Sam Thompson played 15 seasons (1885–1906) for Detroit Wolverines, PHI and DET. Career regular-season line: 1,979 hits, 126 home runs and a .331 average. Late Developer career, peaking in 1895. Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1974.
Sport-specific career totals from the active profile tables, with VAL shown whenever the sport has a value file.
Career boards only, within MLB
Cross-sport prominence: 97.8th percentile among MLB careers — a within-sport percentile, because career value is not comparable across sports.
Historical franchise
No continuous modern successor — attributed to the franchise itself, never folded into a modern club.
Explore baseball's lost clubs →MLB Advanced — ERA+ & OPS+ LeadersMLB Age Milestones — Youngest to 1,000 Hits, 100 HR, 100 Wins and 1,000 KMLB Breakout Seasons — Biggest Career-High LeapsMLB Career Arc TypesMLB Career Dominance — top-25 in multiple all-time categoriesMLB Clutch Delta — Who Rises in OctoberMLB Compilers vs Comets — Career ShapeMLB Consistency Index — Mr. Reliable vs Boom-BustMLB Era-Adjusted Careers — Greatest Careers on One ScaleMLB Era-Adjusted Seasons — Greatest Seasons in Modern TermsMLB Franchise Mt. Rushmores — Four Faces of Every Team
Players whose careers had the same shape — total value, peak, best three-season stretch, length and when the value came — measured with VAL against their own leagues.
Bio, rosters, and year-by-year/career stat splits come directly from MLB's own official public StatsAPI.
Fan Rating
Rate Sam Thompson — All-Time
12 seasons · peak 15.6 in 1895
VAL (Value Above League) measures each MLB season against that season's league; the dashed line is zero — a season that added nothing above the league's fringe. ● peak · ○ league-best season.
40.0 career wins over 12 seasons · 1 win = 2.61 VAL
Best season · 1895 · +6.0 wins
Latest season · 1896 · +2.2 wins
VAL 3.0 measures each part of a MLB player's game in his sport's own currency against what that season's fringe players produced, converted to team wins with rates fitted from every team-season in the encyclopedia.
How often Sam Thompson led or placed top-ten on a MLB season board, and the shape of the career — computed from the same per-season boards the year pages publish, so every number is checkable.
Career arc
Late Developer
Peaked in the back half of their career — got better with age. Peak 1895, 12 rated seasons.
Where Sam Thompson ranks on StatVault's all-time league-relative boards (park-unadjusted; 100 = league average that season).
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