Tiger shortstop Jose Iglesias was the AL RoY runner-up, turning in a .300 hitting campaign to go with solid defense (0.989 fielding). That by itself would be an unusual rookie campaign for a shortstop, but a mid-season trade from the Red Sox to Detroit made Iglesias’ season more unusual still.

I was curious how often a rookie who had established himself as the “regular” shortstop (i.e. not necessarily an “everyday” player, but the player used at his position more frequently than any other) had been traded to another team to became its regular shortstop. I figured it was probably unusual, but I wouldn’t have guessed it had happened only once before in the live ball era.

After the jump, more on rookies who establish themselves only to get traded mid-season.

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For my first offseason time-killer, I assembled lists of the best seasons in certain stats by batting order position, retrieved with the Batting Split Finder. The idea was spawned by discovering that Jimmie Foxx mainly batted 5th for his first five full seasons, including a near-Triple Crown in 1932. (The Athletics’ 3rd and 4th men from 1928-32 were Mickey Cochrane and Al Simmons.)

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One of the best kept secrets of the 2013 season was this – among only a handful of previous occasions, this season ended with two players having current 13 year or longer streaks of 20 or more stolen bases. Those players were Ichiro Suzuki and Juan Pierre. And, if not for an injury-plagued 2010 season that held him to just 17 thefts, Jimmy Rollins would have been a 3rd player with that distinction.

More after the jump on players who maintain stolen base proficiency throughout their careers.

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The “Expansion Era Committee” of the Hall of Fame will consider twelve candidates for induction this year. Those candidates who appear on 75% of the ballots of the sixteen committee members will be inducted into the Hall in July, 2014.  The results of the committee’s voting will be announced on December 9.

Four of the twelve candidates being considered were long-time managers: Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and Billy Martin.   Evaluating managerial performance is not easy — it is very difficult to separate the contributions a baseball manager makes to winning from those of his players.  But what we can do is evaluate what kinds of records have led previous managers to be inducted into the Hall.  I’ve found that the following formula is very good as a description of which managers have made it into the Hall:

–First, take the number of games over .500  a manager’s teams have been during the regular season overall for his career.
–Then add to that a number equal to 100 times the number of AL and NL pennants the manager’s teams won.
–Then add a bonus of  85 times the number of World Series won.

Let’s call the result HOF Manager Index Points (“MIPs”).  After the jump is a table of the top MIP totals in major league history.  Checking the table you’ll see that of the of the top 27 MIP totals (540 MIP points or more), 26 managers are either in the Hall of Fame (elected either as managers, executives or players) or are on the current Expansion Era Committee ballot.  The only manager with more than  540 MIPs who is not in the Hall, or on the current ballot, is Ralph Houk, who is down at 25th on the list with 558 MIPs. Continue reading →

According to results generated using Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, Josh Donaldson of the A’s led the majors with 90 games in which he played the entire game and his team won. The leaders in that category in 2013:

Josh Donaldson, 90 complete game wins
Ben Zobrist, 88 complete game wins
John Jay, 87 complete game wins
Andrelton Simmons, Andrew McCutchen and Matt Carpenter, 86 complete game wins

More on this odd statistic after the jump. Continue reading →

Nolan Ryan was recently inducted into the HHS Circle of Greats and is one of these pitching greats with a career accomplishment unique among pitchers active since 1901. What is this unusual career feat?

Congratulations to Artie Z! He correctly identified our quiz players as the only Hall of Fame pitchers active since 1901 who hit no more than 5 career home runs but did hit one off another Hall of Fame pitcher. More on this vanishing occurrence after the jump.

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Wil Myers won the 2013 AL Rookie of the Year award, as announced this evening.  It was generally acknowledged that Myers’ season was likely the best of a not particularly impressive class of AL rookie seasons this year.  Baseball-reference’s WAR ranks several AL rookies seasons a bit ahead of Myers’ 2.0 WAR total, but no AL rookie produced a WAR season above 2.7, so nobody can really claim to have a big WAR advantage over the ROY winner.

That lack of a rookie season over 2.7 WAR (pitching WAR for pitchers, overall WAR for everyday players) is very unusual in the AL.  Indeed, it looks to me as if the last time the top WAR for a rookie season in the AL was under 2.8 was 1958 (not including the strike year of 1994).  Albie Pearson of the old Washington Senators won the Rookie of the Year in the AL in 1958, sixty-five years ago.

This post is for voting and discussion in the 36th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG).  This round adds to the ballot those players born in 1940 who were not added in the previous round.  Rules and lists are after the jump. Continue reading →

Palmer, Briefly

In a near-repeat of the 26-26 tie vote between Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan in the 1941 round, Jim Palmer barely edged Rose, 27 votes to 25, to become the 35th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats.  More on Jim and the voting after the jump. Continue reading →

In a recent quiz, I happened to stumble upon a tiny subset of hitters, namely those represented by the yellow area in the extreme upper right-hand corner of the chart below. In that post, I noted the recent increase in the number of such hitters and speculated on what might be causing this uptick.

More on batters with a high XBH to SLG ratio after the jump.

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