Duke Snider passed away at age 84 last week. Snider is (probably) the greatest hitter in Dodger history. He is their all-time leader in Offensive bWAR and home runs. Beyond the Boxscore has a graph of his bWAR1 with emphasis on his Brooklyn years and then the years after the team moved to Los Angeles.
Upon first glance, it looks like Snider fell off a cliff. But there is more to it than that. In Snider’s five seasons in Los Angeles, he only played at least 126 games once and never played more than 106 games any other year. His home run rate also dropped, surely somewhat from Dodger Stadium’s negative effect on hitters.
Snider’s injuries likely hurt him most, but moving to LA didn’t help.
(Thanks to Baseball Reference for stats)
- Baseball Reference’s version of Wins Above Replacement [↩]
