From Mays to Trout: What lost career time means for the legacies of MLB greats

Willie Mays was still finding himself as a player when he departed the New York Giants in late May of 1952. There was no doubt he'd already displayed one of the best skill sets anyone had seen on a Major League Baseball field, but he was very much still in the process of converting his immense talent into immense production.

Mays turned 21 years old on May 6, 1952. On May 28, Mays went 0-for-4 at Ebbets Field, then left the Giants to serve in the army during the Korean War. He missed the rest of that season and all of 1953. When he returned in time for the 1954 campaign, he was fully formed as a ballplayer, at least in part because a good bit of his military service involved playing around 180 baseball games. During his return season of 1954, Mays hit .345 while winning his first batting title, clubbed 41 homers, won the National League's MVP Award and led the Giants to a championship.

When baseball historians get into the what-if topic of players losing time to the worthy endeavor of serving their country, Mays isn't typically the avatar of the subject. Usually, Ted Williams comes up first, or maybe Joe DiMaggio. Part of that may be because the scope of player involvement in World War II dwarfed that of Korea. Mays, of course, went on to play into the 1970s, finishing with 660 career homers, 3,283 hits and a place on the short list of best players in baseball history. But what if Mays had not been drafted? Could his stature somehow become even more than it already is?

Perhaps. As mentioned, Mays hadn't finished his development when he left for the Army. Over 155 games, he had hit .266 with a 116 OPS+, clubbed 24 homers and driven in 91 runs. Excellent numbers, to be sure, especially for one so young. But the production pales in comparison to what Mays did after he came back: a 13-year stretch in which he hit .312 with an average of 36 homers, 100 RBIs, 106 runs and a 162 OPS+, all while cementing his status as perhaps the best-ever defender in center field.

Because Mays was so different after returning from the service, it's hard to say how much production he lost. But consider this: During his rookie season, Mays hit 20 homers. In his return season, he hit 41. Let's split the difference and say he would have averaged 30 homers over the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Instead of the four total homers he hit before leaving, he'd have hit around 60. The extra 56 dingers would have increased his career total to 716. In other words, Hank Aaron would have been chasing Mays' career home run mark, not the hallowed total of 714 hit by Babe Ruth.

For Mays, the home run record would have been a towering achievement, but there was more. Mays certainly didn't know it at the time, but he also might have missed out on something like 12 to 15 bWAR (the Baseball Reference blend of WAR), at least. As it is, Mays ranks fifth all time with 156.2 bWAR. If you tack on another 15 to that figure, you have Ruth, then Mays, then a drop to third-place Walter Johnson. The question of whether Ruth or Mays is the greatest player ever would possibly be promoted from the list of great baseball debates to its own place as THE great baseball debate.

There are all too many of these kinds of what-if scenarios littered through baseball history. Players have lost time to injuries and suspensions, and still do. Suspensions are self-inflicted. Alex Rodriguez lost an entire season, or else he would have soared past the 700-homer plateau, just to cite one recent example. Injuries can be a product of bad habits, bad luck or a combination of both. But they, too, are struggles of the self, not the kind of thing that hits the entire population of players all at once.

All-encompassing disruptions have skewed the historical record away from what it might have been. There have been wars that have taken players out of the majors and shortened seasons. There have been labor stoppages that clipped campaigns. Some players had shorter big league careers than they otherwise might have because they were stuck in the minor leagues, with no recourse for finding another big league organization that could use them. There were the decades of major league time lost for the great black players who never got a chance to have their achievements precisely measured against those of their white contemporaries. And, now, for the first time, we are facing the reality of a global pandemic putting a halt to the national pastime.

Right now, at this precarious moment, the homers that aren't flying and the hits that aren't falling are way down the list of things that we are worried about. That's as it should be. Eventually, though -- sooner than later, we hope -- society will start churning again. So, too, will baseball. When it does, we'll once again be in the position of calculating estimates of things that we know we lost, even if we can't know exactly how many. Unless something wonderful and unexpected happens very soon, baseball history will end up looking a little different than how it otherwise might have looked.

