CAN THE WASHINGTON EAGLES TAKE FLIGHT AGAIN?
For much of this decade the Washington Eagles were the class of the Federal Association. Washington won 3 pennants in a 4 year span beginning in 1922 and it would have been four straight had they not finished a game back of Pittsburgh in 1924. However, since then the Eagles have been on a three year spiral that hit rock bottom this past season when they finished last in the Fed with a 61-93 record and their worst winning percentage in 46 years.
Now this is not the first time the Eagles followed up a strong run with some dreadful baseball. A decade earlier starting in 1910, Washington won 3 pennants in a 5 year span but by 1916 they started a string of 5 years in the second division before they took off again in the early 1920s. The Eagles management team is tasked with trying to duplicate that resurgence and they have made one move towards that goal and are looking to do more.
Before we talk about the changes let's take a look at how the Eagles got into this predicament. When you look at the roster of their 1925 pennant winning club, one would have thought Washington was well positioned to contend throughout the remainder of the decade.
They had a brilliant young catcher in 24 year old T.R. Goins, who was coming off a .360, 18 homer season and five other position players who seemed to be right in their prime: 26 year old 1B George Clark (.366,8,131), 25 year old SS Freddy Rush (.318,7,87), 25 year old 3B Glenn Morrison (.352,5,93), 25 year old CF Art Simmons (.352,3,81) and 28 year old LF Paul Bailey (.349,12,116). The other two everyday players, RF Harry Jones (.263,1,63) and 2B Jim Carreon (.271,2,86), were both 28 and at least average FABL talents. The pitching staff was older with 38 year old George Johnson (22-5, 4.33) and 31 year old Mel Wenz (20-16, 4.04) leading the way but Dick Dennis (15-10, 4.76) and Harry Horn (13-11, 4.60) were both 28 while Cap McDonald (12-14, 4.61) was still just 26 years old.
So what happened to a team that won 93 games and was second in the league in both most runs scored and fewest runs allowed? They still won 88 games in 1926, but finished third and then finished just 2 games over .500 in 1928 before everything collapsed last year.
Let's look at the Eagles position by position four years ago in 1925 and also where they stand now:
CATCHER: Goins is still the catcher (although we are not sure for how much longer as he is rumoured to be on the trading block) and his 1926 season was even better then the 1925 pennant winning year. He led the Fed in batting by hitting .395 and won a Whitney Award in '26. His numbers dipped each of the past two seasons but he still hit .321 a year ago, although he also led the league in strikeouts with a huge jump over previous season totals. The 1928 Goins at 27 years old was not quite as productive as the 1925 version but he still is an upper echelon catcher.
FIRST BASE: George Clark had the best year to date of his career as a 26 year old in 1925 when he hit .366. Clark is still an elite defensive 1B and a decent hitter with back to back .298 seasons but perhaps the Eagles did not recognize the position has changed. Clark hits a lot of doubles but hit only 2 homers a year ago and the lack of power production from the 1B is a big reason why the Eagles finished last in runs scored this past season. None of the other 7 starting 1B in the Federal Association hit less than 6 homers and Clark's .414 slugging percentage topped just Bob Scholer in Boston and the Pioneers Bill Ellis. Both of those teams had power elsewhere in their lineup.
SECOND BASE: Jim Carreon is still the Eagles starting second baseman and still pretty good with the glove. Now 32 years old he had the worst season of his career at the plate, batting just .240 with a .288 on base percentage. He was over .300 in batting in 1926 and 1927 but just a .271 hitter in the final pennant winning season.
SHORTSTOP: Our first change as Freddy Rush is no longer the starter but still with the club. In 1925 Rush had the best year of his career at age 25, batting .318 with a league leading 40 stolen bases. Jim Moore is the same age as Rush now (29) but became an every day player for the first time last season. Moore had a pretty good year at the plate, hitting .303 and while not providing the same speed on the basepaths as Rush, Moore did commit fewer errors in the field last year than Rush did in the pennant winning season.
THIRD BASE: The position was a mess for the Eagles a year ago. Glenn Morrison, who was so good as a 25 year old in 1925, started 58 games last season and hit .326, but then went down with a hamstring injury that cost him 7 weeks. Inexplicably he was released at the end of August and signed with Portland of the Great West League. The Eagles used three other players at third base including SS Rush, Bill Conner and John Wright. Conner is a 26 year old who hit .256 in 46 games while Wright, also 26, is a rookie who batted .247 in 40 games. Both seem to provide average defense but either looks to be a huge drop off from Morrison with the bat. Not sure the reasoning behind releasing Morrison (perhaps 40 man roster limit concerns) but it will likely haunt the Eagles for a while or cost them a good trading piece to find a suitable replacement as Conner or Wright do not look like the solution.
LEFT FIELD: Paul Bailey was 28 years old in 1925 and was the World Championship Series MVP that year. He also had the best average of his career (.349) and led the Fed in triples with 32 that season. Now 31, he may be showing signs of age as his average (.267) dipped below .300 for the first time since his rookie year and his slugging percentage was a career low.
