This post takes a look at some of the more unusual happenings this season, some you may have heard about, but hopefully more that you haven’t (at least not until now). More after the jump.
Wil Myers hit for the cycle on Apr 10, only the 12th time since 1913 a player has cycled in his team’s first 10 games of the season (Gee Walker of the Tigers is the only player to cycle on opening day, on Apr 20, 1937 against Cleveland). Myers is only the second Padre to cycle, and the first was only two years ago, by Matt Kemp against the Rockies on Aug 14, 2015 (who knew that Tony Gwynn never cycled?). But, this wasn’t the only big game for Myers, who led the majors in slugging and OPS through the first 10 games of the season.
The Mets had three players (Yoenis Cespedes, Lucas Duda, Asdrubal Cabrera) with four hits in their 14-4 drubbing of the Phillies on Apr 11. It was only the second time in Mets history that three players had recorded four or more hits, the first coming on July 4, 1985 with Wally Backman, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter doing the honors (the Mets also had four other players with three hits, part of a 28 hit attack against the Braves in a crazy 16-13 win in 19 innings).
Philadelphia’s thrashing at the hands of the Mets came only 3 days after the Phillies had pummeled the Nationals by a 17-3 count. It was the fourth searchable 17+ run eruption for the Phillies in the first 10 games of the season, trailing only the White Sox (8) and Yankees (6) (the 1993 Tigers are the only team with two such games among their first 10). The Athletics and Browns/Orioles share the franchise record for getting pounded by 17+ runs in the first 10 games of the season, each with 6 such searchable games.
Yoenis Cespedes‘s 6 home runs and 32 total bases are both the second highest totals by a Met outfielder over his team’s first 10 games. The records belong to Dave Kingman with 7 bombs and 34 totals bases in 1976 (Kingman played 106 games in right field that year, 74% of his career total for that position and 85 more than in any other season).
For the second year in a row, no player stole 3 bases in a game over the first 10 games of the season, something that hadn’t happened in consecutive seasons since 1999-2000. The last player with two such games among his team’s first 10 was 33 year-old Chuck Knoblauch, playing his final season for the Royals in 2002 (those were the first 3 stolen base games for Knoblauch in 5 seasons, and two of only nine such games for his career).
Toronto has begun the season 1-9, the worst ever start for a team that appeared in the previous season’s ALCS, and matching the mark set by the 1998 Marlins among NLCS participants from the preceding season. Among the Blue Jay defeats was a 2-0 loss to the Brewers on Apr 12 with Marcus Stroman the hard luck losing pitcher, the first Toronto starter to lose a complete game at home since Roy Halladay in 2009.
The Mariners, Toronto’s expansion cousins, have hardly been any better, getting out of the gate at only 2-8. Three combined wins by the two teams over their first ten games is a new low, eclipsing their twin 2-8 starts 39 seasons ago in 1978.
The Marlins’ Wei-Yin Chen was removed from his start against the Mariners on Apr 18, despite allowing no hits or runs in 7 IP (he had thrown exactly 100 pitches). It was the fourth time in just over a year (this season and last) that a pitcher had been removed from a potential no-hitter after 7+ IP. There were only four such games in the 19 prior seasons (1997-2015), and one of those was Francisco Cordova getting pulled after 9 innings and 121 pitches on July 12, 1997.
Houston’s Luke Gregerson blew the save in allowing 6 runs, all earned, to the Royals on Apr 8. His resulting 162 ERA for this outing is tied (with many others) for the second highest non-infinite searchable result by a reliever in the first 10 games of the season; the only larger early season single game ERA is a 189 score (7 ER in 0.1 IP), first recorded by the A’s Tex Hoyle on Apr 29, 1952, and matched by three others from 1997 to 2002. Three relievers have an early season appearance allowing 6 earned runs without recording an out, all from 1993 to 1999.
Three relievers finished a game pitching at least an inning and striking out each batter faced. That’s the 18th time in 22 years with as many as three such games, but a big decline from the last 3 seasons that saw 7, 6 and 8 such relief appearances (there are only two seasons before 1996 with three or more such games in the first ten games of the season). Only one of those three games this season was a save, again a big drop from the last three years that saw 4, 5 and 4 such saves.