Think of the history that has been lost already. Here's a very incomplete list of how the record books might look if there had been no wars, and if the owners and players had always gotten along:

Ted Williams: Williams lost three full seasons to World War II and most of two others to Korea. Without all that lost time, he would certainly have flown past the 3,000-hit mark and perhaps reached around 3,500. He, too, might have challenged Ruth's home run record. He also would likely be baseball's all-time leader in both runs and RBIs, and it wouldn't be particularly close in either category. Simply put, Williams' numbers would have been so staggering that there would be virtually no debate about who the best-ever hitter was.

Hank Greenberg: The great Tigers slugger from the 1930s and '40s is a Hall of Famer. However, he lost around 4½ seasons to military service to World War II. In his last full season before entering the military, Greenberg hit 41 homers at age 29 in 1940. In his first full post-service season, he hit 44 homers at age 35 in 1946. Without those missed years, Greenberg would quite likely have joined the 500-homer club.

Joe DiMaggio: Everyone is certainly aware of DiMaggio's greatness, and he was one of the most iconic personalities in baseball history. When he was still around, DiMaggio was usually referred to as baseball's greatest living player -- especially when he had some influence in making the proclamation. However, these days, you don't really hear that many arguments about him being baseball's best-ever player. That likely stems from how much less his career record is than what it might have been. DiMaggio lost three full seasons to the military, was often injured during his career and retired at 36 after his first real down season (and it wasn't that bad). And even though DiMaggio debuted at 21, he had already been destroying the Pacific Coast League for three years, so he was probably ready for Yankee Stadium a couple of years before that. What would an uninterrupted big league career for DiMaggio have looked like from, say, 1934 to 1953? Well, consider this: DiMaggio's career averages per 162 games played were 207 hits, 34 homers, 143 RBIs and 130 runs. They didn't play 162 games per season in his day, but you get the point. His career was to baseball what Michael Jordan's was to basketball.

Bob Feller: Rapid Robert missed the entire 1942, 1943 and 1944 seasons and most of 1945 because of WWII. He won 25 games at age 22 in 1941 and had 26 wins at age 27 in 1946. In between, he won five games over nine starts. He retired in 1956 with 266 wins. Now, as a young power pitcher, you can't assume Feller would have stayed healthy through those missing seasons, and you can't discount the possibility that his career might have been prolonged because of the break. But if Feller had pitched through those years, stayed healthy and enjoyed the same career length, we're talking about someone would could have won around 360 games and been a lot more prominent in discussions about the best-ever pitcher.

Harold Baines: Baines enjoyed a long enough career that he got to experience firsthand the labor stoppages in 1981 and again in 1994-95. Given his established levels of play around both stoppages, you can guess that Baines lost around 130 hits, perhaps more. He finished with 2,866 career hits. Baines, of course, eventually was selected to the Hall of Fame via a veterans committee. But membership in the 3,000-hits club might have gotten him in a lot sooner.

Satchel Paige: As a representative for all the Negro Leagues greats who missed out on major league milestones, let's consider ol' Satch. We can't really quantify what Paige would have done in the majors with any degree of certainty. By all accounts, he was likely one of the four or five best pitchers of all time. We also know that Paige had an unbelievable combination of durability and longevity. The first season in which he has extant statistics from the Negro Leagues was 1927. His last season in the majors was 1953. He pitched professionally into his 50s. Given all of this, it seems realistic to suggest that had he simply been a major league pitcher, Paige would have won at least 400 games.

Stan Musial: The Man lost one season to military service, but it was his age-24 campaign. He had 197 hits the season before he went in and 228 in his return season. His missing season could have pushed Musial past 3,800 hits. He also would have likely reached the 2,000 mark in both runs and RBIs. And although Musial hadn't fully developed his power at the time he entered the service, he eventually finished with 475 career home runs. If he'd had a power surge in the missing 1945 season, perhaps he could have sneaked over 500.

