Dolph Camilli

[dgarza]

Dolph Camilli

I don't see Camilli's name come up too often. He certainly gets less mention than Norm Cash.

Camilli did have a rather short career (12 years, only 9 of them I would consider full years). He had a late start in his career and missed 1944, but it doesn't really seem like his career was directly affected by the war.

He didn't put up any really spectacular numbers, but he was steady. Back in his time, the NL was not so slug-happy. It was not so unusual to crack the Top 5 in HRs but still have hit less than 20.

For me Camilli is just about last in line for first-basemen than I would care to see in the Hall, or at least my own version of it. Certainly a borderline cndidiate at best. I'm sure other do not see him as a HOFer, but I think he is a batter candidate than Cash.

[mtortolero]

In the same way as Bill James built the "pitchers familly" in his las Baseball Abstract I think we can build famillies for every position and in Camilli´s case he is in the short carrers, slow foot, lower average qith power and discipline hitters, the same as Roy Sievers, Kent Hrbek, Leon Durham or Norm Sieberm.
I think Camilli took advantage of playing at Baker and Ebbets Fields to balloon his Hrs totals but still he was a very productive player.

[dgarza]

in Camilli´s case he is in the short carrers, slow foot, lower average qith power and discipline hitters,
I wonder how slow he was. From a period of time from roughly 1936-1943 he pretty much matched Arky Vaughan in triples and was something like 3rd in ML triples.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Dolph Camilli

I don't see Camilli's name come up too often. He certainly gets less mention than Norm Cash.

Camilli did have a rather short career (12 years, only 9 of them I would consider full years). He had a late start in his career and missed 1944, but it doesn't really seem like his career was directly affected by the war.

He didn't put up any really spectacular numbers, but he was steady. Back in his time, the NL was not so slug-happy. It was not so unusual to crack the Top 5 in HRs but still have hit less than 20.

For me Camilli is just about last in line for first-basemen than I would care to see in the Hall, or at least my own version of it. Certainly a borderline cndidiate at best. I'm sure other do not see him as a HOFer, but I think he is a batter candidate than Cash.

Camilli is nowhere near the borderline for the HOF. Nor is he anywhere near the level of Norm Cash.

Norm Cash hit .271 lifetime in a league that hit .257. Dolph Camilli hit .277 lifetime in a league that hit .282. If Camilli played in the 1960s, he would have struggled to hit .250, in his BETTER years, and would have struggled to hit .240 in his lesser years. Cash's OBP was .379 with a league norm of .329; Camilli's was .388 in a league that got on base at a .346 clip. Cash has an advantage here as well. Cash comes in slightly ahea of Camilli in slugging, based on his career norms, vs. league career norms, but the difference is only 3 points, so I'll give this to Cash by, literally, a hair.

I don't know how Camilli won the MVP award in 1941. I know he won because he was playing on the pennant winner, but, judging from stats, Pete Reiser and Whit Wyatt were each better candidates than Camilli. 1941 was Reiser's greatest year, and he added more defense to the equation than Camilli did. Wyatt had a Cy Young year on the mound, and may have won the award if it existed. Cash would have won the MVP award in 1961 had it not been for Maris breaking Mantle's record; it is not clear that Cash should not have rated ahead of Maris in MVP voting (although the consensus now is that Mantle had the best season in the AL that year).

I'm not advocating Norm Cash for the HOF here, so let's understand that. But I am unequivocally stating that Cash is a possible borderline HOF candidate, while Dolph Camilli, if elected to the HOF, would be about even with George Kelly for being the worst player in the HOF. It is POSSIBLE that Camilli was a better offensive player than Kelly, but if he was, it wasn't by much. Kelly, by all accounts was a superior defensive first baseman, the Vic Power of his day. Cash is nowhere near the race for the bottom that Camilli would be in, if inducted into the HOF; indeed, Camilli would probably take Kelly's place, if only by a hair, as being the worst player in the HOF.

Even worse, think of the precedent it would set. If Camilli, why not Roy Sievers, Kent Hrbek, Joe Adcock, Gil Hodges, Norm Cash (of course), Greg Luzinski, John Olerud, Mark Grace, Cecil Cooper, George Scott, Jack Clark, Hal Trosky, Gus Zernial, Ted Kluczewski, Jason Giambi, Mo Vaughn, oh my Lord, the list goes on and on. Dolph Camilli's selection to the HOF would be an unparallelled disaster, one that would give Eddie Robinson hope of one day receiving his plaque.

[willshad]

Camilli is like a poor man's Edgar Martinez.Most players you can say they peaked in their 20s, and if they matched in their 30s what the did in their 20s then theyd be a hall of famer. With Dolph and Edgar, the opposite is true. If either had matched their late career performance earlier, theyd be sure hall of famers...though Edgar a more obvious one (even with spending time as a DH)
Larry Doby is almost identical stat-wise to Camilli, and he is in the hall. But i suspect that is for other reasons.

[Paul Wendt]

Camilli is nowhere near the borderline for the HOF. Nor is he anywhere near the level of Norm Cash.

Norm Cash hit .271 lifetime in a league that hit .257. Dolph Camilli hit .277 lifetime in a league that hit .282. If Camilli played in the 1960s, he would have struggled to hit .250, in his BETTER years, and would have struggled to hit .240 in his lesser years. Cash's OBP was .379 with a league norm of .329; Camilli's was .388 in a league that got on base at a .346 clip.

At baseball-reference Cash is .374, 45 points above his context.
By this FB metric, covering batting, on-base, and slugging in that order,
+14, +45, +97 Cash
-05, +42, +95 Camilli
+17, +39, +96 Doby

Of course, Camilli matches Cash and Doby in slugging only by hitting with greater extra-base power to make up for his lesser batting average.
isolated power = slugging - batting = extra bases per at bat
+0.83 Cash (+.217 in +.134 context)
+1.00 Camilli (+.215 in +.115 context)
+0.79 Doby (+.207 in +.128 context)

Cash has an advantage here as well. Cash comes in slightly ahea of Camilli in slugging, based on his career norms, vs. league career norms, but the difference is only 3 points, so I'll give this to Cash by, literally, a hair.

In ten of his full fourteen seasons, Norm Cash missed 20-41 games. Recognizing all the pinch-hit games call it 20-50 games in the field.
Doby played a few more games than Cash with a team schedule 8 games shorter. Camilli played average 148+ games for 8 years but that run as an "every day player" in contrast to Cash and Doby was one year out of phase with his eight good years as a batter, average only 141 games (1936-43).

With all his time off, Norm Cash played only 1871 games in the field during his 14 seasons as a regular player, or 134 per 162. Not good, but those games would make 12 very full seasons, three more than the most generous plausible count for Camilli (I would call it four more). Camilli had a little more impact as a batter -- for seven seasons. With merely three mediocres outside his run, however, he is outside the range of plausible candidates. Honoring him and others like him would transform the profile of the Hall of Fame.

That makes Camilli a better subject for biographical interest than for Hall of Fame interest. What happened in the winter of 1936? Did he learn something? anyone show him something? change his diet and physical conditioning?

[willshad]

Cash was good for a longer time, and had the best season (1961) that either guy had, but there is no doubt that Camilli had a better sustained peak than Cash. From 1935-1942 he received MVP votes every season, besides 1937. Interestingly enough, 1937 was his best hitting year. Does anyone know the story behind that?