i9s

Norman “Turkey” Stearnes was a generational talent and a no-doubt HoFer, bursting onto the scene as a 22 year old and posting MVP level numbers well into his 30s.

It’s all stupendous: on our projections, he hits over .300 16 times, posts an OPS over 1.000 in 13 of his first 15 seasons (with a .998 in one of those), leads the league in hits a half dozen times, in doubles thrice, and is up there in homeruns most years. He ends his career within spitting distance of the all-time record in doubles, over 300 triples, and over 500 homeruns.

Oh, yeah, he played CF. Excellently. Not a great arm, but excellent range, and overall strong enough defensively to never be moved down the defensive spectrum (throughout his career he played a handful of games at 1B, another handful in LF, but all before he was 35).

He had a good walk rate and, in probably the only knock against him, he struck out a lot. A lot. Like among the league leaders for 1/3 of his career a lot.

We’ve added a couple years to the end of his career, as it’s hard to see someone playing as well as he was in 1940 just stopping–those are clear decline years, but I still think they would have happened.

Most impressively (at least to me), if anything these projections are a hair conservative: I would not be surprised if his walk rate nudged up slightly in future projections, and his SLG could easily nudge up about 5%. He was that good.

Name	Norman Stearnes (Turkey)
ID / Status	stear01tur / Draft
Pos	CF
DOB / i9s Career	05/08/1901 / 1923 - 1942
Birthplace	Nashville, TN (USA)
Height / Weight	6'1" / 185
B / T	L / L

 

Batting Projections

Year	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1923	467	166	29	15	21	35	59	9	6	0.355	0.400	0.617	1.017
1924	470	148	31	17	19	38	71	8	5	0.315	0.366	0.574	0.941
1925	556	213	39	17	36	65	65	16	6	0.383	0.448	0.709	1.156
1926	609	221	52	20	29	71	73	29	2	0.363	0.429	0.657	1.086
1927	646	238	44	22	30	83	81	18	3	0.368	0.440	0.644	1.084
1928	571	186	45	21	39	57	91	8	5	0.326	0.387	0.683	1.070
1929	626	224	45	20	41	80	81	16	16	0.358	0.431	0.690	1.121
1930	666	243	48	20	47	76	83	32	11	0.365	0.430	0.709	1.139
1931	588	190	39	14	33	81	90	11	7	0.323	0.405	0.605	1.011
1932	615	233	46	16	28	63	98	34	13	0.379	0.437	0.642	1.079
1933	592	210	42	17	33	52	77	9	6	0.355	0.407	0.650	1.057
1934	599	221	50	17	36	50	90	28	11	0.369	0.418	0.689	1.107
1935	611	236	44	20	23	84	88	12	6	0.386	0.460	0.637	1.097
1936	511	164	38	14	27	57	57	5	4	0.321	0.389	0.609	0.998
1937	552	182	36	13	21	63	101	7	5	0.330	0.398	0.556	0.955
1938	525	141	35	15	25	58	89	5	3	0.269	0.341	0.535	0.877
1939	529	166	37	15	18	53	98	6	4	0.314	0.376	0.543	0.919
1940	539	130	34	10	11	56	102	3	3	0.241	0.313	0.403	0.715
1941	546	132	29	8	14	52	97	5	3	0.242	0.308	0.401	0.709
1942	450	97	19	2	6	49	84	3	3	0.216	0.293	0.307	0.599

 

Pitching Projections