Upon hearing that Francisco Liriano had signed a 2-year deal with Pittsburgh, I checked his recent stats and guessed that he was the wildest starting pitcher over the last two years.
My guess was off by one spot. But look at the across-the-board closeness of these two-year stats:
| Most walks per 9 innings, 2011-12 combined (200+ IP) |
|---|
| Player | IP | Age | G | gs | cg | sho | W | L | H | R | ER | BB | SO | hr | BF | hb | wp | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edinson Volquez | 5.25 | 291.1 | 27-28 | 52 | 52 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 18 | 266 | 160 | 153 | 170 | 278 | 4.73 | 79 | 33 | 1291 | 13 | 14 | .244 | .351 | .403 | .754 |
| Francisco Liriano | 5.01 | 291.0 | 27-28 | 60 | 52 | 1 | 1 | 15 | 22 | 268 | 178 | 169 | 162 | 279 | 5.23 | 79 | 33 | 1284 | 14 | 20 | .246 | .347 | .387 | .734 |
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
What’s more:
- Liriano and Volquez were born not 4 months apart in 1983, in neighboring cities (San Cristobal and Santo Domingo) along the southern coast of the Dominican Republic.
- They had similar minor-league stats.
- They reached the majors six days apart in 2005, each pitching in a game that his team lost by shutout — Volquez pitching for Texas, Liriano against Texas.
- Each allowed an extra-base hit to his first batter — a double off Volquez, a HR off Liriano.
- Each was an All-Star in his official rookie year. Neither won the Rookie of the Year award, but each each topped the eventual ROY winner in WAR, Volquez with 4.5 pitching WAR, Liriano 4.4.
- Each has one career complete game, a 1-0 shutout win. Liriano tossed a no-hitter in 2011, while Volquez hurled a one-hitter last July, allowing just an infield single.
- Each made his lone postseason start on October 6, 2010, in a Division Series opener. Each allowed 4 runs in losing to a former AL Cy Young Award winner who won exactly 21 games that year (and would win exactly 19 the next) — Liriano losing to Sabathia, and Volquez falling before Halladay’s no-hitter. Each team got swept.
- Each pitcher is now 29 years old and has yet to reach 200 IP in a season, though each has topped 190 IP and has one 200-K season.
- In his final inning of 2012, the 4th inning, each allowed 3 hits and 2 walks, and retired two batters, on a swinging strikeout and a groundball forceout.
- Each has a career high Game Score of 87. Liriano’s is not the no-hitter.
I don’t know about their high games in bowling. And we all know that when you go looking for “eerie similarities,” you generally find some. But I still think the list above is plenty weird.
each has a seven letter surname with exactly 3 vowels, and the letter “o” occurs exactly once in both their given names and their surnames , as indeed it does in the two-word phrase “occurs once” …………….
oops 4 vowels in liriano .. I’m not cut out for this work — should leave it to the experts…
Amazing stuff — I especially liked 10/6/2010. I checked to see their respective ground ball/fly ball tendencies — yup, on a career basis they are virtually identical, Liriano with a .93 GB/FB ratio (.80 being average) and Volquez at .95.
The first one of these types of comparisons I ever remember reading about was Lincoln-Kennedy way back when. The first one related to baseball was Roger Maris- Hack Wilson. At least I think that’s the order I became aware of them in- it was such a long, long time ago.
But while your comparison might not involve anyone quite as famous as those guys were the real similarities are probably far more relevant and telling. Yet amazingly they don’t even show up on B-R’s similarity rankings at ages 27 or 28. Weird.
Way back when I was a stamp- and sometimes coin-collector, I bought one of those “Kennedy Looks at Lincoln” pennies with a tiny JFK face etched next to Lincoln’s. It came with a list of their “eerie similarities,” one of which was “carried in death on the same caisson.” Even as a kid (after looking up “caisson”) I realized that *that* similarity was more manufactured than organic.
Yeah, but, what about Fogelberg & Weisberg, who time would show clearly weren’t twin sons of different mothers.
Here’s a couple of guys with similar stats, 1B Jake Jones and 1B Rudy York in 1947.
Stat……..Jones……York
G…………154……..150
PA………..636……..644
AB………..575……..584
R………….65………56
H…………136……..136
2B…………21………25
3B………….4……….4
HR…………19………21
RBI………..96………91
BB…………54………58
SO…………85………87
BA………..237……..233
OBP……….306……..302
SLG……….386……..397
OPS……….693……..699
OPS+……….89………94
On 6/14 that year the Red Sox traded York to the White Sox for Jones. At the time of the trade the Red Sox had more home games remaining than the White Sox so Jones ended up setting a ML record for most home games played in a season with 91. And no, York did not set a record for most road games.
Jones’ 96 RBI were his ML high and his second highest was 13 in 1946. As far as I can determine that is the highest differential of its kind.
Fascinating stuff there, Richard!