Through 10 games of the season there were 2474 strikeouts, almost identical to the 2466 whiffs over the same period last year. Also like last year, both teams struck out at least once in each of those 150 games (in the 20 seasons since the last expansion in 1998, there have been only 8 team games without a strikeout out of 6000 over the first 10 games of the season, the last coming in 2011). The most efficient strikeout performance was by the Blue Jays on April 13, with one strikeout for every 5.3 strikes thrown, whiffing 15 Oriole batters despite throwing only 80 pitches for strikes.
In contrast, home runs over the first ten games are up substantially from 2016, with 334 this year, a 10.6% jump from last season. The number of team games with a home run has shown a similar increase, with 202 such games, 9.2% more than last year. Despite the home run surge, scoring is only up 1%, with 13 more runs scored this year over the first 10 games of the season, and the proportion of batters putting the ball in play (including homers) actually declined, down 0.55% from 2016 to 68.3%. The power bump, though, may be related to a slowdown in the pace of play with the first 150 games averaging 3:10, 8 minutes longer than last year. Only 10 games (6.7%) were completed in less than 2½ hours, about the same as the 9 such games last year, while the number of 3 hour games climbed to 63.3%, up from 60.7% last season.
To close, here’s a couple of nuggets from a game I took in last week. Evan Gattis delivered a bases clearing, two out, pinch-hit double against the Mariners on Apr 11, good for a .401 WPA. It was his third career .400 WPA game when appearing only as a pinch-hitter, the most among active players. And Mariner shortstop Taylor Motter drilled three doubles, matching his season total from 2016; it was only the 9th searchable game of 3+ doubles when batting 9th for the losing team.
What has caught your eye this young season?
As hot as Kingman was in 1976, I believe Mike Schmidt had 8 HR’s after 9 Phillies’ games
Yes, but the Phillies are not the Mets, and Schmidt wasn’t an outfielder. 🙂
Correct, on both accounts. However, I was referring to the National League, 1976 and I believe that was a ML record that Schmidt set — IIRC, he may have also broken Kingman’s record set a few days earlier?
Right you are, Paul. Schmidt had 9 home runs in the Phillies’ first 10 games, still the major league record and matched since only by Luis Gonzalez in 2001. Gonzalez also has the Total Base record with 39, two more than Schmidt.
The AL record is 7 home runs by A-Rod (2007) and the immortal Chris Shelton (2006). Shelton has the Total Base record with 35, three more than Chris Davis (2013). In those 10 games, Shelton compiled 4% of his career PA, but 19% of his career home runs and 8% of his career total bases.
A bit surprising that Detroit gave up on Shelton so quickly, with a .281/.348/.477 slash as a Tiger and a 162 game average of 148 hits, 77 runs, 26 doubles, 23 HR and 71 RBI (and 136 whiffs, but hardly alone there). He also appeared to be a league average fielder, so not a liability at first base.
HR
9 Schmidt PHI
7 Kingman NY
5 Cedeno HOU
5 Matthews SF
RBI
17 Schmidt, PHI
16 Cedeno HOU
15 Griffey CIN
15 Kingman NY
April 24, 1976 – the Phillies had played just 10 games. Schmidt was slugging .908 at this point.
If 2001 was the same year Luis Gonzalez hit the 57 homers, at one point (maybe as late as August) his pace was beyond Chuck Klein and Lou Gehrig for the all-time TB records for a single season (NL and MLB)
Sorry, re Gonzo, that’s Hornsby and Ruth (not Klein & Gehrig)
With today’s game, St. Louis swept Pittsburgh with three identical scores of 2-1. A team beating the same team 3 times in a row by the same score is fairly rare, having happened only 27 other times (assuming my scanning of Retrosheet data is correct). It’s the sixth time that same score was 2-1. The last time was ATL over PHI over 3 games ending Sep. 20, 2015 (one of the other 2-1 sets of scores).
