Searching for Mr. 1850

There is just something about numbers that fascinates many individuals. Especially in baseball, where statistics can sway an argument in any direction. But this post is more aligned with just a fascination with numbers themselves. In particular, the number of players who have played for the Cleveland Indians.

Back in 2014, the Cleveland franchise said hello to Mr. 1800, the 1,800th player to don an Indians uniform, Tyler Holt. Tyler managed to just get into 45 games while with the organization before shuffling off to Cincinnati, but he still counts for the sake of this count.

And on Opening Day 2016, we said hello to Mr. 1825, Rajai Davis, when he led off the game. Also adding to the list on opening day was Mike Napoli, Marlon Byrd, Juan Uribe, Collin Cowgill, Ross Detwiler, Tyler Naquin and Joba Chamberlain.

By the end of the season when Adam Plutko appeared on September 24, the grand total would increase to 1844. Even though the Indians will return almost their entire roster in 2017, Mr. 1850 will surely make his debut at some point. In only one season in history have the Indians debuted fewer than six players. That was in 1926. And in only two seasons did six players make their debut, 1917 and 1935. The fewest debuts this century was 10 players in 2005.

The pool of players who could be Mr. 1850 will either be a free agent signing, or a rookie making his debut. Of the offseason transactions, Edwin Encarnacion and Boone Logan are most likely be No. 1845 and No. 1846, either Opening Day or in the first couple of games.

Fifteen of the sixteen non-roster invites this spring (sans Michael Martinez) have never played for Cleveland in the regular season. Austin Jackson could be an option, but I suspect he’ll be No. 1847. Chris Colabello and the highly touted Bradley Zimmer might be the guy. Or will it be one of the minor-leaguers on the 40-man roster? There is Dylan Baker, Tim Cooney, Nick Goody, Carlos Frias or Francisco Mejia, too, although he is a longshot.

If you believe the No. 1850 seems a bit high for number of players for an organization, you would be correct. Six of the eight original National League franchises have more, but they obviously had quite a few more seasons to add to their totals. Both the Dodgers and Giants franchises, with an additional seventeen and eighteen seasons, respectively, still have used fewer players (1796 and 1735) than Cleveland has. Of the original eight American League franchises, only the Athletics have surpassed the Tribe with a whopping 1912 different players.

In order to get a fairer picture, the players pre-1901 were removed from the player pool and we get this result for most players per franchise, in order from most to fewest for the original sixteen American and National League franchises:

* Yankees franchise joined in 1903 after Baltimore franchise disbanded in 1902.

It was most interesting to me that the Giants are the most stable of the bunch.

Grouping the other expansion eras:

These numbers are definitely higher than the original franchises, but roster constructions have been vastly different over the past 60 years compared to 100-plus years ago. But man, do the Padres cycle through a lot of players.

And the last round of expansion, for completion sake:

Again, these numbers are higher, but that is expected of expansion franchises as they are trying to find core players from the get go. Plus, the bullpen structure and the plethora of injuries has skyrocketed the usage rates of more and more players.