So I set out to see if Jake Jones is the only player with a season of 90+ RBI and no other years of 15+ RBI.
For the modern era, the answer is YES.
But way back when, Jim Burns played one full year in the American Association, 1889, and paced the KC Cowboys with 97 RBI. Of his other two partial years, his best RBI total was 10.
I also looked into career RBI for that set. Once again, Jake Jones takes the cake among modern, true-MLB players, with a career total of 117 RBI. But the same Jim Burns totaled 111 RBI, and Charlie Hanford (who played 2 years in the Federal League) had 90 RBI in 1914 and 22 in ’15, a total of 112.
P.S. I had expected Super Joe Charboneau to show up in these lists, but no — his high mark was 87 RBI (then 18, then 9, then gone).
Sung to the tune of “Mrs. Robinson”:
“Where have you gone, Joseph Charboneau…
This is not 100% certain but I found that Charboneau’s differential of 69 RBI was third on the list, Orestes Destrade was second with 72.
Looking at that 1947 trade of Rudy York for Jake Jones, I was shocked to see that York was an All-Star that year, despite a first half of .216/8/35.
And who was the AL starter at 1B in 1947? Thirty-seven-year-old George McQuinn. Hell, McQuinn started the next year, too, his last in the game (and one of his worst).
McQuinn had a solid career, but the AL just didn’t have many good first basemen in that era, and certainly no “classic” sluggers.
McQuinn paced AL 1Bs in 1947 with 4.1 WAR, hitting .304 with a .395 OBP, but just 13 HRs and 80 RBI. Next with 4.0 WAR was Roy Cullenbine, who batted .224 but with 24 HRs and gobs of walks. Then came the ping-hitting Ferris Fain at 3.8 WAR (.414 OBP but 7 HRs). No one else topped 1.2 WAR.
And that was nothing next to 1948: With Cullenbine unceremoniously dropped by the Tigers, Fain led the way at 2.6 WAR, then Billy Goodman 1.6 WAR, and no others worth even half a WAR. Eddie Robinson led AL 1Bs with 16 HRs, McQuinn was next with 11, no one else in double figures.
The 1948 AL 1B class was so bad that the median OPS among the 9 regulars was a shade below the league average, which includes pitchers.
And in ’49, Mickey Vernon led with 3.5 WAR, then Robinson 2.2 and Fain 2.1, no others with even 1.
From 1947 through ’49, no AL 1B hit 25 HRs in a season. The days of Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg and Trosky seemed very long past….
It didn’t stop there. There wouldn’t a prototypical AL 1st baseman until Killebrew came into his own in the 1960s.
For 1950-59:
– there were no AL first basemen with a 25 HR, 120 OPS+, 4 WAR season.
– only one season (Mickey Vernon, 1953) of 5 WAR, and only one season (same one) of 150 OPS+
– only three seasons (Walt Dropo 1950, Luke Easter 1952, Vic Wertz 1956) of 30 HR and none with 35 HR
Instead, the AL batting champion was a first baseman (Ferris Fain, Mickey Vernon) in 1951-53, but with only 23 HR total for the three seasons.
Incidentally, two players in the 1950 season (Walt Dropo, Vern Stephens) had 144 RBI with 70 or less XBH. That is the record in a 154 games season and trails only Tommy Davis (153 in 1962) and Edgar Martinez (145 in 2000) for RBI with 70 or fewer XBH.
Actually, Bill Skowron’s 1956 totals, 23 HR, 142 OPS+, 4,1 WAR, comes mighty close.
Yeah, I would say that Skowron is fairly prototypical for a first baseman- he just didn’t play as much as he otherwise might have because of all the talent the Yankees had.
But Doug’s assertion still holds that it was a very unusual stretch- especially when you realize that it was also a time when there were a lot of big, slow-moving outfielders around- guys like Hank Sauer, Jim Lemon and Teddy Ballgame toward the end of his career- who would seem to have been far better suited to play first.
Skowron also lost much playing time due to injuries. In 1958 and 1959 combined he played in only 190 games. His replacement was Marv Throneberry who I suspect does not meet your criteria for talent.
Tommy Henrich played 52 of his 115 games in 1949 at first base. His 24 HR, 85 RBI, 148 OPS+ and 4.0 WAR put him ahead of all the other full-time AL first-basemen. He almost single-handedly carried the Yankees until DiMaggio’s return at the end of June.
Concerning my post #7:
Now that PI has been extended to 1916 I have discovered that Buck Herzog holds the record for most home games in a season with 98 in 1916. I should say for the time period 1916-2012.
Ladies and gentlemen…drum roll please…the 2012 winner of the “Best HHS Article Title Relative to Interesting Conundra in Philosophy and Biology Award” is…John Autin
Too much credit, Jim. The working title was “Trout Mask Replica,” but I thought folks would be disappointed to find it wasn’t about Mike. And then I couldn’t find the ASCII code for Led Zep’s “Runes.”
Still, I’ll be glad to send Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the award.