Stan Musial: 1947

In past posts we've reconstructed an imagined injury-free performance for Ted Williams and, more recently, examined the careers of longtime consistently high performing players (Eddie Collins, Willie Mays).  THC also looked at Stan "The Man" Musial, became aware of a one-season aberration in a lengthy sequence of outstanding seasons and decided to take a closer look.
(from Sporting News)

Stan reached the majors with the St Louis Cardinals in September 1941, hitting .426 at the age of 20.  He had a terrific rookie season in 1942, becoming one of the  best players in the league the following season.  From then through 1954 he was consistently the best, or among the top four or five players in the league every year with two exceptions; 1945 when he was in the military and 1947.

Below is a summary of Musial's performance over that period, using Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging, On-Base+Slugging; Park Adjusted and Wins Above Replacement.  The numbers to the right of each indicate where he ranked in the league that year.

A couple of notes on the last two metrics.  For OPS+ 100 is the league norm.  Anything above that is good, above 150 is excellent and 200 extraordinary.  For WAR, 5.0 is considered All-Star quality while anything around 8 puts a player in the running for Most Valuable Player.

	BA		OBP		SLG		OPS+		WAR
1943	357	1	425	1	562	1	177	1	9.4	1
1944	347	2	440	1	549	1	174	1	8.8	1
1946	365	1	434	2	587	1	183	1	8.6	1
1947	312	5	398	8	504	8	134	7	4.6	8
1948	376	1	450	1	702	1	200	1	11.1	1
1949	338	2	438	2	624	2	177	2	9.3	1
1950	346	1	437	1	596	1	164	1	7.3	1
1951	355	1	449	2	614	2	183	2	9.1	1
1952	336	1	432	1	538	1	167	1	8.0	2
1953	337	3	437	4	609	2	169	2	7.7	3
1954	330	4	428	4	607	4	167	4	6.9	5

1947 is clearly his worst season between 1943 and 1954.  What happened?

The first thing THC did is go to Baseball-Reference.com to look at Stan's day by day performance and was surprised to find that as of June 6, 1947, 44 games into the season he was only hitting .196 with a miserable OBP of .292 along with a pathetic .338 slugging percentage.

Further research revealed that he'd not felt well since spring training and had been diagnosed with an inflamed appendix and tonsillitis.  At some point early that season he underwent a procedure to "freeze" his appendix.  THC can find no further detail on the ailments or the treatment.  Whatever occurred it seemed to provide benefits because on June 7, Stan finally began to hit.

From that point to the end of the season, Musial hit .351, slugging .560 with an OBP of .429, all of which look like normal Stan Musial performance if extended over a full season and would have placed him first or second in all five measurements that season giving him nine consecutive seasons finishing first or second in all five categories.

Musial's illness may have cost the Cardinals the pennant.  After winning the World Series the prior year, as of June 6 their record was 18-25.  From then until the end of the season the Cards were 70-39, 2 1/2 games better than the pennant winning Brooklyn Dodgers who had rookie Jackie Robinson (who later wrote that Musial and Hank Greenberg were the two opposing players who did the most to encourage him that year).

After the 1947 season ended Stan had his appendix and tonsils removed and went on to have his greatest season in 1948.  For more about what kind of man Stan The Man was see Earl And The Man.