Top NYY Could-Have-Beens: Fred McGriff
12/23/2024 01:00 PM
Crime Dog was a star, and the poster boy for bad trades.
There are a lot of players on this list who were dealt away by the Yankees after a cup of coffee, or who never quite found their stride with the club. Then there's the Hall of Famer, the guy that impressed Teddy Ballgame himself, who never stepped foot in the Yankee home dugout.
That Fred McGriff broke out as a star on a division rival only twists the knife that was one of the Yankees' biggest missteps.
Years in Yankees Organization: 1981-82
How They Left: Traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in 1982
Career MLB Yankees Statistics: Never reached the majors with the Yankees
Career MLB Statistics: 19 seasons, 2,460 games, 10,174 PA, .284/.377/.509, 2,490 H, 493 HR, 72 SB, 134 OPS+, 134 wRC+, 52.6 rWAR, 56.9 fWAR
Drafted in the ninth round of the 1981 MLB Draft out of a Tampa area high school, McGriff turned down college to sign and spend his first summer in pro ball in the Gulf Coast League. By 1982 he was coming into his own, leading the league in home runs and RBI, just in time to be dealt to the still-nascent Toronto Blue Jays — this would become the front half of a bookend for his pro career.
You can see the logic of the trade. McGriff was a central cast first baseman, without the kind of athleticism that could see a move to the outfield. He was also very, very young, having just turned 19 when dealt. The Yankees had also just seen Don Mattingly's first turn in the majors, two years older than Crime Dog, and bet on him (or Steve Balboni if Mattingly didn't work out).
McGriff, Mike Morgan*, and unsuccessful "Bronx Burner" Dave Collins headed north to Toronto, for Dale Murray and Tom Dodd, a trade so lopsided that Rob Neyer memorialized it as one of the game's great, stupid moments. I imagine most Yankee fans know off the top of their heads that Murray appeared in just 62 relief outings over the next two-plus seasons, totaling a 4.73 ERA. Dodd, an original Yankee draftee, was dealt back from Toronto after being in the John Mayberry deal. He never made it to the Bronx, notching all of 16 career PAs for the Orioles.
*Morgan could honestly be his own honorable mention for this series, as he made an All-Star team in 1991 and pitched in the majors until 2002. The Yankees just get a slight pass on him because he also went belly-up with the Jays and it took a long time and multiple team changes for him to truly find his footing in the majors.
We're 300-odd words into this, McGriff hasn't made the majors yet, and that's the end of his Yankee story, unless you count the .872 career OPS he notched hitting against the Yankees. Incidentally, that began in his very first game in the Bronx, on June 8, 1987, when he went upper tank off Rick Rhoden.
Maybe now's a good time to talk about the privilege of perspective. I have all the perspective in the world, because I have 14 tabs open to McGriff's FanGraphs and Baseball Reference pages, his National Baseball Hall of Fame writeup, bios, stats, newspaper articles, all the information I need to be able to conclude the Yankees probably should have held on to Fred McGriff.
If the sole source of your baseball information were broadsheets and tabloids in the early '80s, you don't have that perspective, by definition. If the Yankees traded Brando Mayea tomorrow, we wouldn't really know what that means for Mayea. That Murray and Dodd were so replaceable is the compelling factor in making this such a bad trade — simply put, you don't know you have Fred McGriff until you have Fred McGriff.
Indeed, we wouldn't really know who McGriff was until his breakout in 1987, putting up 20 home runs and 131 wRC+ in 107 games for the Jays. Although there had been optimism — Baseball America wrote in the 1983-84 offseason that "it will be some time before he makes the Yankees regret that deal more than ever, but the time should come," — a private swing instructor and three tours in the Dominican Winter League truly helped Fred fill out.
One of the most consistent power threats in baseball soon emerged. McGriff put 34 out the next year, kicking off seven straight years of 30 home runs or more. He compiled a pretty good MVP case for himself in 1989, highlighted by opening the cavernous SkyDome in style:
That season the Dog lead the AL in homers and OPS, with a six and a half win campaign. It is very, very fun to look at how we thought of baseball at this time:
McGriff finished sixth in MVP voting, but you can make a really good argument he should have finished second or third. I'm a believer in letting pitchers win MVPs, and Bret Saberhagen was unconscious. Rickey Henderson was Rickey. After that, it's the old offense vs. defense value argument, and I think Toronto's newly-crowned star just created more runs than Cal Ripken Jr. would have prevented. Instead, he finished behind a reliever.
