[tm1681]

KING KONRAD PUTS DOWN HIS BAT

After the APBL’s 1883 season, Konrad Jensen, now a 43-year-old, 26-year veteran of both pre-professional and professional baseball, decided it was time to call an end to his extraordinary career. He hadn’t declined significantly - .362/.411/.581 for a .992 OPS in his final season – but he felt after slightly more than a quarter century’s worth of summers playing the game regularly it was time to do something else. He immediately signed a lucrative contract to become the Hitting Coach of the Excelsior Knights.

How good was his career? Well, take a look…





NOTE: For some reason, along the way I had to restore a backup and in the process I lost all the Black/Gray ink prior to the 1881 season, thus the highlighting is gone.

The honors he racked up during his career?

1st player to reach 3,000 career hits (3,311 for career)
1st non-pitcher to cross 80 WAR (81.9 for career)
16x Team of the Year (Silver Slugger) at OF (7x NYL, 9x APBL)
10x Batsman of the Year (MVP) (4x NYL, 6x APBL)
10x Batting Champion (5x NYL, 5x APBL)
9x New York League (NBBO) All-Star (1860-64, 67-70)
2x APBL championship winner (1872, 1875)
3x New York League (NBBO) Most Valuable Player (Custom – based on WPA) (1867, 68, 70)
2x New York League (NBBO) Triple Crown winner (1869, 1870)

15x League leader in OBP (5x NYL, 10x APBL)
12x League leader in Walks (3x NYL, 9x APBL – never led league in IBB)
11x League leader in Runs Created (5x NYL, 6x APBL)
10x League leader in OPS (4x NYL, 6x APBL)
5x League leader in AVG, OBP, and SLG simultaneously (4x NYL, 1x APBL)
4x League leader in RBI (2x NYL, 2x APBL)
4x League leader in position player WAR (2x NBBO, 2x APBL)

1867 (Excelsior, NYL): .451 AVG, 1.127 OPS (222 OPS+), 49 XBH, 90 RBI, 109 R, 8.05 WPA in 70 games
1867-70 (Excelsior, NYL): .428 AVG, 1.081 OPS (215 OPS+), 324 RBI, 395 R, 18.6 WAR in 280 games
1871-83 (3 teams, APBL): .390 AVG, .442 OBP, .528 SLG, .970 OPS (170 OPS+), 55.59 WPA, 45.0 WAR in 1,157 games
1876 (Buffalo, APBL): .448 AVG, .498 OBP, .546 SLG, 1.044 OPS (197 OPS+), 201 TB in 90 games

Here’s how good he still was at the age of thirty-nine:





And here’s how good the game engine still had him at the age of 39:





NOTE: I had hitting batter aging speed set to .850 so players would start to fall off around age 35 because of the shorter seasons, so this was still a large deviation. I also had the amateur draft ticked off, and with the different way the game engine generates random free agents instead of amateur draft pool players, it would seem on the face of it that outlier players like this are more likely to appear…

As a columnist from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle put it, “Of all the men and women in all of human history who have ever tried their hand at anything, a scarce few have been better at their selected field of work than Konrad Jensen was at the game of base ball.”