Only one team has won 4 games in a row by the same score, San Diego in 4 games ending June 7, 2008 (another set of 2-1 games); they were not all against the same team. If the Cardinals beat Milwaukee 2-1 tomorrow they will tie that record.
Two teams have lost 4 games in a row by the same score (neither all against the same team), the Washington Senators by 0-2 scores in 1958 and the Giants by 2-3 scores in 1961. Pittsburgh can tie that record against the Yankees on Friday.
Oops, make that 25 times before this, I accidentally counted a couple of instances where 3-game sequences with the same score of two teams overlapped, but were not all against each other.
Kerry: how far back in time does your search go?
I went back to 1901 using the game logs at Retrosheet.
As a follow-up, the most games in a row a team has won or lost by the same run difference is 7. The Cubs won 7 in a row by one run on June 6-12, 1927, against the Braves (1 game), Dodgers (4 games), and Giants (2 games). The Senators lost 7 in a row by one run on May 21-29, 1919, against the Browns (3 games), White Sox (3 games), and Yankees (1 game).
All other instances with at least five in a row with the same difference (10 other times) have been one run differences, except for a weird one: in 1981, the Cubs lost 5 in a row by 5 runs each time (May 13-17). Three of those games were 1-6 losses (not consecutive).
When the Yankees beat the Marlins 6-1, 6-1 in games 2 and 3 of the 2003 Series, I looked up the last time there were two consecutive World Series games in the same Series with the same scores. I got back to the A’s vs Dodgers in the early ’70s, but one of their three 3-2 games was won by the other team.
On April 12th, Jordan Montgomery made his MLB debut for the Yankees. His battery mate that day was Kyle Higashoika, who was making his first MLB start (Higashoika was used the night before as a defensive replacement or else it would have been his MLB debut as well).
Quite strange for an all-rookie battery to be used in the 8th game of the season, with both basically making their MLB debuts.
In that game the Yankees scored eight runs on eight hits, something I noted at the time as being fairly rare—not just scoring as many runs as hits but scoring a lot of runs on the same number of hits. Can anyone elaborate on this phenomenon? How rare is it for, say, seven hits or more to produce seven runs or the hit equivalent over seven? What is the greatest number of runs scored with this proviso? I realize that walks come into play here (the Yanks had five in that game), so here’s a different question: what is the greatest number of runs scored when every baserunner for a team crossed the plate? This isn’t a quiz. I’m just curious about the answers.
Here are the number of such games since 1913, when scoring exactly these number of runs:
8 runs – 501 games
9 runs – 466 games
10 runs – 456 games
11 runs – 390 games
12 runs – 345 games
13 runs – 276 games
14 runs – 195 games
15 runs – 157 games
16 runs – 139 games
17+ runs – 258 games
So, it’s about 4 or 5 times a year for 8-10 runs, dropping to less than two times per year at 14 runs or more. The most runs in such a game is also the game with the most runs period when the Rangers scored 30 runs on 29 hits against Baltimore on Aug 22, 2007 (Texas also won the nightcap, by a 9-7 score).
Included in the 3183 team games above were 10 games when both teams turned the trick, the most recent being the A’s beating the Tigers 16-10 on Aug 10, 2007. Those 3183 games also include 104 with a team scoring 50% more runs than hits, with the largest ratio coming on May 17, 1925 when the Browns beat the Red Sox 11-6 on only 4 hits (Boston walked 8 Brownies and committed 7 errors).
nsb: Not a direct answer to your question, but…
It’s a fairly rare event that a team leaves no runners on base in a game. The White Sox did so in Tuesday’s game against the Yankees, but I believe it’s the first such game this season (in more than 200 games, i.e., more than 400 team-games).
The White Sox scored all runners who reached base. Here’s how:
3rd inning: Leury Garcia, solo HR
7th inning: Tim Anderson, single; Melky Cabrera, ROE; Avisail Garcia, 3-run HR
A team can also wind up with no LOB for the game through a combination of scoring, double plays, caught stealing, etc. Still, the feat is unusual.
The starting battery both playing their first career game in the first 10 games of the season has happened four times since 1913, including on Apr 6 this year when the Reds started William “Rookie” Davis (yes, that’s his nickname) on the mound with Stuart Turner behind the plate. The other times were:
– Apr 30, 1995: Rockies, Juan Acevedo and Jorge Brito
– Apr 14, 1967: Red Sox, Billy Rohr and Russ Gibson
– Apr 15, 1942: Indians, Ray Poat and Otto Denning
Interesting there’s never been a late-in-the season call up pair.
I might be mistaken, but McNally and Ettchebarren(sic) debuted on 9/26/1962 and the result was a CG, 2 hit, 3-0 victory for the Orioles over Kansas City – I believe both were 19 years old?
That’s a great find. Etchebarren played in two games to finish the season. He was back in the Minors for all of 1963 and 1964, was a September call-up in 1965, and played in 5 games, wasn’t full time until 1966. McNally pitched that one game in 1965, and then never went back to the minors.
“That’s a great find.”
Honestly, I may have seen it on this site (or perhaps another) several months ago. I couldn’t recall initially, thinking it was Palmer or Milt Pappas, but did recall Etchebarren and was able to find it in his game logs.
But, absolutely incredible that two 19 year olds could figure so prominently in a ML game – that they debuted in, no less.
On a hunch, I looked up Greg Maddux’s first game (Astros/Cubs). http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN198609020.shtml
Amazing game. Astros took a one run lead in 9th, Cubs tied it, then seven scoreless innings, then Astros scored 3 in top of the 17th, Cubs matched it in bottom of 17th, Maddux came in to pinch run, then gave up winning run in top of the 18th. 17 Pitchers. Nolan Ryan and Jamie Moyer started–two of the oldest pitchers of all time. Also, Larry Andersen who pitched until he was 41, Danny Darwin (42), Maddux himself (42). The position players had Davey Lopes (42) and Jose Cruz (40). Must have been like one of those casino cruises.
In his first start 5 days later, Maddux goes 9 for the win at Cincinnati surrendering 11 hits and 3 BBs in an 11-3 blowout. Nowadays, they’d take him out after 6 innings because he was 20 years old.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN198609070.shtml
The McNally/Etchebarren game is the 9th youngest by combined age for teenage batteries for any game (not necessarily starting), and 4th youngest among starting batteries. Here’s the list. Starting batteries were Darwin/Kirkpatrick, Odom/Duncan, Nolan/Bench and McNally/Etchebarren.
Game Combined Team Pitcher Pitcher Catcher Catcher Age (yy.ddd) Age Age 1957-09-11 36.136 BAL Milt Pappas 18.123 Frank Zupo 18.013 1957-08-11 36.162 BAL Jerry Walker 18.180 Frank Zupo 17.347 1971-09-04 37.199 SDP Jay Franklin 18.172 Mike Ivie 19.027 1962-09-30 37.218 LAA Bobby Darwin 19.226 Ed Kirkpatrick 17.357 1953-07-29 37.256 PIT Jim Waugh 19.246 Nick Koback 18.010 1964-09-27 38.122 KCA Blue Moon Odom 19.121 Dave Duncan 19.001 1949-06-24 38.184 BSN Johnny Antonelli 19.073 Del Crandall 19.111 1967-08-29 38.359 CIN Gary Nolan 19.094 Johnny Bench 19.265 1962-09-26 39.063 BAL Dave McNally 19.330 Andy Etchebarren 19.098In the Pappas/Zupo game, Zupo also caught Dizzy Trout in his ill-fated age 42 comeback, one of only 6 instances of a teenage catcher catching a 40-something pitcher.
Is it safe to assume that is THE Bobby Darwin of Twins CF fame? I believe the Dodgers convertd him to the OF. I didn’t know he had made the majors as a pitcher
The very same. Darwin had this one start for his majors debut, then had 3 relief appearances for the Dodgers 7 years later, and then became an outfielder two years after that. Darwin also posted a 46-56 record in the minors from 165 games (127 starts), 824 IP and a 3.92 ERA.
Darwin’s brief major league pitching career wasn’t memorable but he managed to retire Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and Alex Johnson (among others) the only time he faced them, and didn’t surrender a home run to anyone.
