Card of the Week: 1967 Topps #122 George Brunet
Posted by Andy on April 3, 2010
Ahh, the 1967 Topps set. This isn't one of the better sets, thanks to a lot of photos like this one. Don't get me wrong--a closeup of a player is not a bad thing, but this guy isn't wearing his cap and the set is full of too many shots of this type. The back of the card is similar to others from this general time period. But let me ask you this--if you pitched 8 complete games, why on earth would you draw a big number 8 on a chalkboard?
Here's the long story as to why I picked the Brunet card.
Now that WPA is widely available on Baseball-Reference.com, it's time to start using it. I feel it is perhaps the most useful stat around today. If you're not familiar with the stat, check out Sean's post announcing this addition.
I used a series of Game Finder searches to find out the average WPA for starting pitchers in 2009 in their wins, losses, and no-decisions. (Actually I looked a the first 300 of each to occur in the season.) Winning starters had an average WPA of 0.24, while losing starters had an average WPA of -.12. Starters with no-decisions averaged 0.11. Those numbers make sense. A really solid win by a starting pitcher usually scores in the range of 0.20-0.40 WPA. Dominant performances ae usually around 0.50 while a few games creep up in the range of 0.60-0.80. These games are usually shutouts where the winning team scored only 1 run and the starter went the distance. Late in such games, situations with runners on base have extremely high leverage and pitchers who prevent scoring rack up the WPA.
Anyway, across the years covered currently by the Streak Finder (say it with me now...1920-1929 and 1952-present) here are the longest streaks of game starts where the pitcher registered at least 0.24 WPA but didn't get the win:
| Rk | Strk Start | End | Games | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | GF | SV | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | HBP | WP | BK | Tm | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Derek Lowe | 2006-04-18 | 2006-05-05 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27.1 | 18 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 19 | 1 | 1.32 | 1 | 0 | 0 | LAD |
| 2 | Dustin Hermanson | 1997-08-22 | 1997-09-13 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25.2 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 12 | 22 | 0 | 1.05 | 0 | 1 | 0 | MON |
| 3 | George Brunet | 1967-09-02 | 1967-09-15 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36.0 | 20 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 22 | 0 | 0.75 | 1 | 0 | 0 | CAL |
There's our man Brunet in 1967. What a tough year for the guy. He led all of baseball in losses with 19, despite having an overall positive WPA for the season.
April 3rd, 2010 at 8:03 am
And look at his previous five starts. In the total of nine games his team scored 0,1,2,2,2,1,2,2,2 = 14 runs.
April 3rd, 2010 at 8:23 am
I've got this card. He switched teams so often that he probably decided not to wear a cap, figuring the team logo would be blacked out by the time the card appeared (just kidding). As for the drawings on back of the cards of that era, you have to consider that the main market was kids, as opposed to collectors. That's also the reason they had that awful bubble gum in the pack. It ruined my 1966 Sandy Koufax card, with all the sugar residue.
April 3rd, 2010 at 12:52 pm
George Brunet was a lefty, but the cartoon shows him pitching righthanded. Maybe that's because the description lists him as a righthander, too. Then again, he was a righthanded batter. (Lefthanded throwing, righthanded hitting position players are rare, but pitchers who do this are more common.) He's also shown righting on the blackboard with his right hand. While most southpaws probably write lefthanded (and most righthanded throwers probably write righthanded), some do the opposite. In fact, just across the room from me, lefthander J.A. Happ was on the T.V. screen pitching in the Phillies last pre-season game. (He's in the dugout now because the Phillies are at bat.) I got his autograph a couple of years ago, and he wrote it righthanded. A few weeks later, I got Chris Coste's autograph. Coste throws righthanded, but he signed lefthanded. Getting back to Brunet, he may have batted righthanded because he was a natural righthander. Relief pitcher Al Levine, who played in the majors in the 1990s and early 2000s, is an example of a natural lefthander who pitched righthanded and batted lefthanded (although as an American League reliever for all or most of his career, probably didn't get many, if any, at bats). I read that his father had wanted him to be a third baseman and thus had encouraged him to learn to throw righthanded at a young age.
Several years ago, when I hung out regularly in the Usenet newsgroup, rec.sport.baseball, someone asked if there had been any baseball players who had a last name that was spelled the same as that of another player but was pronounced differently. I came up with Jose Pagan (puh-GAHN), originally from Puerto Rico, and Dave Pagan (PAY-gan), originally from Saskatchewan, Canada. I remember that a T.V. baseball announcer, commenting on the lesser-known Dave Pagan's entry into a game, noted how his last name's pronunciation differed from that of the better-known Jose Pagan's last name and that both came from places in the Western Hemisphere that were not in the U.S. (Never mind the technicality that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.)
I also mentioned two players who passed through Washington, DC, and played their home games in RFK Stadium around the same time in the early 1970s: Washington Redskins special teams player/reserve running back Bob Brunet, a Louisianan whose last name was pronounced bru-NAY, and Washington Senators pitcher George Brunet, whose last name was pronounced bru-NET. Yes, George Brunet did move on to yet another team after his stint with the Los Angeles/California Angels.
April 3rd, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Your stories and insight are pretty awesome, DD. Thanks for another great comment.
I have thought before about players whose last names are spelled the same but pronounced differently. I had a list in my head at one point but I can't recall it now. One that does come to mind is Franco, which rhymes with "bank"-o for many players but rhymes with "honk"-o for Julio Franco, even though few people ever correctly pronounced it.
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Adam Lind / Jose Lind
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Eric and Greg Gagne. Eric is from Quebec while Greg is from Massachusetts.
There was a professional wrestler popular in Minnesota in the 1980s whose name was also Greg Gagne. He was born in Minnesota (son of Verne) but that family used the French pronunciation.
April 4th, 2010 at 12:57 am
John Valentin and Jose Valentin.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
pat burrell (burl) and anyone else named burrell? i see there are 2 others but having played over a 100 years ago, i cannot confirm that it is pronounced differently.