The Lost Souls- Bob Johnson

One of the biggest reasons I started this project was to search through the “live ball” baseball era to find players, particularly before the ending of World War 2, who performed at a high level, but have been ignored not only by the Hall of Fame but by the general baseball media and historians of the game.

The “standout” candidate for me (outside numerous Negro Leaguers, see Neglected NGL HOF Candidates ) was the utterly generically-named, Bob Johnson, an outfielder for the Philadelphia A’s, Washington Senators, and Boston Red Sox between 1933 and 1945 with his first ten years spent with the A’s. Bob played in 138 or more games in all but one of his 13 career seasons. His OPS+ was never lower than 125, and for his career it was an incredible 139. His BWAR was never less than 2.9 (his final season) and included five seasons of 4.5 or higher with a 6.6 in 1938 and a 6.3 in 1944 at age 38 when he led the Amercican League in both on-base percentage and OPS. And even at age 39, Bob was still a significant contributor with an OPS+ of 125 in just under 600 plate appearances.

Bob’s disappearance from history is almost totally due to the lack of success of the teams he played for. For the ten years he played for the A’s the team finished either last or next to last in nine of those years. In his first year they finished third but were still 19.5 games off the pace. No team he played for finished within ten games of first place.

Nothing flashy in the name but an eight time all-star, Bob Johnson has become a non-entity. But his HOMA score qualifies him for HOMA enshrinement and that score is higher than several players from the same era such as Joe Medwick, Hack Wilson, Billy Herman, Goose Goslin, and Chuck Klein. All were inducted into the Hall of Fame. So if you aware of those players, let it be further known that Bob Johnson actually stands a bit above them all.