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An interesting utility player. The most challenging thing here is that Barber’s (also spelled Barbour in some sources) decline matches up with the transition from the dead ball to a higher offense era. Hit for some power, struck out a lot, didn’t take many walks, but still in the early 1910’s was good enough to be a regular starter somewhere.

Barber played all over the place, but wasn’t very good defensively anywhere. He was best in LF, RF, and 3B but also saw some time at 1B, 2B, SS, and CF. By mid-career, he was pretty much established in the OF.

Very fast, with an outside shot at the league lead in SB’s a year or two.

Barber may change significantly on the next revision: I see him as faster and with less true power than other MLE sources do (that is, I see a lot of his SLG coming from legging out triples while other sources seem him as more of a masher), and only a deep dive into some of the contemporary sources will resolve that.

Batting Projections

Pitching Projections