Embracing the Future: The Transactions of the 1972 Texas Rangers

There are a number of reasons teams complete transactions in major-league baseball. While the goal is clearly to improve the team, the exact nature of that improvement varies considerably, based on the circumstances in which the team finds itself. A contending team will look for upgrades in the field or on the mound in the near term, while a rebuilding team will seek to cash in current assets for future value. A financially strapped team might attempt to unload high-salaried players, and a poorly attended team might try to make a splash to boost fan interest and (presumably) attendance. Interestingly, the 1972 Texas Rangers appeared to pursue several of these goals at the same time.

Ostensibly the Rangers were in the midst of a well-publicized youth movement with an eye toward future competitiveness. Owner Bob Short was also struggling financially, and could be expected to try to cut costs. On the other hand, the team wanted to create fan interest in the first season in Dallas, and manager Ted Williams’s competitive drive was an established fact.

Youth Movement

When the Washington Senators were surprisingly competitive in the 1969 season, they were led by a number of veterans. The average age of the team’s position players was 27.8, above the American League average of 27.3. Similarly, the Senators’ pitchers averaged 27.0 years old against an American League average of 27.1. By 1971, the Rangers ranked as the youngest team in the league in both categories. The transactions pursued by the team before and during the 1972 season, in aggregate, would make the team younger still.

Despite the youth movement, however, Ted Williams was not throwing in the towel on fielding a competing club as of the start of the 1972 season. Williams outlined his thinking in The Sporting News’s season preview: “We could be a little better than anyone thinks. I think we’ve plugged some defensive gaps, and our pitching should be stronger.”1 By the season’s midpoint, however, the skipper was ready to embrace the future more vigorously.

Cost Cutting

The move to Dallas from Washington was motivated by money, notably the inability of Bob Short to remain financially viable in the nation’s capital. While a full treatment of Short’s struggles is beyond the scope of this article, his money problems were anything but low key. Sports Illustrated described Short in 1971 as an “impoverished millionaire,”2 and he was in danger of failing to meet the team’s financial obligations. Short’s budget problems showed up in the transaction register. At the start of the 1972 season, the Rangers’ highest-paid player was Frank Howard at $120,000 for the year. Consistent with Sports Illustrated’s observation that Short had in previous years “economized by peddling off players in the middle income range,”3 the next highest-paid player was Don Mincher at $47,000. Both Howard and Mincher would be gone by season’s end, as well as the player with the fourth-highest salary (Ted Kubiak, $31,000).

Near-Term Improvements

The Rangers moved a number of depth pieces for small upgrades. The veterans acquired in these trades did not necessarily support the next great Rangers team, but did offer the potential for improved results in 1972. Their limited upside made any significant impact in the standings unlikely, however.

Make a Splash

In his tenure as owner of the Senators, Bob Short had made a good-faith effort to attract fans to RFK Stadium. In fact, Sports Illustrated noted in 1971 that “Short stages as many promotional extravaganzas as any other owner in baseball, including that formidable showman Charles O. Finley.”4 This desire to attract attention spilled over into transactions as well, as Short had pursued a number of personnel moves aimed at garnering attention for his struggling team while in Washington. Two of the more prominent were the hiring of Ted Williams as manager of the team before the 1969 season and a trade for former 30-game winner Denny McLain before the 1971 season. The Rangers’ 1972 acquisitions did not include any of these noteworthy moves, but the trade of McLain (see below) did undo the least successful of Short’s splashy transactions.

November 3, 1971
Traded Joe Grzenda to the St. Louis Cardinals. Received Ted Kubiak.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Thirty-four-year-old Joe Grzenda was a very good relief pitcher in 1971, appearing in 46 games with a record of 5-2 and an ERA of 1.92. This season stood as an outlier, however, as his ERA was 3.88 in 1969 and 5.00 in 1970. The 29-year-old Ted Kubiak was a good-fielding, mediocre-hitting infielder who appeared in 121 games in 1971, mostly as a starting second baseman, for the Brewers and the Cardinals. Kubiak had been responsible for 1.4 WAR, batting .232 with four homers. Williams was reportedly enamored of Kubiak’s potential as a starting second baseman, and oversaw a spring-training battle between him and youngster Len Randle.5

Results: In 2017, this trade would be considered a savvy move by the Rangers. The trade of a fluky good reliever for a starting position player is looked on as a sure win for the acquiring team. Grzenda, as could be expected, reverted to form. He had an ERA of 5.66 for the Cardinals in 30 games in 1972 and was finished as a major leaguer. Kubiak did not hit well enough to remain a starter at second base, though. He started about one-third of the Rangers’ first 66 games, hitting only .224, before being traded to Oakland. Overall, this trade was inconsequential for the Rangers.

December 2, 1971
Traded Paul Casanova to the Atlanta Braves. Received Hal King.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Paul Casanova was a 29-year-old career backup catcher who had spent his career to that point with the Senators. He was sub-replacement in 1971, hitting a mere .203 with five homers.

Hal King, a 27-year-old backup catcher with Atlanta, had similarly hit .207 in 1971 with five homers, albeit in fewer at-bats than Casanova. King did bat left-handed, however, and therefore would serve as a better platoon partner for incumbent catcher Dick Billings and newly acquired Ken Suarez than the righty-swinging Casanova.

Result: Manager Williams tried King as a starter against right-handed pitching in the early part of the season, but Hal had “hit” his way to a .125 batting average by May 20. Thereafter, his playing time was spotty until he was optioned to Triple-A Denver in July. He did not appear in another game for the Rangers, being packaged in a trade with the Reds after the season. His contributions to the Rangers amounted to 150 plate appearances, a .180 batting average, 4 home runs, and a .333 on-base percentage due to a strong ability to take a walk. Casanova appeared in 49 games for the Braves with a .206 average, and did not contribute above replacement level for the remaining years of his career. This trade proved inconsequential to the Rangers’ fortunes.

December 2, 1971
Traded Bernie Allen to the New York Yankees. Received Gary Jones and Terry Ley.
Traded Gary Jones, Terry Ley, Denny Riddleberger, and Del Unser to the Cleveland Indians. Received Roy Foster, Rich Hand, Mike Paul, and Ken Suarez.
Type: Youth Movement

After the aforementioned minor transactions, the Rangers pulled off a big deal with the Cleveland Indians. Per Ted Williams, the Rangers hoped to acquire “more versatility, more depth, and more pitching potential”6 and moved a number of veterans to the Indians in the quest to meet those needs.

Gary Jones and Terry Ley were young nonprospect pitchers for the Yankees who were destined to spend less than a day under Rangers control. Jones and Ley were acquired for the services of third baseman Bernie Allen and immediately flipped to the Indians as part of the larger trade. Therefore, from the Rangers’ perspective the trade consisted of Allen, Riddleberger, and Unser for Foster, Paul, Hand, and Suarez.

Del Unser was the key to the deal from the Indians’ perspective. The 27-year-old had been a four-year starter at center field for the Senators, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1968, and batting .255/.325/.355 for 2.5 WAR in 1971. Denny Riddleberger, a 26-year-old left-handed reliever, had shown flashes of potential in 1971. Denny had appeared in 57 games for the Senators, striking out 7.2 batters per nine innings and registering a 3.23 ERA. Allen, a 32-year-old utility infielder, had had a pretty good season at the bat in 1971 while appearing in games at both second and third base. Bernie’s hitting was good for a 115 OPS+ as he had a .359 on-base percentage while playing passable defense.

22-year-old right-hander Rich Hand was the key figure in the trade from the Rangers’ perspective. The original trade had been held up for three days until the Indians agreed to include the former first-round pick in the 1969 June secondary draft. In 1971, Hand had gone 8-2 with a 1.88 ERA in Triple A before going 2-6 with a 5.79 ERA with the big club. In his 1970 rookie season he had shown strong potential though; Rich had allowed only 132 hits in 159⅔ innings with an ERA of 3.83.

Paul was a 26-year-old left-hander who had been a regular pitcher for the Tribe since 1968. In 1971, he had struggled to a 2-7 record with a 5.95 ERA and had similarly struggled to a 4.37 ERA in Triple A.