One of the things that made McGriff such a hard case for Hall of Fame voters, I believe, is that he was somewhat of a travelling star — always good enough that you wanted him hitting in the middle of your lineup, but never really thought of as linked with one franchise. I think of him as a Blue Jay first because my dad loved him so much, but by the end of calendar 1990, the 26-year-old was headed about as far from Toronto as you can get.
McGriff and Tony Fernández were dealt to the Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter, the kind of trade that when you put it in context kind of befuddles you. Three of the four were either All Stars or MVP vote-getters in '90, and Fernández received MVP down-ballot votes in 1989. Four genuine stars — I don't have time here for a thorough critique of Joe Carter — changing teams in the same deal, all under the age of 30. We don't see deals like that.
Ho-hum, as a Padre he notched a .906 OPS, leading the NL in home runs in 1992. While it must have caused some mental anguish seeing his old squad win their first World Series that year, it wouldn't be long before McGriff found himself on baseball's biggest stage. Dealt again as Tom Werner and company ripped out the studs of San Diego's young core, this time to the "Team of the '90s", Fred introduced himself to Atlanta in style:
Joining Atlanta at a time the club was in second place behind the San Francisco Giants in the NL West, McGriff seemed to light a fire under the rest of the squad (though not as literally as the press box)— smashing a 1.004 OPS in the 68 games remaining that season. The team as a whole went 51-17, leapfrogging the Giants, although they eventually bowed out to the Phillies in a six-game NLCS. For the second year in a row, McGriff would have watched his former team celebrate a World Series title, this time in that most famous of Joe Carter moments.
Still, Crime Dog's impact was felt throughout the clubhouse, with his own teammates lauding him with praise in the New York Times:
"He just makes everyone else a better hitter. I hit in front of him. It wasn't that the pitchers were throwing me different pitches. They were throwing me the same pitches, but I was just more of an aggressive hitter with him hitting behind me. He just makes everyone else better." - Ron Gant
After seeing his old teammates celebrate twice, Fred McGriff got his shot in 1995 — indeed, what would be the only title for that "Team of the '90s". Batting cleanup, McGriff was coming out of his peak in this, his age-31 season, but an .850 OPS will play, especially when paired with strong World Series play, blasting two home runs as the Braves finally got their ring.
Remember how I said there was a certain bookend to McGriff's career? He got his start with a team just five years old at the time he was traded for, and after the 1997 campaign Atlanta sold his contract to the new Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
You might think of that as an insult to one of the decade's most productive hitters, but the D-Rays gained instant credibility as a new franchise. Fred McGriff was A Guy, the type of player that could convince fans and media that this was a real project with real stakes (and not just because of those classic Emanski videos). For McGriff's part, simply getting to play in front of his family and hometown was the highlight of the deal.
That 1998 Rays team was STINKY, with just two players seeing more than 300 PA with a .750 OPS. McGriff was of course the best full-time player, and the best the next season, and the second- or third-best in 2000. Dealt to the Cubs at the 2001 Trade Deadline, he stayed on the North Side in '02, spent a spell in LA the following year, and then returned to Tampa Bay for one last ride in '04. He tried to reach 500 homers but fell seven shy and retired.
McGriff's pursuit of the Hall of Fame could make for its own deep dive. First eligible in 2010, he received 21.5 percent of the vote, and while that grew to just under forty percent by his final year on the ballot, he never came close to that 75 percent threshold. His movement between teams hurt in the eyes of writers, and his 493 home runs kept him just shy of that "magical" 500 club. It was the same number as Lou Gehrig though, so not too shabby — especially since he swatted at least 30 bombs in 10 separate seasons and twice led the league in the era right before Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds started churning out some downright silly power seasons.
In 2022, McGriff was universally elected by the Contemporary Era Committee into the Hall, where he was inducted the next summer alongside Scott Rolen. You may say he got in the back door; I just say Fred McGriff is rightfully a Hall of Famer.
I think about how the Yankees could use a guy like Fred McGriff right now; 35 home runs from a lefty first baseman feels like a pipe dream given the power outage at that position the last couple of seasons. Betting on Don Mattingly turned out to be a great decision, but those 493 career dingers would have looked a lot more fun in the Bronx than spread across so many other franchises. At least we got Dale Murray.
Sources
Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders: A Complete Guide to the Worst Decisions and Stupidest Moments in Baseball History. 2006. Simon&Schuster.
Marc Topkin, "Know Who Thinks Fred McGriff Deserves to Be in the Hall of Fame? New Member Chipper Jones," Tampa Bay Times, January 25, 2019.
Claire Smith, "McGriff and Turnaround are Same Word to the Braves," New York Times, October 5, 1993: B16
Bill Francis, "McGriff honored, thrilled with Hall of Fame election", Baseball Hall of Fame, December 5, 2022.
A very long phone call with my dad.
