Mule Suttles had three years in his career where he had over 200 OPS+ which means he was twice as good as an average hitter. He had another year he led the league with an OPS+ of 197. He could still smack that ball in his 40s. He played left field and first base and has been ranked in both. He is shown by Baseball Reference as an average fielder, but that might be because of a lack of information.
Suttles always sounded like a big guy for me. He was tall 6 foot 3 inches. However, Baseball Reference said he only weighed 215 pounds which doesn’t seem that big for that height muscle wise. He was very strong as the SABR article says in a couple places about tape measure homeruns.
Suttles played in the California Winter League from 1930 to 1940. This was a league with both black and white players. Suttles hit some home runs against white major league pitchers in those years. Records show he hit .378 with 64 homeruns in 126 games during his career in that league. In the Negro Leagues he hit .339 in his 21 years and 179 homeruns in 906 games as a comparison. That is based on the data that Baseball Reference was able to find.
It has been a while since I completed an article and I apologize for that. I had COVID for part of the time and was busy working on my top 1,000 list. I’m going out of town for a few days and when I come back I will have to do my taxes. However, I will try to sneak some articles in.