Foster, the other principal piece headed west in the trade, was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1970. He had followed up his stellar first season with an 18-homer effort in 1971, although his average had dropped to .245 and his defense was considered suspect. At the time of the trade, manager Williams was hoping for big things from his new outfielder. Williams stated that he always liked Foster’s potential and opined that “he may hit even better and more home runs in Texas.”7

Ken Suarez was a right-handed-hitting backup catcher. 28 years old, he had batted a mere .203/.310/.285 in 146 plate appearances in 1971.

Result: The trade initially worked out well for the Rangers from the pitching perspective, as both Hand and Paul had some success as starters for the 1972 Rangers. Hand proved to be the Rangers’ best starter in 1972, going 10-14 with a 3.32 ERA in 28 starts. Paul surprised, given his track record, by chipping in with 20 starts good for 8-9 and a 2.17 ERA. Neither, however, would prove to be a long-term solution. Paul reverted back to the journeyman hurler he had always been in 1973 (5-4, 4.95 ERA for the Rangers), and Hand was unable to build on his 1972 season. He went 6-6 with a 4.39 ERA in 1973 to finish up his major-league career.

Foster, in a bizarre twist, never appeared in a regular-season game for the Rangers. He was traded back to the Indians in April (see below). Suarez played for a couple of seasons for the Rangers without distinction.

Unser proved to be the most impactful player included in the trade. He played for 11 more seasons, including five as a major-league regular. He accounted for 11.5 WAR over the remainder of his career. Riddleberger went 1-3 with a 2.50 ERA for the Tribe in 1972 and then exited the major leagues for good. Bernie Allen hit .227 in part-time duty for the Yankees in 1972, then finished his major-league career in 1973 as a sub-replacement player in limited action.

In the final analysis, the Rangers gave up a peak-year center fielder, a valuable commodity, in their quest for depth, versatility, and pitching potential. They received in return a brief glimpse of that potential but nothing else of significance.

Before 1972 Season
Lew Beasley received from the Baltimore Orioles in an unknown transaction.
Type: Youth Movement

Beasley was a 22-year-old outfielder in the Orioles system. A second-round pick in 1967, he had a strong season in Class A in 1971, hitting .303/.347/.392 with 24 steals. It is not recorded what the Rangers gave up to acquire him.

Result: Today, the fact that Beasley was 22 years old in Class A would cast doubt on the predictive power of his strong season at the bat. Those doubts proved to be well founded.

March 4, 1972
Traded Denny McLain to the Oakland Athletics. Received Jim Panther and Don Stanhouse.
Type: Youth Movement

As previously mentioned, owner Bob Short had acquired the enigmatic McLain prior to the 1971 season in an attempt to attract attention for his struggling club. His payoff had been a 10-22 season with a 4.28 ERA, a season-long dispute between McLain and Williams over the structure of the Senators’ pitching rotation, and a pitcher who was thought to be a disruptive influence on the Rangers’ younger players.

On the advice of Rangers Triple-A manager Del Wilber, the Rangers pursued Don Stanhouse and Jim Panther. Wilber was particularly high on Stanhouse’s potential, stating, “If you can get Stanhouse even up for McLain, make the deal.”8 Stanhouse was a first-round draft pick in the 1969 draft and had gone 7-4 with a 3.74 ERA at AAA in 1971. He was considered the outstanding pitching prospect in an Oakland A’s system that had recently produced Catfish Hunter and Vida Blue.

Jim Panther, 26, had gone 10-10 with a 3.63 ERA for Triple-A Iowa in 1971. He was too old to be considered a strong prospect, but offered the versatility to pitch as both a starter and reliever.

Result: Enticing the normally astute Charlie Finley to give up his number-one pitching prospect for the washed-up McLain was a coup for the Rangers. Stanhouse came out of the gate strong in1972, fanning 12 batters in his first 12⅔ innings with the Rangers after striking out the side against the Chicago White Sox in his major-league debut. However, he hurt his elbow and was forced on to the disabled list. His overall 1972 season consisted of 16 starts with a 2-9 record and a 3.78 ERA. Panther made a limited contribution to the Rangers, going 5-9 with a 4.13 ERA in 58 games before being moved to Atlanta in a postseason trade. The McLain-Stanhouse trade, much like the trades described above, did not prove to be a needle-mover for the Rangers franchise.

