Sal Bando vs Josh Donaldson
By Tony Frye
Sal Bando played for the Athletics of Kansas City and Oakland from 1966 to 1976 primarily at third base. Regarded as one of the great Athletics, Sal Bando played in four all star games and ranked in the top five for MVP voting three times.
Just for kicks, we’re going to compare him to a recent Athletic that shared third base duties, Josh Donaldson. Donaldson played two full seasons with the Oakland Athletics and quickly became a fan favorite. In order to give these guys a fair comparison (as fair as these types of things can possibly be) we’re just going to look at career highs while in Oakland and, for Donaldson, we’re going to count 2012, 2013 and 2014 as 2.5 years, since he only appeared in 75 games in 2012, and adjust some averages to reflect that. OBP, AVG, SLG will still be counted as three years..
First off is home runs. The Oakland Coliseum has always been a pitcher friendly park. Sal Bando, in 1969, hit 31 home runs and averaged 21 homers per season while playing for Oakland. Donaldson’s season high was 29 jacks and averaged 20 home runs per season while he played in Oakland. On this stat, we’ll call it a draw.
Next we’ll look at RBI’s. Sal Bando had a season high 113 RBI’s in 1969 and totaled 789 RBI’s total for a season average of 88. Donaldson, on the other hand, peaked at 98 and has a season average of 89. Again, we’ll call it a draw.
In 1970, Sal Bando had an OBP of .407 and had actually hit .400 the year prior as well. His career OBP while in Oakland was .359, his lowest season coming in 1968 when he marked a .314 in 162 games. The Bringer of Rain has yet to make the .400 mark for OBP and has averaged .338 in three seasons. Considering the 4% drop between 2013 and 2014, I’m going to give this one to Bando. He did give the Oakland A’s four seasons of .375+ OBP.
In terms of slugging, Sal Bando peaked in 1973 with a .498. Donaldson has a career high of .499. Bando’s .421 career SLG in Oakland is a bit lower than Donaldson’s .451 but given the drastic difference in their tenure with the team, I’m going to call this one a draw, too.
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So, just on the surface, it would appear that Sal Bando and Josh Donaldson are relatively equal at the plate. Bando struck out significantly less. In his worse strikeout year, Bando struck out only 24 more times than Donaldson’s lowest year and had played 85 more games. In fact, Donaldson averages 120 K’s per season where as Bando averaged 75. This one, clearly, goes to Sal.
Their WAR as batters is pretty similar as well with Bando peaking at 8.3 and Donaldson at 8.
On the base path, Bando beats Donaldson on stolen bases (20 to 8).
As a defender, Sal Bando peaked at third base with a .971 fld%, which is an admittedly flawed statistic, but Donaldson peaked at .961. Their peak errors were within one of the others but Bando had 40 or so more chances to make a play than Donaldson did in those peak years. Each player’s range factor per game peaked at about the same point (3.06 and 3.08) as well.
So, it’s safe to say that we can’t really call a definitive winner on this one. While Sal Bando had a number of great years with the Oakland A’s and will forever be a fan favorite for his contribution to a dynasty team, Josh Donaldson, on paper, stacks up pretty nicely next to him. Had Donaldson been able to play for 9 seasons in the green and gold, I think the numbers would start to skew more towards Bando’s favor but that’s not how history is playing out so we’ll just have to settle on: