Fans tuning into this season’s MLB games from the very first pitch have been treated to plenty of early offense. Leadoff hitters are launching home runs left and right (and center) at an especially high rate, and producing more first-inning offense than we’ve seen in decades.
Contributing to USA Today Sports Weekly, our own Aidan Jackson-Evans (@ajacksonevans on Twitter) tries to explain the phenomenon. Here is the link to his column.
Every week during the season, HHS submits analysis like this to the magazine. Check it out online, or consider picking up a print copy.
I don’t have any way to substantiate this, but my recollection is that the notion of leading off the game with a dinger was first tried by the Yankees about 1955-1956, when Casey Stengel told Hank Bauer to try to go long, as much for shock effect as anything.
Someone may have done it sooner, of course, and in our era of all or nothing batting, nobody cares that much. I’m guessing Rickey Henderson holds the record for leadoff HRS.
It wasn’t leading off the game but the Yankees had back-to-back home runs today in the first PAs of the game for two players (Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge), both making their major league debuts. It’s the first time since at least 1913 that a team has had two players debut with a home run, at any point in the game.
Henderson is correct, and it’s not close, with 81 lead-off home runs, Here’s the top 10. Never would have guessed Ichiro.
Bauer had 17 in 440 games leading off—didn’t realize this info was available until I looked for it. Henderson had 81 in 2875. Bauer’s % was 4.01, Henderson’s 2.82, Soriano’s—54 in 768—an amazing 7.03, Granderson 5.06. Someone else can look up the others.
Sorry—Bauer’s was 17 in 424, not 440.
Can’t determine where to post so I’ll do it her on the most recent live board. Was trying to explain COG and HHS to a colleague. Is there a list of players in the COG but not the HOF and vice versa?
That information is in the table in the COG Recap post.
http://www.highheatstats.com/2016/02/circle-of-greats-recap/
Sandy Leon is currently batting .390 through 136 PA.
He’s a Catcher.
Here are the BA leaders for Catcher, minimum of 130 PA:
.399 … Don Padgett (254)
.390 … Sandy Leon (in progress)
.374 … Earle Brucker (191)
.368 … Smokey Burgess (392)
.367 … Babe Phelps (349)
.366 … Gus Mancuso (254)
.365 … Joe Mauer (606)
.364 … Babe Phelps (130)
.362 … Bill Dickey (472)
.362 … Mike Piazza (633)
.361 … Hank Severeid (248)
Padgett only played 61 of 93 games that year behind the plate…..6 games at 1B, the rest as a pinch hitter.
What was his average purely as a catcher?
Burgess had his .368 BA in 1954. His incomplete splits show 307 PA against RHP (Burgess was a LHB), 50 PA against LHP and 35 PA unaccounted for. His BA against RHP was .372 and .229 against LHP. So he definitely benefited from a platoon advantage. I can’t check the other players now because I am having problems with running BR.
Padget went .317/.357/.467 over his first 1141 PA (3 seasons) but .254/.312/.356 for the rest of his career (1007 PA). Of course, the back half of his career sandwiched four years lost to military service.
Completely off topic but I noticed that Jose Quintana has 3 straight seasons of 200+ innings, 30+ starts, and 9 or fewer wins. I’m guessing that no one else has ever done that before. Does anyone else even have 3 non-consecutive seasons that fit those criteria?
BTW, for a while, it looked like Quintana would do it again this season but he’s gone 4-0 in his past 7 starts. So he just needs one more win to break double digits for the first time in his career.
Steve Trachsel, Mike Moore and Rick Mahler have each done it 3 times, non-consecutively.
Thanks Richard! Mahler came very, very close to doing it 3 times consecutively. He did it in ’82, ’88 and ’89, and fell just 3 innings short of also doing it in ’87.
It has been done 213 times, and without a P-I subscription I can’t get the money shot.
But I know who won the least number of games with 30/200.
Jack Nabors
1
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/naborja01.shtml
Another A’s pitcher, Steve Gerkin in 1945 had the most IP (102) in a season with zero wins and 50% of appearances as a starter.
The most starts in a zero win season are 14, by Vida Blue (!), pitching for the Royals in 1983. Blue totaled only 85.1 IP for the season, going 6 innings in only 5 starts, including one 8 inning CG.
One Saturday evening in September 1985, I went to the White Sox game on free tickets from their Straight A / Perfect Attendance program with my parents (the principal of my junior high was a Sox fan and our western suburb was pretty much Cubs country). We were late for the 6:05 start. As we walked along 35th Street (there were no neighborhood parking permits for Bridgeport in those days), we heard the roar of the crowd… and it built up… and got louder… and finally the scoreboard exploded. When he came to bat again, we learned that Rudy Law had led off the game with an Inside-the-Park homerun.
(As James Thurber once said, You could look it up. It was the 21st of September.)