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The 10 most under-appreciated players of the 1980s: #5 Von Hayes

Posted by Andy
Von Hayes got a raw deal.

He came up with so-so Indians teams that basically did very little.

Then he got traded in an infamous deal that earned him the derogatory nickname "Five for One", as he was the one player the Phillies received from the Indians in exchange for Julio Franco, Manny Trillo, George Vukovich, Jay Baller, and Jerry Willard.

The Phillies went to the World Series in Hayes' first year with the team but he barely played that post-season. In the following years, the Phillies were a .500-ish team before finally going in the tank in 1988.

During those mid-to-late 80s Phillies teams, most folks gave a little attention to Mike Schmidt and not any to anybody else on the team.

But Von Hayes was actually a pretty damn good player who never got his due.
From 1984 to 1990, only 17 major leaguers played 100 games with an OPS+ of at least 100 each season:


I'm willing to bet that Hayes has already surpassed your thoughts of him.

Here's the top 20 list for that same time period, minimum 4000 plate appearances, ranked by OPS+:

Rk Player OPS+ PA 2B HR RBI BB SO SB Pos
1 Wade Boggs 147 5018 300 60 468 714 350 10 *5/D3
2 Darryl Strawberry 146 4076 172 226 659 533 832 172 *9/87
3 George Brett 144 3940 218 131 602 490 339 53 35D/976
4 Rickey Henderson 144 4307 192 131 409 659 461 509 *78/D
5 Pedro Guerrero 142 3510 166 121 520 377 490 37 375/98
6 Don Mattingly 141 4532 273 165 726 321 226 9 *3/D7958
7 Eddie Murray 138 4670 194 181 676 586 511 39 *3/D5
8 Tim Raines 137 4318 196 76 401 552 376 388 *78/4
9 Alvin Davis 135 4364 197 148 598 616 471 7 *3D
10 Dwight Evans 134 4576 212 175 676 655 691 28 *9D3/8
11 Kent Hrbek 133 4099 183 183 620 476 449 17 *3/D5
12 Kirk Gibson 132 3653 152 150 495 420 704 188 978/D
13 Tony Gwynn 132 4613 197 47 434 389 219 223 *98
14 Dave Winfield 131 3790 179 142 600 379 538 45 *9/D875
15 Brian Downing 128 4164 168 145 522 531 491 17 *D7
16 Paul Molitor 127 3559 190 71 345 337 408 173 *5D/437
17 Dale Murphy 126 4735 194 214 643 559 949 67 *89/7
18 Robin Yount 125 4616 202 112 568 458 513 113 *86/D73
19 Harold Baines 124 4240 195 137 606 387 603 4 D9/8
20 Von Hayes 124 4273 208 118 515 552 580 173 3897/5
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/10/2012.

Hayes makes the list, and notice how nicely his other numbers stack up: great BB/K ratio, lots of stolen bases, and lots of different positions played.

I chose the 1988 Fleer card (#304) of Hayes because he doesn't have any cards that I think are that good. I do really like the 88 Fleer design, and the Phillies cards in this set look pretty good with their almost-red team color.

The backs of the 1988 Fleer set are similar to the other Fleer issues from the 1980s, but they made some interesting changes. They don't have the little photo that the 83 Fleers had on the back (which were awesome) but they did add some basic splits at the bottom. Those pictures of day, night, home, and road are kind of dumb, and just serve to demonstrate how poorly the space on the back was utilized. But I give Fleer props for including splits at all--this was an early step on the road to good statistical analysis.

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