March 7, 1972
Released Tim Cullen.
Type: Cost Cutting

Tim Cullen was a 30-year-old middle infielder who had appeared in 125 games for the Senators in 1971, batting a mere .191 and fielding just well enough to account for .6 WAR. He was obviously not a part of the Rangers’ future and in the absence of a likely trade market, he was released. He was signed by Oakland and appeared in 72 games in 1972 to finish out his career.

April 3, 1972
Traded Roy Foster and Tommy McCraw to the Cleveland Indians. Received Ted Ford.
Type: Youth Movement

After his acquisition in the blockbuster deal with the Indians, Roy Foster had hit .302 in spring training. Despite this, Ted Williams was not a fan. “I just couldn’t stand his moping around all the time,” said Williams. “That’s not my kind of player.”9

30-year old Tommy McCraw was a nine-year veteran who had been acquired by the Senators before the 1971 season. He had played 122 games for them, batting .213/.291/.382 in 234 plate appearances. It was clear to him during 1972 spring training that he was not in Ted Williams’s plans. McCraw commented, “Heck, he only gave me four at-bats all spring training. How could I prove anything to him?”10

The Rangers were excited by the potential of the 24-year-old Ted Ford. “I personally made this trade, I think it’s a damn good one,” said Ted Williams.11 said Ted Williams. “I think we got the best end of it in age on the one hand and enthusiasm on the other.” Ford had been a first-round pick in 1966, and had torn up Triple-A pitching to the tune of a .326 average with good power in 1970 and a .330 average, .404 on-base percentage, and .500 slugging percentage in 1971. He had struggled upon his callup to the Indians in 1971, though; he hit .194 with no power in 206 plate appearances.

Result: Ford had the best year of his career for the Rangers in 1972. After hitting a three-run homer in his first game on April 28, he went on to hit 14 homers, knock in 50 runs, and bat .235. His career faded quickly after that, as he hit only .225 in 40 at-bats in 1973 and exited the majors for good after that season. McCraw came out of the gate strongly for the Indians. The Tribe surprisingly surged into first place in May, prompting Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte to say, “I don’t know where we’d be today if it weren’t for Tom McCraw. He has been a tremendous addition.”12 The discerning fan would be skeptical that a 31-year-old with a previous high of 2.6 WAR in any of his previous seasons, and that all the way back in 1967 as a 26-year-old, would suddenly flash MVP potential, and would be proved correct. McCraw finished 1972 with a .258 average and accounted for 2.0 WAR, not bad but certainly not the linchpin of a playoff team. He went on to play three more seasons as a decent hitting (on-base percentage ranged from .336 to .343), poor fielding part-time player before leaving the majors after the 1975 season. Foster was used primarily as a pinch-hitter for the Indians, and his poor performance confirmed Williams’s estimate of his potential. The 1972 season was his last in the majors.

This trade proved to be another that had limited short-term and no long-term impact for the Rangers.

May 8, 1972
Signed Tom Robson as a free agent.
Type: Youth Movement

Tom Robson was a 25-year-old outfielder who had hit 16 homers and delivered a .274/.347/.445 slash line in Double A in 1971 in the Reds system. The Rangers signed him after he was released by the Reds in April. His major-league career totaled 54 undistinguished plate appearances in the 1974 and 1975 seasons.

May 30, 1972
Traded Norm McRae to the Detroit Tigers. Received Dalton Jones.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Norm McRae, a 23-year-old who had been a throw-in in the 1971 acquisition of Denny McLain, went 6-13 with a 4.89 ERA for Triple-A Denver in 1971. He was not viewed as a prospect of note.

Dalton Jones was a 27-year-old utility infielder for the Tigers. He had appeared in 83 games for them in 1971, batting .254.

Result: McRae failed to return to the major leagues (he had played briefly with Detroit in 1969 and 1970), while Jones served his utility role in undistinguished fashion for the Rangers in 1972 and never again appeared in a major-league game.

