Electric Company

Recently, I was skipping through the Major League leaderboards on Baseball Reference, just passing the time while the coffee brewed on the stove, when an enormously cool occurrence jumped off the screen:  in 1955, the top 10 in position player bWAR was made up of 10 future Hall of Famers.  Naturally, this realization provoked a question of this season’s rarity, and that answer is also keenly notable; there’s only two other seasons since 1901 that fit this bill, 1927 and 1928 (I only looked at the top-10 for the NL and AL combined, no Negro League or Federal League participants were considered).

From the bottom up, that ’55 leaderboard presents the following names:  Stan Musial, Henry Aaron, Richie Ashburn, Ted Williams, Eddie Mathews, Ernie Banks, Al Kaline, Duke Snider, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle.  Unearthing one additional layer to this confluence, Mays (with a 9.2) was playing in his age-24 season, while Mantle (9.5) was in his age-23 campaign.  Imagine a picture with all these pieces assembled:  two players so young, producing so much value while occupying the same position.  Well, if you followed the 2024 season, you don’t have to imagine it, you saw it unfold.  

This past year, Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson (age-23 season) produced a 9.1 bWAR, while Kansas City’s Bobby Witt, Jr. (age-24 campaign) dropped a nifty 9.4 into the mix.  The two highlighted a season in which six of the best 18 values in the metric came from shortstops, with Francisco Lindor, Elly De La Cruz, Zach Neto and Corey Seager all posting a mark of 5.0 or better.  The two headliners, Henderson and Witt, by virtue of their respective ages and production, also connected the 2024 campaign to a special few others.

Seasons With Multiple Players in Age-24 or Younger Seasons & bWAR of 9.0+

1909    Ty Cobb (RF) & Eddie Collins (2B)

1910    Ty Cobb (CF) & Eddie Collins (2B)

1911    Ty Cobb (CF) & Joe Jackson (RF)

1912    Joe Jackson (RF) & Tris Speaker (CF)

1955    Mickey Mantle (CF) & Willie Mays (CF)

2015    Bryce Harper (RF) & Mike Trout (CF)

2016    Mookie Betts (RF) & Mike Trout (CF)

2024    Gunnar Henderson (SS) & Bobby Witt, Jr. (SS)

Cobb, Speaker, Collins and Jackson posted the four highest bWAR values (for position players) for the whole of the 1910s; Mantle (first) and Mays (third) have similarly significant representations in the 1950s (Mays also leads the entirety of the 1960s).  Since 2010, Trout and Betts are 1-2 in the Majors in position player bWAR (Harper lags behind in 12th place).  These nine – to date – own 14 MVP awards, with only Jackson failing to capture one.  There are 16 combined batting titles, a pair of Triple Crowns and 11 home run belts there.  Cobb (fourth), Collins (tenth), Speaker (sixth), Mantle (16th) and Mays (second) all occupy gargantuan positions among the all-time positional player bWAR leaderboard.  Trout, Betts and Harper appear to be shoo-ins to someday meet up with the others (sans Jackson) in the Hall of Fame.  Accomplishments, accolades, installations within the game’s mythology – they all have immense slots in our story of baseball.  And they are all tied together through this specific lens of being so good at such a young age and having a companion to double the magic. And now Henderson and Witt – and 2024 – join the illustrious roll call. 

Like that 1955 season, 2024 gets a little extra boost from the positional duplicity, a multiplicative surge from a single outlet. The shared space piques the imagination in a wave of resonance that carries from the Mantle v. Mays litigation all the way to the now and affords us a precedent onto which we can project a future where Henderson and Witt joust for supremacy for the next decade.  The idea seems almost too perfect for these two superstar shortstops – debuting in the same year (like the two New York outfielders, who both hit the big leagues in 1951); All-Stars for the first time in year three, a campaign coinciding with a loud and comprehensive breakout; even a head-to-head matchup during the 2024 postseason.  Perhaps 2024 will one day be regarded as the year when Witt and Henderson truly inscribed themselves into the fabric of the game’s great positional confluences like the Mays and Mantle pairing or the various trilogies that have erupted at shortstop:  Robin Yount/Alan Trammell/Cal Ripken, Jr. and Álex Rodríguez/Derek Jeter/Nomar Garciaparra.  

Whatever the future may describe, whatever showdowns and shared honors may ultimately add to the connected arcs, Witt’s and Henderson’s 2024s is a milestone of sorts, an early indication of the (hopefully) long and mesmerizing journey ahead.  At least in terms of shortstops launching from early greatness, they have unimaginably electric company for their travels.

The game’s history has produced 33* position player seasons in which the performer was in his age-24 or younger campaign and produced a bWAR of at least 9.0.  We’ve already covered a few of these prodigies, but there are other shortstops that appear when we look beyond just those seasons that produced multiple stars.  

Shortstops (51% of Games at SS) in Age-24 or Younger Seasons & bWAR of 9.0+