Backup Third Baseman —Al Rosen
(with Cleveland from 1947-1956)
35.2 fWAR, 32.6 bWAR
.285/.384/.495, 1044 G, 4374 PA, 137 OPS+ (with Cleveland)
Almost all of Rosen’s career value came in the five seasons from 1950 to 1954, when he averaged 6.0 WAR per season while hitting .298/.396/.528, with 95 runs scored, 31 home runs, and 114 RBI per season. He led the league in home runs twice and RBI twice during this stretch and made the all-star team four times. He also won the 1953 MVP Award with an incredible 10.1 bWAR season (more than 3.5 WAR better than the next-best player). Over these five brilliant seasons, only two players were more valuable than Rosen—Stan Musial and Jackie Robinson.
Unfortunately for Rosen, and Cleveland fans of the time, his timing was terrible. Rosen was 18 years old in 1942, which was a rough time to be 18 years old in this country. He had just started to play professional baseball, but that was put on hold when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy to fight in World War II. Rosen spent four years in the Navy before leaving in 1946 as a lieutenant.
With the war over, Rosen returned to baseball as a 22-year-old and re-started his career at the Class-C level. He was promoted to Double-A in 1947 and even got into seven games with Cleveland at the end of the season after hitting .323 and slugging .600 in the minors. He seemed ready for big league play.
Alas, it was not to be. Cleveland had a very good third baseman holding down the position in Ken Keltner. Rosen spent almost all of the 1948 and 1949 seasons in Triple-A and continued to rake, but couldn’t crack the starting lineup with Keltner blocking him. He finally got his break when Keltner was traded before the 1950 season and he ran away with the job by hitting a league-leading and AL rookie-record 37 home runs. That was the first year of his great five-year stretch outlined above.
Along with Rosen’s career getting started late, it also ended early. He started to experience back pain in 1954 and was limited to 137 games. More injuries built up in 1955 and he once again missed about a dozen games, but he also was much worse when he did play. After being a well above average hitter for the previous five years, Rosen was just slightly above league average in 1955, then again in 1956. After dealing with injuries over the last few years of his career, he chose to retire.