CENTER FIELD: Art Simmons was 25 in 1925 and had a career best .352 average. Simmons missed some time in 1927 with an injury and played just 69 games last year, batting .274 as Billy Tam, a year younger than Simmons, received the majority of the starts in center. Tamm, who was in AA when the Eagles won in 1925, slashed .289/.338/.387 with 13 stolen bases in 104 games last season. He had 10 outfield assists but also made 19 errors.
RIGHT FIELD: Harry Jones was the starter in 1925 but hit just .263 with a .365 slugging percentage that season. He is still in the Eagles system but spent most of the past 3 years in the minors. Jones was not particularily good as a right field option but the Eagles have not found a suitable replacement. First they tried 30 year old Oscar Bering for a couple of seasons and he was a bit of an improvement, even hit 11 homers in 1927 but for some reason he lost his starting job in 1928 to a 35 year old named Ray Buckner, who has been in the Eagles system since 1914 and a starter for a number of years but not since 1923. In fact, Buckner had been in the minors since 1925 until he was given the starting job last year. Buckner responded by hitting .225 with a .275 slugging percentage in 101 games in right field.
PITCHING: Johnson's 22 win season at age 38 was the last hurrah in a great career that saw him win 311 career games. He would go 8-6 in 1926 and then retire. The other 20 game winner that season was Mel Wenz. Sadly, that would also appear to be Wenz's last hurrah in the majors. He blew out his elbow in spring training the following year and missed all of the 1926 campaign. He was 16-9 at AA in 1927 and split last season between AA and AAA so he probably deserves another shot in Washington but does not appear to be the pitcher he was before the injury. The other three members of the 1925 rotation are still with the Eagles organization but #3 starter in 1925 Dick Dennis has been in AAA the last couple of seasons. Harry Horn was 13-11, 4.60 as the 4th starter in 1925 and posted similar numbers this past season 12-15, 4.12 but he suffered a pretty severe shoulder injury in September. Cap McDonald won 12 games as 26 year old in 1925 and had a huge 21-9, 3.85 season the following year but he too succumbed to the injury bug, cutting short his 1927 campaign. He struggled, to say the least, last year as a 29 year old, going 8-22 with a 5.53 era.
The newcomers to the rotation since 1925 are Tommy Russell, a 26 year old former first round pick who went 19-13, 4.25 in his second season with the big club and looks like a good one. 34 year old Ralph Smith was a bullpen arm on the 1925 winner and he had a decent year last season in the rotation with a 4.28 era to go with an 8-18 record while Bob Gould, at 35 years old and a former rotation piece early in the decade but lately a longtime fixture in AAA, only was able to prove his best days are long gone after a 4-14, 6.61 season with the Eagles last year. There does not seem to be much pitching help in sight as their only viable pitching prospect is just 20 years old and pitched in Class A a year ago after both Chuck Calvert and Earl Farrar were lost in the rule V draft.
VERDICT
So what happened? Well, bad luck certainly played a role in the demise of the Washington pitching staff. One can only wonder how different things might be for the Eagles had Mel Wenz and Cap McDonald remained healthy and continued to pitch like they did prior to the injuries.
However, the position players are a different story. Washington caught a huge break in 1925 with career years out of younger guys to win a third pennant with a roster that had a lot of changes from the previous two titles. The Eagles elected to make very few moves and the ones they did make, such as releasing Morrison, seemed ill conceived. The Federal Association has been a hitters league for some time now and power hitting is in, but the Eagles kept a small ball lineup - and not a very good one at that - while the top teams in the Association all learned from the impact a slugger like Max Morris in St Louis could have on the game, and reacted accordingly.
THE FUTURE
The immediate future seems very bleak. Goins is the only Washington player on the top 20 hitters or pitchers list and the league positional ranking story is very bad for the Eagles. Their starting pitching ranks worst in the entire FABL and most other positions are in the bottom quarter. Only Goins, who is ranked second among catchers, and recently acquired 24 year old 3B Hank Bullock, at 8, are in the top of half of the league.
There is some cause for optimism in the long term as the Eagles had a very good draft this year, adding OF Wally Flowers and SS Ollie Page to the league top 100 prospect list, and their farm system is ranked 5th in FABL. The Eagles dealt one of their two viable trade chips, in trading down from the first overall draft pick and turned it into three quality prospects including Flowers. However they have only one chip of value left (outside of a likely very high first round pick again next year) in T.R. Goins and still have a real shortage of pitching prospects. The Eagles have made it known that Goins is available but so far, on the eve of spring training, he remains a Washington Eagle.
Washington ended the last decade with some poor showings but laid the foundation for pennants in 1922,1923 and 1925 during those lean years from 1916-20. Perhaps they can duplicate things next decade with a strong start to the 1930's from talent built over the past year and the next couple of drafts.