I was only looking for battery debuts within the first 10 games of the season. The complete list for any point in the season has 17 more occurrences, the youngest of which was the McNally/Etchebarren battery mentioned below (the next youngest was Early Wynn (19) and Al Evans (22) for the Senators on Sep 13, 1939).
Of the 21 games, only two did not occur in Apr, Sep or Oct. Those were Jing Johnson and Doc Carroll for the A’s on Jun 27, 1916 and Leo Magnum and Johnny Grabowski for the White Sox on Jul 11, 1924.
Yes, I see that now.
Thanks Doug! Was obviously wondering about that, but wasn’t sure it was possible to search via the PI.
The P-I search is Player Batting Game Finder, select P and C positions only, select Starter, select in Player’s First 1 (or n) Career Games, select (if you like) In Team’s First n Games, select Find Number of Players Matching Criteria in a Team Game, click Get Results. The games with 2 such players are the matches.
In theory, you could get a match from a player who started the game at a different position, and then moved to P or C, but pretty unlikely as those are probably the two positions that a player is least likely to switch to during a game, especially early in a career.
In last night’s game against the Pirates, all 3 Yankees runs scored without the benefit of an RBI. That’s the most such runs scored by them, tied with 5 other of their games.
Josh Hamilton was released by the Rangers and needs another knee surgery. Assuming his career is over (which seems like a good assumption), he’ll have the fewest career PAs (4350) of any position player to win an MVP (previous low was Kevin Mitchell with 4.696).
The Astros’ Chris Devenski has begun the season in notable fashion: 5 consecutive relief appearances with 3 or more strikeouts in each of them. That has not been done since 2006 (Joaquin Benoit), and is tied for the second-longest streak to start a year; the record is 6.
Looking for strange?
Look at the Rockies after 18 games. Tenth in the league in runs scored, first in runs allowed, 7-0 in one run games, 12-6 record.
This is old news but it’s so incredibly weird that I had to share it. In high school, Madison Bumgarner, dated a girl named…wait for it…Madison Bumgarner!!! How is that even possible???
https://www.si.com/sportsman/2014/12/09/madison-bumgarner-sports-illustrated-sportsman-profile
Not sure anyone’s reading this thread anymore but here’s another oddity from the Jordan Montgomery debut start that I mentioned above.
So far Ivan Nova has walked 1 batter in 36 innings which would challenge the record for BB/9 set up Carlos Silva in 2005 (0.43 BB/9).
The only batter Nova has walked? Pitcher Jordan Montgomery, in his first MLB plate appearance.
David P, I am still reading it!
A strange occurrence in last night’s Jays-Yankees game: Ryan Goins hit a sacrifice fly to Jacoby Ellsbury…that knocked in two runs without an error. This was the first 2-RBI sac fly in the 40-year history of the franchise, and the first in MLB since September 16, 2014, when Wil Myers hit a deep fly ball that was caught by…Jacoby Ellsbury.
Great to know Daniel! This is always my favorite thread of the year!!! Love reading about quirky little things that you would never expect to happen.
Anthony Rendon’s big game on Sunday was among a handful of like games. These are the game counts (incl. Rendon’s) since 1913.
6+ hits – 105 games
6+ hits, incl. 4 XBH – 11 games
6+ hits, incl, 3 HR – 5 games
6+ hits, 3 HR, 10 RBI – 2 games
Rendon’s game came in the Nats’ 23-5 thrashing of the Mets. The other game of 6 hits, 3 HR and 10 RBI was recorded by Walker Cooper on Jul 6, 1949 when the Reds beat the Cubs 23-4.