July 20, 1972
Traded Ted Kubiak and Don Mincher to the Oakland Athletics. Received a player to be named later, Vic Harris and Marty Martinez. The Oakland Athletics sent Steve Lawson (July 26, 1972) to the Texas Rangers to complete the trade.
Type: Youth Movement

It had been about eight months since the Rangers’ last big trade. With the team mired in last place in the American League West at the All-Star break, owner Bob Short finally was able to persuade Ted Williams to embrace the youth movement full force. Per Short, “We think we are now putting a young, aggressive, and attractive team out there, one that with experience can be a contender in future years.”13 Veterans Ted Kubiak and Don Mincher were not the last to exit the Rangers’ stable over the following few weeks.

Kubiak had been acquired from St. Louis as a potential starting second baseman in November of 1971. He had received regular playing time for the Rangers, but with a .550 OPS was clearly not someone to continue playing with a full-fledged youth movement underway.

Don Mincher, who was 34 years old, had been the Senators’ leading hitter in 1971 after coming over in a trade with Oakland. In 100 games for the Senators, he had hit 10 home runs, knocked in 45 runs, and hit .291. He was still effective in 1972, although this was due more to a high on-base percentage driven by walks than by his customary home-run power. He had hit only six homers in 243 plate appearances at the time of the trade, and was batting at a .236 clip.

Steve Lawson was a 21-year-old left-hander working at Oakland’s Triple-A farm club at the time of the trade. A third-round pick in the 1969 draft, he had excelled at Class A in 1971, going 7-2 with a 3.07 ERA while striking out nearly a batter an inning. He jumped from Class A to Triple A for the 1972 season, and was struggling against the tougher competition (7-9, 4.57 ERA in 20 starts). However, Denver manager Del Wilber was very high on Lawson’s potential. Per Bob Short: Wilber “advised us to take Lawson head up for both Kubiak and Mincher. That’s how much he thinks of this kid.”14

Vic Harris, the A’s first-round draft pick in 1970, had stolen 39 bases while batting.291/.392/.419 at Class A in 1971. The A’s had moved him through Double A and Triple A in 1972 and he was still performing well, batting a combined .293/.355/.419 with 18 steals and 7 triples. He seemed to offer a nice package of speed and batting eye as a middle infielder.

Marty Martinez was a 30-year-old utility player who was hitting .125 for the A’s at the time of the trade. His last regular playing time had been 150 at-bats with the Astros in 1970. He was the epitome of a throw-in.

Result: Steve Lawson appeared in 13 games in relief for the Rangers in 1972. While his ERA was a solid 2.81, he walked 10 batters in only 16 innings. Despite Del Wilber’s assertion that he “has all the equipment,” he would struggle with control in Triple A in 1973 and was destined not to appear in another major-league game.

Vic Harris debuted for the Rangers in 1972 as well. He batted only .140 in 61 games. In 1973, he became the Rangers’ starting center fielder and appeared in 152 games. He batted .249 with eight home runs, but struggled in the field and on the basepaths (he stole 13 bases against 12 times caught stealing). The Rangers traded him after the 1973 season, and although he played through 1978 he had the unusual distinction of never finishing a season with a positive WAR.

Martinez played in 26 games for the Rangers in 1972 without distinction to finish off his playing career.

Mincher served as a pinch-hitter for the A’s for the balance of the 1972 season. He appeared in the A’s World Series victory over the Reds, getting a hit in his only at-bat, before hanging up his spikes for good. Kubiak continued to play his utility-infielder role for the A’s and Padres through 1976, but had negligible impact on his teams’ fortunes.

This was yet another Rangers youth bet that did not pay off. Given the negligible cost, however, nothing was really lost or gained.

August 31, 1972
Sold Frank Howard to the Detroit Tigers.
Type: Cost Cutting

Frank Howard was a star for the Senators in 1971, slugging 26 home runs to lead the team and delivering a 145 OPS+ and 2.7 WAR. He fell from those lofty heights in 1972, being reduced to a .244 average with nine homers on August 30. He had still managed a 116 OPS+ in the reduced offensive environment of the time, but with his high salary was a luxury the rebuilding Rangers no longer thought necessary. He played for the Tigers through the 1973 season, but his days as a major contributor were over.

August 31, 1972
Traded Casey Cox to the New York Yankees. Received Jim Roland.
Type: Near Term Improvement?

Casey Cox, 30, had been with the Senators since his major-league debut in 1966. He had enjoyed several solid years with the team, but since the end of the 1969 season had toiled as a below-replacement-level spot starter and reliever. Through August 30, he was 3-5 with a 4.41 ERA in 1972.

