Quick Hits from The Baseball-Reference Play Index
Posted
Friday, February 22nd, 2013 at
2:08 am by Raphy
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with the new PI tools. Here are some of the things I have found.
- The only pitcher of any significance to wear #1: Matt Young
- In 2012 the Mets scored 43.5% of their runs with 2 outs, the most in baseball.
- Yankee killers: Players who smacked the Yanks around much better than they hit everyone else. #1 Richard Hidalgo, #5 Luis Tiant!
- Here are 19 players whose only career HR was a grand slam. The list includes Felix Hernandez , Shaun Marcum and J
ake Westbrook
- Player with the most career HR all solo shots (among those available in the PI) : Todd Dunwoody
- Watch for
AlexeiRamirez to start slow. His career OPS is .725, but only .561 early.This is the 8th worst difference: among players with 3000 PA - On the other hand Matt Kemp is a fast starter. His career OPS in March/April is 1.024, but overall it’s .853 That difference is the 4th most on record.
- Ryota Igarashi faced 351 batters in his career, 31 with bases loaded. This 8.8% rate is the most on record (50+ IP)
- Rockies starters only pitched 53.8% of the teams’ innings in 2012; by far the lowest on record.
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these filters are great, but i have a tough time generating them myself sometimes. some tutorials on more advanced PI searches would be a nice addition to the website
Raphy!!!! A triumphant return!
In looking through the “Yankee Killers”, the name Gene Green jumped out at me. Had never heard of him before. He managed to lead the league in GIDP twice, once while having only 489 PAs, the other time with only 405 PAs.
For his career, he grounded into 61 DP in 285 opportunities. His 21.4% GIDP is much higher than that of noted GIDP expert Jim Rice (15.1%). He was not only a Yankee Killer, he was also a Rally Killer!
Green also split his time between catcher and right field, which is a really odd combination. He often played 10+ games at each position in the same season. Don’t think I’ve seen that before.
Yogi Berra spent more than 10% of his career in the outfield. More in left than in right, but he’s far from the only catcher to regularly play the outfield.
True though Green’s games are almost 50/50 catcher and right field. And he wasn’t switched to a new position like Surhoff, Biggio, etc. Green always played both positions.
Ed — Charlie Moore.
Ah Charlie Moore. 14 seasons with the Brewers and only 8.7 WAR. Wonder if anyone else has played so long with the same franchise and given them so little in return???
As I recall, Gary Carter’s old baseball cards listed him as catcher/outfield.
I recently found this using the new Batting Split Finder. In 2000 Darin Erstad set the seasonal record for most RBI from the lead-off position with 100.
Erstad broke Nomar Garciaparra’s record of 98 RBI from the leadoff spot in 1997.
Raphy: Would you explain how you obtained your Yankee Killer list? I went to the Batting Split Finder and got a list of players OPS against the Yankees with PA more than 50. What I would then do is to save the first several pages and use them to do a search under Season Finders Player Batting for OPS. I would enter all lists into an excel spreadsheet, sort by name , calculate the OPS differences and sort by that difference. It looks to me like you did not do it that way.
@8 Richard:
Select:
Find Career Totals
Split Type: Opponent
Choose a Split: New York Yankees
Check: Compare this split to the player’s season/career totals
Set criteria for totals only: PA >=50
Sorted by OPS
Difference between total and split (found underneath the sorted menu)
Raphy: Thanks but as you were posting your comment I discovered the “Compare this split….” box after looking more carefully. Sorry to trouble you.
No trouble.
That box is the key to most of the searches that I posted.
@8
@9
I’m sorry for that one I didn’t do:
Set criteria for totals only: PA >=50
Instead I did:
Select Additional Criteria Games Must Match: PA >=50
I knew what you meant.
Perhaps the Orioles can take some comfort from the list of teams with the most runs scored with 2 outs in 2012. They’re near the bottom of the list, so perhaps at little more luck in that category in 2013 will offset an expected regression in winning one-run games.
Derek Jeter has hit 30.2% of his HR to right field, the second highest percentage for a RHB to the opposite field with at least 10 career HR. Matt Diaz is first with 35.6%.
Now that’s cool. Where is Dale Murphy’s career number on that list, Richard? It’s gotta be fairly close to Jeter’s number (although Murph was more of a right-center guy really).
Evidently Hit Location stats only go back to 1988 so only 15 of Murphy’s HR show up on the PI list.
Yankee Stadium, (both) may be helping him here. The short right field helps raise that number while the big left field lowers those. Both increasing the RF%.
Where would David Ortiz rank on homers to LF by a LHB?
Career leader in the PI count era for HR on a 3-0 pitch: Thome with 17. (Most by a pitcher: EHanson, Moyer, Trachsel with 5)
Triples leading off the 1st inning: Tim Raines, 26.
SB in a season by a pitcher: 3 of the top 4 seasons are by Cardinals — Gibson (5, 3), Andujar (3), Browning (3).
Surprised it’s so low. I suppose that if you have a very fast pitcher, you don’t necessarily want to use him to pinch-run on days between starts for fear you’ll lose him for a long time if he pulls something. I used to do it all the time in HH2K1, I recall that he had several years at 15+ SB. I wonder if we’ll ever see it in real life.
I clicked on the link of teams like the 2012 Rockies with low proportion of innings by starters. Of course, almost all of the top positions are from recent times. But, sitting in 11th position, was the 1964 Kansas City As. I was intrigued.
So, I looked them up and saw that they were a predictably awful team and had switched managers part way through the season. Then clicked on the 1965 season – same story. To cut to the chase, after having the same manager for 50 years (except when spelled by his son), the As then went through 14 managers in the next 20 seasons, 15 if you count both of Hank Bauer’s separate stints. Then, 9 more managers in the next 16 seasons, or 11 if you count separate stints of two more managers. So, between Mack and TLR, 23 different men in 36 years, the longest stints being 3 years by Jimmy Dykes (right after Mack), Dick Williams and Billy Martin.
Yikes!
When in doubt, fire the manager, since you can’t fire the owner. Of course there was a different dynamic under Finley when they had success.
Thanks for posting some of these neat tidbits! I particularly love the grand slam in their only at bat list. Any list that includes both Arquimedez Pozo and Creighton Gubanich is definitely a winner… however, it’s unfathomable that there was a player named Jim Command, and he wasn’t a pitcher….
I was so keen to dive into this pool that I forgot to trumpet the return of the Wizard of the Play Index! Welcome back, Raphy. And folks, do pay attention to the man behind the curtain….
With their novel approach to starting, the 2012 Rockies also almost singlehandedly kept alive the notion of long relief. They had 98 reliever outings of 2+ innings, more than twice the average of the other 29 teams.
Long relief has withered in that last 10 years. In 2002, there were 2,257 reliever outings of 2+ IP. In 2012, just 1,508, or one-third less. The proportion of innings thrown by SPs was 66% both years. Teams are just spreading out the relief innings over more and more guys.