Cecil Travis: Here's another avatar for a group, this time for players who might be in the Hall of Fame if not for missed seasons driven by external forces. Travis was a regular shortstop and third baseman for the Washington Senators from 1934 to 1941, a period that began with his age-20 season. During those eight seasons, only DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and Greenberg bested Travis' .327 average. Among shortstops, only Joe Cronin and Luke Appling created more runs, even though Travis plied his trade in cavernous Griffith Stadium.

In 1941 -- his last season before entering the service -- Travis led the AL with 218 hits, even though that's the season in which DiMaggio had his 56-game hitting streak and Williams hit .406. During the war, Travis nearly had to have his frostbit feet amputated while serving for the army in Europe. He was a shell of himself as a player once he returned, then soon retired at age 34. Travis wouldn't likely have been a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, but he would have had a shot if not for seasons missed just when he career was reaching its apex. And he might have played a lot longer if not for the disruption.

Tommy John: The man, not the surgery, finished with 288 wins. He went through the work stoppages of 1972 and 1981, the latter of which came during a spree in which he was winning 20 games per season. It's possible he could have reached 300 wins and even if he fell a couple short, perhaps he would have hung on just a little longer near the end of his already-long career. John is not in the Hall of Fame, but he probably would have gotten there had he reached 300.

Bert Blyleven: In a career that was mostly contemporaneous with John's, he finished with 287 wins. He wasn't winning games at the same clip as John when the 1981 stoppage hit, but you never know. Blyleven is in the Hall, but with 300 wins, he wouldn't have had to wait so long.

Barry Bonds: Bonds finished with 2,935 career hits and went through the 1994-95 work stoppage. He was playing pretty much every day at that time, so you can figure he lost around 68 games. He hit .302 when he did play in 1994-95 and averaged more than a hit per game. Without the stoppage, Bonds would have possibly reached the 3,000-hit club. He also would have gotten the four RBIs he needed to reach 2,000 for his career, a level only five players have reached.

Those are just a few of the what-ifs lingering from the past. Now, back in the present, here we are, once again facing the probability of lost games. We are weeks away from knowing how many and years away from fully understanding the ramifications of what will be lost. The historical stakes are higher for some than others, as is always the case with baseball's marquee performers. Let's consider a few possibilities for the historical fallout that would come from the nightmare scenario of a season that never begins.

Albert Pujols: The two years left on Pujols' contract could be sliced in half. He has already racked up 3,202 hits, 656 homers and 2,075 RBIs, so he has passed some major milestones. Losing a full season would kill any remaining chance that Pujols had to reach the 700-homer mark. And it would also doom his already long-shot bid to pass Hank Aaron's RBI record of 2,297. One faint silver lining: If a lost season were to convince Pujols to hang 'em up, it would freeze a career batting average that as of now still rounds to .300.

Miguel Cabrera: Miggy needs 185 hits to reach 3,000 and 23 homers to reach 500. There are plenty of seasons left on his contract to get him to both marks, even with a lost 2020 season. That said, Cabrera turns 37 next month, and you can't take anything for granted, especially given the chronic knee trouble that sapped his power in 2019. The worst thing about it was that reports on Cabrera's spring training were glowing -- he went 10-for-29 with three homers -- giving rise to hopes for one more vintage Miggy season, one that we might never get to see.

Nick Markakis: People started noticing this a couple of years ago, but there is a non-zero chance that Markakis reaches the 3,000-hit plateau. According to Bill James' career-projection concept he called The Favorite Toy*, Markakis had about a 1-in-4 chance of getting to 3,000 after last year. It's hard to know how a system like Favorite Toy will handle a wiped-out season, but let's say the decision is to just carry over everyone's established level of play, but simply age them by one year. Under that scenario, Markakis' chances to reach 3,000 drop in half.

(* For this piece, the Favorite Toy methodology was re-created in a spreadsheet using the definition found here. Many of the numbers do not match the results found in the 2020 Bill James Handbook, so it's possible that some of the underlying formulas have changed. The larger points remain the same, as Favorite Toy is more a blunt object than a surgical scalpel.)

