Our last MLB Monday piece for 2024 examines another random player’s career: catcher Ron Hassey. Amusingly enough, he best known as the answer to a random baseball trivia question … which we won’t reveal until the end of the column today. He compiled just 14.7 WAR in his career that spanned 14 years with six different franchises. He hit .266 overall with a .722 OPS which rates out to a 100 OPS+ mark. Wow!

He is literally an average-hitting catcher in MLB history, which surprises us; we didn’t think he hit that well. Here is his seasonal record, starting with his age-25 rookie season:

  • 1978-1984: Cleveland—569 games, 8.0 WAR
  • 1984: Chicago (NL)—19 games, 0.4 WAR
  • 1985-1986: New York (AL)—156 games, 3.2 WAR
  • 1986-1987: Chicago (AL)—98 games, 0.7 WAR
  • 1988-1990: Oakland—298 games, 2.4 WAR
  • 1991: Montréal—52 games, 0.1 WAR

With just 71 home runs and 438 RBI total, he never was a full-time catcher, really. His seasonal high for games played (130) came in 1980 when he posted a career-best 3.8 WAR. Five times in his career, he did play in more than 100 games for a season, the last time in 1988 with the Athletics (107 games). He won a ring with the A’s in 1989, as well, obviously, and he was never an All Star nor a Gold Glove winner. Boring guy?!

Basically. But he did hit .323 in three combined postseasons with Oakland (16 total games with an .891 OPS), showing his veteran presence added value to the club’s roster. He walked more than he struck out, too, in those playoff ABs. Hassey definitely was a big part of that A’s dominant run from 1988–1990, which we cannot call a dynasty since the franchise only won a single World Series in that stretch, strangely enough.

His career walk total also surpasses his career strikeout total, so he had that going for him, too. As a left-handed hitter, he did get a lot of pinch-hitting action in his overall career, also: the best we can tell, his .277 average as a substitute hitter was 12 points higher than his BA as a starter, although in both roles, he posted the same .722 OPS overall. This was a guy who did not hurt you at the plate but could sometimes help you.

What else can we say about Hassey? He managed to put up 4.3 dWAR in his career, so he was an above-average defensive player, to go along with his average plate presence. His best defensive season came in 1981 with 1.1 dWAR, and he only had three seasons overall where his dWAR was negative (1978, 1985, 1987). His highest salary was $700k/yr in 1990 with Oakland when the A’s were spending a lot of money to win big.

Today, he’d be worth a $2.5M/yr contract, at least, if not more. He’s the kind of player that every team sort of wishes they had on the bench, you know? Never a star or even a real solution to start a lot of games, he nonetheless carved out a nice niche role for himself on many teams—including championship ones with the A’s, who won the AL West and the AL pennant in all three years that Hassey was with the team.

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that Oakland didn’t win the AL West in 1991 after Hassey departed. “Glue guys” like this are often missed on teams of that stature; we know we enjoyed watching him catch games for the A’s at the Coliseum during those three seasons, which comprised the end of our high-school days and the start of our college days. In fact, we always thought Hassey bore a strong resemblance to one Chevy Chase.

On that note, we have nothing left to offer on this player—other than the trivia question to which he is the sole answer: Who is the only catcher to have been behind the plate for two perfect games in the major leagues? Only 23 catchers have caught even one perfecto, yet Hassey was calling the shots for Len Barker on May 15, 1981, and he was doing the dirty work for Dennis Martínez on July 28, 1991, as well. Impressive.