Monday, March 14, 2011

Dave Foutz=Roy Oswalt

Foutz, it appears, is to play first base for the Brooklyns. He has for a year or so wanted to get out of pitching and go to playing either at first base or in the outfield, and it is probable he has talked over the matter with Manager Byrne.
-Milwaukee Sentinel, December 5, 1888


This is not entirely accurate. Foutz played 78 games in the outfield in 1888 and only 42 at first. He pitched in 23 games and, despite the arm injury, was rather effective. But the general point is true. Foutz was on his way to transitioning from being a pitcher/outfielder to being a first baseman.

Foutz just has the strangest stats and it's tough to make sense of them. In the next couple of days, I'm going to write up something comparing Foutz and Caruthers and I'll try to sort out the weirdness. But I'll leave you with this: according to B-Ref, the most similar pitcher to Dave Foutz is Dizzy Dean. The fifth most similar pitcher is Roy Oswalt, which makes absolutely perfect sense to me in a way that I don't think I can really explain. But on a gut level, it just seems right. Roy Oswalt is Dave Foutz without the bat.

1 comment:

Margaret said...

dave foutz was my great uncle, I had several pro tryouts as well in the late 70's see ya chuck foutz