Rendon somehow managed a .407 WPA score in an 18-run game, and with an aLI of only .583. That’s a .698 ratio between WPA and aLI, and there are only 78 other .400 WPA games with that high a ratio. Of those games, only two had a double-digit run differential (but nothing close to 18): Dwight Evans in a 16-4 game on Aug 13, 1988; and George Altman in a 20-9 contest in 1959, also on Aug 13. Of those 78 games, 5 were in a losing cause, 4 by one or two runs, and Bob Brenly’s game on May 8, 1988 when the Giants lost 13-7 to the Cubs.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLA/SLA192505050.shtml
….and, in this game of 92 years ago (1 of the 5 above), Cobb homered thrice to go along with the 6-hit thing – after, supposedly, claiming in the press something along the order of, “yeah, anyone can hit home runs if they try”
In the “It’s Way Too Early To Be Tracking This, But What The Heck?” Department:
We talk a lot about Three True Outcomes for batters, but what about for pitchers?
Through 5 starts, Danny Salazar appears to be challenging the record, having walked, struck out, or given up a home run to 46.8% of the batters he’s faced.
I have no idea what the record is but I checked Nolan Ryan (44.6%, 1977), Randy Johnson (46.5%, 2001), Sam McDowell (42.1%, 1966), and Bob Feller (36.9%, 1938)
Here are the top 20 qualified seasons (I added HBP to the mix to make it four).
Oliver Perez – who knew?
Lowering the bar to 500 batters faced results in this list :
Rank % Year Pitcher
1 ….. 0.491 ….. 1998 ….. Kerry Wood
2 ….. 0.483 ….. 2001 ….. Randy Johnson
3 ….. 0.468 ….. 1997 ….. Randy Johnson
4 ….. 0.465 ….. 1987 ….. Bobby Witt
5 ….. 0.465 ….. 2013 ….. Yu Darvish
6 ….. 0.463 ….. 2003 ….. Kerry Wood
7 ….. 0.458 ….. 1991 ….. Randy Johnson
8 ….. 0.456 ….. 1986 ….. Bobby Witt
9 ….. 0.453 ….. 2001 ….. Kerry Wood
10 ….. 0.452 ….. 2000 ….. Randy Johnson
11 ….. 0.451 ….. 1992 ….. Randy Johnson
12 ….. 0.446 ….. 1998 ….. Randy Johnson
13 ….. 0.445 ….. 1977 ….. Nolan Ryan
14 ….. 0.444 ….. 2016 ….. Jose Fernandez
15 ….. 0.442 ….. 1972 ….. Nolan Ryan
16 ….. 0.442 ….. 1976 ….. Nolan Ryan
17 ….. 0.441 ….. 1999 ….. Pedro Martinez
18 ….. 0.438 ….. 2009 ….. Rich Harden
19 ….. 0.438 ….. 1999 ….. Randy Johnson
20 ….. 0.436 ….. 2004 ….. Oliver Perez
Booby Witt and Rich Harden make the top 20.
Thanks Doug! (and Richard).
If we add in HPB, then Salazar is at 48.41%, just ahead of Randy Johnson for second place.
In case you are interested here’s the top 20 with a minimum of 40 IP in a season:
Rank ….. % ….. Year ….. Pitcher
1 ….. 0.658 ….. 2014 ….. Aroldis Chapman
2 ….. 0.599 ….. 2010 ….. Carlos Marmol
3 ….. 0.585 ….. 2013 ….. Aroldis Chapman
4 ….. 0.584 ….. 2012 ….. Craig Kimbrel
5 ….. 0.583 ….. 2011 ….. Kenley Jansen
6 ….. 0.565 ….. 2015 ….. Aroldis Chapman
7 ….. 0.560 ….. 2011 ….. Aroldis Chapman
8 ….. 0.555 ….. 2014 ….. Brad Boxberger
9 ….. 0.554 ….. 1999 ….. Armando Benitez
10 ….. 0.554 ….. 2012 ….. Aroldis Chapman
11 ….. 0.550 ….. 1960 ….. Ryne Duren
12 ….. 0.550 ….. 2016 ….. Craig Kimbrel
13 ….. 0.547 ….. 2000 ….. Byung-Hyun Kim
14 ….. 0.545 ….. 2004 ….. Brad Lidge
15 ….. 0.542 ….. 2015 ….. Dellin Betances
16 ….. 0.539 ….. 1999 ….. Matt Mantei
17 ….. 0.538 ….. 2011 ….. Al Alburquerque
18 ….. 0.535 ….. 2012 ….. Ernesto Frieri
19 ….. 0.535 ….. 2016 ….. Dellin Betances
20 ….. 0.535 ….. 1999 ….. Billy Wagner
Let’s walk down another aisle in that department, David P…
A player has had a 20-20 season with at least 30 doubles and 10 triples just 18 times in MLB history, and there has been only one occurrence (Ken Williams – 1922 St. Louis Browns) with a 30-30 season. As of Monday, Mike Trout was on pace for:
42 HR
30 SB
54 2B
12 3B
Oh, and 216 hits. Mercy!
