobody's surprise he gives up few home runs. He also has good control (starting around 150 on the 1-250 scale, but scaling up to 188 a few years in), but registers few strikeouts (50 starting Stuff, eventually reaching 63).

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The second guy is a righthanded hitter, but don't let that limit you. He usually plays a corner outfield position, but his real position should be considered DH, since he's a Dr. Strangeglove no matter where he plays (bad depth perception). I'm thinking his nearest equivalent would probably be someone who played around the break between the deadball and liveball eras. Maybe Sam Crawford, Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb or Tris Speaker.

He's a line drive hitter who sprays to all fields. His home run power is average, but his gap power is extreme, and he has the speed to stretch a lot of doubles into triples. He's also a savvy baserunner with a high stolen base percentage, but like Carlos Beltran, maybe doesn't attempt as many as he could. He has a good arm and excellent range, but his glove has a huge hole in it. He's really a prototypical DH, but he plays for the Mets. (I'm starting this in 1984, and he'll be a September callup that season. In order to reflect his bad glove I'm planning to limit his experience to around 28-30, knocking it down every few games.) He has very little patience at the plate, and therefore draws few walks. On the other hand, he makes good contact, so he doesn't strike out much (bad ball hitter who knows the strike zone, just doesn't care).

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Does anyone have suggestions?

[Lee]

Randy Jones or Tommy John, make the sinker the main pitch (Orel Hershisher would be a good template as well)

Wouldn't use any the guys you mentioned for the hitter, all were decent defensively and Speaker is one of the best defensive centerfielders ever. Lefty O'Doul with some speed added may be a good template for this player, maybe even Goose Goslin with power tweaked down a bit and speed added.

[Curtis]

Hi Lee, thanks for posting.

Goslin and O'Doul weren't even on my radar, but they are better power comps than most of the other guys I was looking at. (Musial and Hornsby were the other two power comps, but both of them were good at drawing walks and not really as fast as I liked.)

Some of the other hitters I looked at were Paul Waner, Zach Wheat, Heinie Manush, Cap Anson, Sam Rice, Honus Wagner and Tony Gwynn for outfielders, and Rod Carew and Wade Boggs for infielders.

I only checked the fielding for the outfielders, but nearly everyone I looked at had above average fielding percentage (Rice and Cobb average, and Anson below average) and below average range (Wheat average, and Cobb and Speaker above average). Goslin and O'Doul were each below average in both.
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I looked up John and Hershiser, and they were good comps. I checked some of the comps BBRef listed for them, and it turns out there were quite a few soft tossing righties, so I feel better now.

Jim Kaat showed up as a reasonable comp, and four or five guys who I'd never heard of (though some of them pitched quite recently) on Randy Jones' list. After all that, Randy Jones is probably the best comp, except for being lefthanded, if you only look at his San Diego seasons. (His walks skyrocketed with the Mets.)
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Thank you for putting some thought into this.