I'm not sure I ever noticed Tom Prince before scouting candidates for my latest season of Random Captain. I suppose I knew his name from the draft center, as he has a couple 200K seasons and I've probably drafted him in themes for that reason alone. I had no idea he played 17 MLB seasons; if you had offered me $20 to correctly answer the question "How many years did Tom Prince play?" I might have guessed three.

Many of his seasons were cup of coffee type deals—he's got years where his PA totaled 7, 7, 8, 9, 11—and in fact of those 17 seasons only 9 had enough PA to get him seasons in the SLB database. His most PA for one season was 215, and over his career he averaged just under 80 PA a year.

Is this an MLB record? Has any other player appeared in so many seasons and been used so sparingly?

Wow ! You're right crazystengel. His 1200 lifetime ABs looks pretty good till you realize it is over 17 seasons !

There are so many weird things about this:

He hit .208 lifetime but played 17 seasons in the Majors !

The only thing that stands out is that he threw out 118 of 228 basestealers. Maybe he was a specialty player and he was put into high leverage situations where a stolen base would have been especially damaging?

I will ask on Bill James' website and see if his majesty will answer this one without being his often insulting self.

Duffy Dyer

Dyer's a somewhat similar player, but with three fewer seasons and nearly 1,000 more PA he's not quite in Prince's league.

italyprof, when you ask James about Prince remember to sneak in a reference to Trump botching the coronavirus response. Bill will enjoy that!

Love me some Tom Prince. I definitely have his 1989 Donruss card buried somewhere in my closet. Great example of a catcher with no hit tool who can have a long MLB career. I'd love to see how he'd fare in today's game with some of the advanced metrics on pitch framing, etc.

As promised, I asked Bill James and he answered. I had phrased my original question poorly, with a factual error in it, hence the odd reformulation of it here, but his answer is very clear:

Sorry, I wrote asking about Tom Prince, but realize that I read his stats wrong on baseball-reference. He threw out 118 basestealers but 228 stole on him, so his percentage of runners thrown out is 34%. Good, but not earthshaking as I thought when I saw the raw numbers and though SB in this case meant attempts instead of successful steals.

So my question is even more relevant: How did a .208 lifetime hitter with low OBP and no power and only a good ability to throw out runner last 17 years in the majors when he was even then used so sparingly - 1190 lifetime ABs in 17 years?

Thanks. And Happy Easter.
Asked by: MidnighttheCat

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Answered: 4/11/2020
It's a type. If you sort out of baseball history all of the players who had long careers with very little playing time, you find that 90% or more of them are catchers. Prince I think is the archetype, in that his career is longer and less glittering than any other, perhaps, but not by much; there are 50 other guys in baseball history just like that.

Pretty cool, italyprof! Not a bad answer from James, either. Buck Martinez is another catcher that falls in this long career/little playing time category, although again, Prince seems to be the king.

By the way, I noticed on Prince's b-r.com page a link to Manager Stats. He managed the Pirates in 2019. His record? 0-1. He's even a cup of coffee manager! Would be great if he managed in 15 more seasons and went something like 22-30 for his career.