The Red Sox outfield of Bradley, Betts and Benintendi each logged 20+ games in April. If they get to 100 games each, it would be the 3rd such outfield with each player’s name starting with the letter B. All of the other letters in the alphabet produce only 3 such outfields combined.
The Blue Jays have DFA’ed Jarrod Saltalamachia after a 1 for 25 start to his season, with 16 K’s in 26 PA. We’ll have to see if there’s much demand for a 32 year-old backstop with a .159/.267/.317 slash in 318 PA this season and last. If he doesn’t catch on somewhere and his current numbers are his season totals, it would be just the 3rd 25 PA season by a non-pitcher with strikeouts in 60% of PA.
At least the other two did some damage the rare times they connected.
Doug, if you add Xavier Bogaerts to the mix, there are four big-B Bostonians in the everyday lineup. How many teams have had 50 percent of their starting fielders (min. 100 games played) with the same surname letter?
If only Pablo Bandoval, Dustin Bedroia and Mitch Boreland rounded out the infield, with Christian Bazquez catching…
The 1926 Indians had 5 starters whose names began with s: Joe and Luke Sewell, Freddy Spurgeon, Homer Summa and Tris Speaker.
The 1943 Reds had Max Marshall, Frank McCormick, Steve Mesner, Eddie Miller and Ray Mueller.
Here’s the full list for most players with same last initial and 100 games at one position. How many of the players on these teams can you name?
Hmmm….the 1982 Indians. Mel Hall. Mike Hargrove. Toby Harrah. No idea who else.
So doing a little self-checking. The answer is Hargrove, Harrah, Von Hayes, and Ron Hassey. Hall didn’t join the Indians till partway through the ’84 season and didn’t have his first 100+ game season with them till ’86.
The 2013 Braves was easy, two Uptons and Uggla.
No “X”‘s? I’ll bet there will be a Chinese major leaguer with the last name Xin, Xinhua, Xinghong, Zinzhou, etc… in the next 10 years…. 1.3 billion people, at least 650 million men – one of those guys has got to be able to play one of these days
Currently there are 7 players in the ML with a first name of Aaron. From 1901 thru 1992 there were all of 3 such players.
I guess they’re either named after the Levite or the Braves RFer? Probably just became a popular name out of the blue…..who knows? Maybe ‘Emily’ will make a comeback?
Looking at the Social Security Name Database, Aaron has always been a somewhat popular first name. In terms of rank, it’s low point was 1945 when it ranked #269 for boys. It’s high rank was #28 in 1994.
Nathan Karns of the KC Roayls struck out four hitters in the 6th inning against the Sox (Wednesday 3rd) …. K K K, WP SB BB K, 2-3. All four were swinging.
With A.J. Pierzynski apparently retired (voluntarily or otherwise), he becomes just the second player with a 7500 PA career and a walk rate below 4% of PAs. The other, and the only such player with a lower rate than Pierzynski, is Hal Chase, first baseman with the Highlanders, White Sox, Reds and Giants (and Buffalo Buffeds/Blues of the FL) from 1905 to 1919 (Chase is one of five players with 1000 games at first for the Yankees franchise).
I thought you must have missed Shawon Dunston, but he only had 6276 PAs. He did, however, walk even less than Pierzinski (3.941%) and Chase (3.477%). Dunston’s 3.235% is deceptively high, actually. From ages 34-39 (1661PAs) he walked 35 times, a percentage of 2.107. The older he got the less he took a pass.