What's the difference between the players who wore now-retired Braves jerseys and those who wore now-retired Phillies jerseys? Essentially, it's Hank Aaron. Both storied franchises are prolific when it comes to retiring jerseys (seven each), but the Braves take the lead when it comes to performance.
Among the NL East teams that have retired player jerseys, the average rWAR for players so honored is 82.3 for Atlanta, 60.8 for Philadelphia, 40.3 for Washington and 38.5 for New York.
If you're wondering why I went with the Expos logo instead of the Nationals logo to represent the franchise, the answers are A) because all four retired jerseys had Expos logos printed on them, and B) because this is a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to use an Expos logo and I shall not squander it.
The Marlins have yet to retire a single player jersey, while the Mets have retired only Tom Seaver's and Gil Hodges' numbers (and good ole' Gil only posted a 0.5 rWAR as a player while wearing a Metropolitans jersey). The Expos retired four uniforms that the Washington Nationals finally decided to honor at the start of the 2011 season.
Additionally, the Mets have retired #37 in honor of their first manager, Casey Stengel, while the Marlins retired #5 in honor of their first president, Carl Barger.
Team | Players | Other | rWAR | Mean |
ATL | 7 | 576.3 | 82.3 | |
FLA | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
NYM | 2 | 1 | 76.9 | 38.5 |
PHI | 7 | 425.6 | 60.8 | |
MON/WAS | 4 | 161.0 | 40.3 |
Source: rWAR data courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com; retired numbers courtesy of Wikipedia.