Jim Roland had been pitching in the majors since debuting as a 19-year-old in 1962. He was still an effective reliever through the 1971 season, but his performance had fallen off noticeably in 1972. With the A’s and Yankees, he had sported an ERA around 5.00 in limited innings.

Result: Neither Cox nor Roland pitched effectively for his new team in 1972. Cox threw one inning for the Yankees in 1973 and then exited the major leagues for good, while Roland never appeared in another game in the majors after 1972. This trade was completely irrelevant for both clubs.

September 7, 1972
Purchased Rich Hinton from the New York Yankees.
Type: Youth Movement

Rich Hinton had the unusual distinction of being drafted five different times before finally signing with the White Sox in 1969. At the time of his purchase from the Yankees, he was 25 years old and had yet to distinguish himself in either the minors or in his brief major-league callups.

Result: Hinton got into five games for the Rangers in September 1972, but those would be the only games he played for them. The Rangers traded him to the Indians before the 1973 season. He pitched in the majors through 1979, but exceeded replacement level only in 1978. Hinton was another young pitcher lottery ticket that failed to pay out.

Overall Summary

The Rangers made a number of transactions before and during the 1972 season, most in pursuit of young cost-controlled talent. The team placed a particular emphasis on the accumulation of pitchers with strong potential, while also adding outfielder Ted Ford and infielder Vic Harris to their youthful roster.

Unfortunately, the net effect of all that player movement was negligible. Most of the acquisitions made the strongest contributions they would make to the Rangers in the 54-win 1972 season. Rich Hand (10-14, 3.32 ERA in 1972), Mike Paul (8-9, 2.17 ERA), Don Stanhouse (2-9, 3.78 ERA), and Steve Lawson (0-0, 2.81) all either washed out or moved on without contributing any more significantly. Similarly, outfielder Ted Ford generated 2.3 WAR with 14 homers in 1972 before turning into a pumpkin while infielder Vic Harris never delivered on his potential.

On the other hand, of the players the Rangers gave up in trade, only Del Unser achieved any significant post-Texas success. Unser’s 11.5 post-trade WAR was the most accumulated by a significant margin by any player included in the transactions described above.

Although the Rangers’ bets on youth did not pay off, in my opinion the attempt was still worthwhile. Retaining Del Unser would not have made the team competitive in the near-term anyway. Perhaps they shouldn’t have listened to Del Wilber’s advice on pitching prospects, though, as none of his recommendations (Stanhouse, Lawson, Panther) panned out.

Postscript

The Rangers 1972 talent drive was not a complete wash. In the 1972 June entry draft, the Rangers selected third baseman Roy Howell (10.9 career WAR), catcher Jim Sundberg (40.5 career WAR), and first baseman Mike Hargrove (30.3 career WAR). It would take a while, but better days were indeed on the way in Arlington.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER has been a baseball fan since receiving his first pack of baseball cards in 1974. An engineer by profession, Bill recently began writing about baseball in addition to avidly reading about and watching the game. He has a particular interest in the strategic aspects of team building and roster construction.

 

Notes

1 Merle Heryford, “Rangers’ Youth Fails to Shatter Ted’s Optimism,” The Sporting News, April 8, 1972: 11.

2 Ron Fimrite, “Bad Case of the Short Shorts,” Sports Illustrated, August 9, 1971.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5Merle Heryford, “Rangers’ Youth.”

6 Merle Heryford, “Rangers Size Up Foster as Home-Run Threat,” The Sporting News, December 18, 1971: 47.

7 Ibid.

8 Randy Galloway, “Youth Drive? “Bunk!’ Says McClain,” The Sporting News, March 18, 1972: 52.

9 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Prefer Their Ford over a Rolls Royce,” The Sporting News, June 24, 1972: 20.

10 Russell Schneider, “Injuns Shudder: Where Would They Be if Not for McCraw,” The Sporting News, June 3, 1972: 9.

11 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Prefer.”

12 Russell Schneider, “Injuns Shudder.”

13 Randy Galloway, “Ranger Roster a Cross-Word Puzzle,” The Sporting News, August 12, 1972: 24.

14 Ibid.