Robinson Cano: Cano enters the 2020 season at age 37 with 2,570 career hits. He has lost a lot of momentum over the past couple of seasons, dropping his established level to just 109 hits per season. His probability at reaching 3,000 was just 17% as it was, but a lost campaign drops it to under 5%.

Jose Altuve: There are a number of players in midcareer whose shot at eventually getting to 3,000 hits would be hurt by a lost 2020 season. Of those, Altuve is probably the most prominent. After his streak of four straight 200-hit seasons ended in 2017, Altuve's established level for hits has dropped to 165 over the past two years. After his age-29 season in 2019, he was at 1,568 hits and carried a solid 24% shot at eventually reaching 3,000. Losing a full season drops that number to 18%. Losing a full season is a huge blow to the career numbers even to players who are still in their prime.

Joey Votto: Votto isn't on track to hit major career milestone like 500 homers or 3,000 hits. He's more likely to settle in between 300 and 400 homers and 2,000-2,500 hits. However, as an on-base machine and exemplar of modern techniques for measuring player value, Votto is going to have a pretty solid argument for the Hall of Fame. A couple of more good seasons would really burnish his case. Unfortunately, as Votto comes off his worst season, a wiped-out 2020 campaign would be particularly bad news. As it is, Votto is near the average Hall standards for a first baseman in the JAWS system. Another above-average season gets him over that average barrier, not that it's a magical line in and of itself. However, Votto dipped to 1.9 bWAR last season, and if he doesn't play again until 2021, he could return at replacement level or worse. Let's hope Votto gets a shot at bounce-back season and can push that Hall case into no-brainer territory.

Edwin Encarnacion: Encarnacion has started down the Nelson Cruz career path as a slugger who seems immune to the passage of time. Entering his age-37 season, Encarnacion's established level for homers is 34, and he has hit at least 32 in every season going back to 2012. He entered the season with a 59% chance to push his career total of 414 over the 500 mark. But at his age, a lost season is a huge blow to the probabilities. If we don't play in 2020, his chances at 500 dingers fall to 39%. And that's carrying over his established level for hitting homers, which might not be particularly realistic for players in his age range.

Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke and Max Scherzer: If you love 300-game winners, a lost 2020 season would be horrible news. According to the Bill James Handbook, which uses a different method from Favorite Toy to generate 300-win probabilities, Verlander has by far the best shot at getting there -- 54%. Greinke and Scherzer are tied for second at 16%. All three aces are in their mid-30s. If Verlander were to really pitch until age 45 as he has suggested, then maybe he'll be fine. Still, you can't take the ability to win 17-20 games per season for granted. In any event, getting a 21st century starter to 300 wins means a very fine needle to thread. You need a hard to fathom combination of luck, greatness, durability and will. You don't need lost seasons.

Mike Trout: We're going to finish up with baseball's best player, one who is eventually headed to Cooperstown no matter what happens with the 2020 season.

There are a lot of stars in Trout's age group or younger whose eventual career numbers might take on a bittersweet flavor because they fall just short of different milestones. Right now, for instance, both Nolan Arenado and Cody Bellinger appear to have a shot at 2,000 RBIs, though that would obviously happen way down a road that has many off-ramps. According to Favorite Toy, Trout and Bellinger are the only two active players with a meaningful chance of someday running down Bonds' career record of 762 homers.

Trout has a lot longer track record in the bank than most of the current pack of elite-level stars, even though he doesn't turn 29 until August. For Trout, losing this season isn't just losing 162 games' worth of opportunity to tack on career numbers. It would be losing a season when he's at his peak.

Each season, Trout has demonstrated an almost unmatched ability to keep getting better, to keep smoothing out the very few rough edges in his game. Last season, Trout hammered a career-best 45 homers and would have gone past 50 if not for the one skill he hasn't quite mastered -- staying healthy. As Trout's power fully blossoms, it's not hard to imagine him reeling off a string of 45-50 homer seasons, if not better. He entered the season with about an 11% shot at breaking the home run record.