Ed McKean

[Paul Wendt]

stone glove

The matter of priorities (Bill Dahlen should be inducted first!) is clearly beside the point here in cowtipper polls and Ed McKean is a relatively good subject for one. There may be only one knock against him.

> One knock against McKean is he wasn't the greatest fielder in the world, as he led the league in errors more than once.

Unfortunately that knock is more like he was one of the very worst fielders among all major league players with moderately long careers.

Bill James does not give many 'F' letter grades to players with 5000(?) innings, the only ones he grades in print (Win Shares). Shortstop McKean is one of the few. And Clay Davenport using a different sabrmetric method agrees with Bill James in giving McKean a very low grade, although I believe it corresponds to D rather than F.

Here are Davenport ratings for the three contemporary infielders with moderately long careers and wow-za batting records. This represents a split with James on Lyons but a consensus of two on McKean and Joyce.

Fielding Rate (100=average) by Clay Davenport
98 Denny Lyons, 3B
93 Ed McKean, SS
90 Bill Joyce, 3B

[jalbright]

With Bill Dahlen and Jack Glasscock unelected it is hard to get excited about Ed McKean.

Those two are in the BBF HOF, along with Cupid Childs and Ross Barnes, who are also outside the Hall. I could add Herman Long and Hardy Richardson to the list of 19th century middle IF who deserve entry before McKean.

[KCGHOST]

With Bill Dahlen and Jack Glasscock unelected it is hard to get excited about Ed McKean.

[Freakshow]

McKean did not make the 18-player list of candidates from the 1890's in the Ultimate Quest project. His poor defense relegates him to the non-candidates.

[stejay]

No he should not be. There are many more deserving candidates

[Cowtipper]

Ed McKean was a very solid, very consistent player for 13 years. Save for his final season, he never played in under 123 games in a season and he never had under 500 at-bats. He never scored less than 76 runs and he never collected less than 139 hits in a season.

His 162 game averages are as follows:

162 G
675 AB
120 R
204 H
27 2B
15 3B
6 HR
110 RBI
32 SB
.302 AVG

That's pretty impressive.

His "normal" averages:

127 G
530 AB
94 R
160 H
21 2B
12 3B
5 HR
86 RBI
25 SB
.302 AVG

He was consistently on the at-bats, total bases, triples, hits and RBI leaderboards. He led the league in games in 1891 and 1896, in at-bats in 1891 and 1895, and in AB/K in 1896.

A shortstop by trade, McKean was also a solid postseason performer. Although he appeared in only one Championship Series (which his team lost), he hit .440 in 25 at-bats, driving in six of his teams 13 RBI.

From 1891 to 1896, he scored more than 100 five times. He drove in 100 or more runs every year from 1893 to 1896.

One knock against McKean is he wasn't the greatest fielder in the world, as he led the league in errors more than once.

One of only four pre-1900 players to have 2000 career hits, 1000 career runs, 1000 career RBI and 300 career stolen bases, McKean is statistically similar to four Hall of Famers: King Kelly, Jimmy Collins, Arky Vaughan and Joe Sewell.

An interesting bit of information: McKean was the first NL player ever to reach 600 at-bats in a season.

So, should Ed McKean be in the Hall of Fame?