Brian Downing was an underestimated player who transformed his body the legal way through weightlifting. He spent two decades in the majors. He was forced to prove himself at every level. He was cut from his high school team, resorted to walking on at a junior college, but failed to make the club. He was scrawny and looked like a nerd, and people misjudged him.
Major league clubs will occasionally hold open tryouts, where anyone with cleats and a glove can stumble on a field and look foolish while scouts try not to snicker at them. These tryouts were more common 40 years ago than they are today, but it was at one of those events that Downing got a break. At an open tryout by the White Sox in 1969, 18-year old Downing hit enough pitches squarely and did enough with his glove in the infield to earn an invite to a low level pro team in the Chicago organization. Downing’s arm was strong, so they stuck him at third base. But the Sox needed catchers so he hopped behind the plate too. Anything to move up the ladder. By 1973, Downing had added several pounds to his frame and made it to the big leagues, but his first game was a debacle. Playing third base, Downing pursued a popup into foul territory, tumbled down the dugout steps, and wrenched his knee. He missed two months of action.
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By 1975, the resolute Downing was the regular catcher for the White Sox, a mediocre team that kept committing the sin of getting rid of good young players too soon. That’s what they did with Downing as well, at the winter meetings in 1977 when they included him in a six-player trade with the Angels that brought Bobby Bonds to the South Side of Chicago. At that point, Downing looked like a glove-first catcher with no power: he had 26 home runs to his name.
Downing’s first season in Anaheim was a lot like his time in Chicago: he hit .255 with only 15 doubles and seven home runs. He didn’t look like anything special at the plate, and he was no Gold Glover behind it. In the offseason he decided he needed to do something, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the majors for long. Over the winter he hit the gym in his native southern California and spent hours in the batting cage. Downing made a drastic change to his hitting approach: he opened his stance and shortened his swing. In spring training he looked like a new man: he had 20 pounds of added muscle and his thick glasses were replaced with contact lenses. His teammates called him “The Incredible Hulk.” The results were startling: Downing hit .341 in April and kept hitting. At mid-season he was hitting .352 with a .427 on-base percentage and a slugging percentage over .500, and was named the starting catcher for the AL in the All-Star Game.
Downing hurt his arm in the early 1980s, in part due to poor mechanics, and he also broke his ankle. He couldn’t throw from a crouch without pain, so the Angels moved him to left field. In 1982 when he was 31, he hit 28 home runs and 37 doubles. He also walked a lot, and despite being thick and slow, Gene Mauch moved Downing into the leadoff spot. He averaged 94 walks per season in that role.
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The Hulk played until he was 41, and over his last 11 years, from age 31 to 41, he never had a bad season. He was a DH from age 36. When he was 41 he had a .407 on-base percentage and hit 10 home runs mostly against left-handed pitching.
Downing hit 219 homers after the age of 31 (80 percent of his career total), and smacked more homers in the 1980s than Don Baylor and Dave Parker, two players about his same age who also stayed in the game because of their bats.
No one will ever buy the argument that Brian Downing was as good an offensive player as Jim Rice. The latter hit nearly .300 for his career, belted 107 more home runs, and he won an MVP award. But outside of the high batting average and about six more home runs per year, Downing did the other things better. Downing walked a lot more, he made fewer outs, and he grounded into fewer double plays.
The chart below shows the career numbers for both players. RC is Runs Created, and you’ll notice that Rice owns a 90 run edge. But Rice made more outs despite playing fewer games and seasons, and his Runs Created Per Game is only slightly better than Downing’s. Win Shares (offense only) has them close, and Wins Above Replacement (offense) favors Downing. Rice was the better performer based on OPS+ (On-Base Percentage plus Slugging, adjusted for league OPS and ballpark variables), his big edge coming from the slugging side.
Downing was not the slugger Rice was, but as an offensive player he was not far off from the Hall of Famer.
| DOWNING VS. RICE | ||||||||
| PLAYER | G | OUTS | BASES | RC | RC/G | WS | oWAR | OPS+ |
| Downing | 2344 | 6125 | 4475 | 1294 | 5.7 | 256 | 53.8 | 122 |
| Rice | 2089 | 6221 | 4572 | 1384 | 6.0 | 244 | 45.7 | 128 |
