What Could Have Been: The Potentially Great Baseball Career of Deion Saunders

A young, jheri-curled Prime Time

• Just to clarify: Deion Sanders is one of the greatest football players of all time. He was possibly the most versatile player who ever played in the NFL. He is 24^th all time in career interceptions, tied for 30^th in career kick return touchdowns, and tied for 8^th in career punt return touchdowns. He was an incredible athlete who could be the best cornerback and the best kick and punt returner in the league most years while also playing receiver. Because of that incredible athletic ability he was able to play in the MLB at a fairly high level at the same time that he was in the NFL. Just the fact that he was good enough to play both sports at the highest level at the same time is incredible. There have been several people who have tried to play both at the same time. Most have been much closer to the University of Washington's All-American linebacker Shaq Thompson (who played 13 games on the GCL Red Sox minor league team and had a spectacular stat line of zero hits, 8 walks, and 37 strikeouts) than they have been to Sanders. Tom Brady, Michael Vick, and Russell Wilson were all drafted by MLB teams; none of them attempted to play both football and baseball at the same time. It is insane to think that someone could manage to play both sports at a high level at the same time. The amount of practice needed to maintain that high of a skill level in either baseball or football should be more than a full time job. However, Deion Sanders was able to be an above-average baseball player and a Hall of Fame football player at the same time. He played both sports, but his focus was clearly on football, which was obviously a good decision for him. But just for curiosity's sake, how good could he have been if he had focused all of his efforts on baseball?

  

  On the super-bowl winning 1994 49ers

  
  

  

  Saunder's 1992 Upper Deck card showing him playing both sports

  
  
• The first thing to look at is what he actually did in his MLB career. In total, he played in 9 different seasons, with his highest single season game total coming in 1997 when he played 115 games. Despite never playing a full season, he still did some pretty impressive things. He led the league in triples in 1992 with 14 even though he only played 97 games. He finished 4^th in the league in stolen bases in the strike season 1994 and finished 5^th in steals in his career high 115 game 1997. These seasons showed flashes of his immense potential. 
  
  
  
• The next step is to round up his actual stats to full seasons. So for example, in 1994 he played 92 games, so I multiplied all of his stats by 1.5 which would be the equivalent of a 138 game season. I then kept the home runs, doubles, triples, and steals as whatever they multiplied to but I assumed that with extra focus on baseball he would be able to add 20 points to his batting average and 30 points to his OBP each year. I also assumed, due to his ability as a cornerback, that he would be worth an average of 1.0 dWAR each year in center field due to the extra focus on baseball. I then assumed that he would be able to play from ages 22-37 (the same as his NFL career), would play every season, and would have a normal level of decline in his mid-30s. For the seasons that he did not play baseball in (his age 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, and 37 years) I just took the average of the three previous seasons and plugged them in, and then took an average level of decline as he entered his mid 30s.
• So in the entirely hypothetical scenario I laid out, here is Deion Sanders' new MLB career:

Year	Age	Games	AVG	OBP	HR	2B	3B	SB	WAR
1990	22	114	178	296	6	2	2	16	1.3
1991	23	108	211	300	8	2	4	22	1
1992	24	145	324	386	12	9	21	39	6.8
1993	25	142	296	351	9	27	9	29	5
1994	26	138	303	372	6	26	6	57	4
1995	27	128	288	357	9	17	12	36	4
1996	28	139	295	363	7	20	9	55	3.7
1997	29	150	293	359	7	17	9	73	3.1
1998	30	139	292	360	8	18	10	55	3.6
1999	31	139	292	360	8	18	10	55	3.6
2000	32	139	292	360	8	18	10	55	3.6
2001	33	130	287	350	7	17	8	45	3.1
2002	34	130	282	340	6	16	6	35	2.6
2003	35	130	277	330	5	15	4	25	2.1
2004	36	120	272	320	4	14	2	15	1.7
2005	37	110	267	310	3	13	0	5	1.1
Career Totals:			278	345	113	249	122	617	50.3

      

      With these rounded-up stats, Prime Time would have probably been a multi-time All Star, would have been 13^th all time in career stolen bases, and would have had more steals than anyone in the 1990-2005 period. He would also have finished 12^th in career triples by anyone since 1950. This scenario would have led to him finishing his career as a not-quite hall of famer but very good player; he would have comparable stats to players like Willie Wilson and Kenny Lofton. I believe that my estimates were probably fairly conservative; with a full time focus on baseball his natural athleticism would probably allow him to be an all time great. But even just very simply rounding his stats up to what he would have had if he played full seasons at the same level that he did in reality shows a very good player. He probably wouldn't have had as great a career as he did in football, but it is amazing how great he could have been at his second-best sport.

Also, since the 90s were an incredible time to be a sports fan, here is Deion Sanders in a dunk competition against Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Conley's dad: