Author Archives: Doug

Ruth’s Chris: Best and Worst First Ball Hitters

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Or maybe it’s Chris is Ruth. In fact, if your name is (or sounds like) Chris, you can put up some Ruthian OPS scores when you put the first pitch in play, as shown by this list.

Rk Player OPS ▾ OPStot Diff PA PAtot AB H 2B 3B HR RBI BA OBP SLG TB GDP
1 Chris Davis 1.554 .923 .631 74 670 74 36 10 0 11 23 .486 .486 1.068 79 1
2 Khris Davis 1.504 .828 .676 46 440 44 18 3 0 9 23 .409 .413 1.091 48 3
3 Kris Bryant 1.466 .858 .608 75 650 72 36 7 3 7 26 .500 .493 .972 70 2
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 2/2/2016.

Those are the top 3 OPS scores from 2015 when putting the first pitch in play, based on a minimum 400 total PA and 40 first pitches put in play.

More after the jump.

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Circle of Greats Round 120 Balloting

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This post is for voting and discussion in the 120th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG).  This is the first of two rounds of balloting that will bring the Circle of Greats membership to a total of 121, matching the current members of the Hall of Fame elected by the Baseball Writers of America in regular (116) or run-off (3) elections, plus the two members (Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente) enshrined by special election. Rules and lists are after the jump.

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200 Game Batteries UPDATED

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This post was first published early in 2016 to identify batteries (pitcher and catcher) with 200 or more regular season starts together. It is based on the Defensive Lineups pages for each team and season on Baseball-Reference.com. At that time (early 2016), those seasons only went back to 1914, whereas now (in early 2021) there are data for the entire modern era, back to 1901.

As I’ve received several queries about this article, I decided to update it to include the 1901-13 seasons and also, of course, the 2016-20 seasons as well. Doing so has increased the number of qualifying batteries from the original 26 up to 35 for the entire modern era. More on these long-term batteries is after the jump.

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Circle of Greats Supplemental Redemption Round

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This Circle of Greats (COG) vote is not to induct anyone into the Circle, but only to select three players who will be restored back to the main ballot after having been previously dropped from eligibility. As with earlier redemption rounds, this is an opportunity for voters to reconsider past candidates who have previously fallen off the regular induction ballots. This “supplemental” redemption round is being conducted prior to the final two rounds of COG balloting that will consider only holdover candidates already on the COG ballot. 

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Quiz – Modern Day Starting Pitchers (stumped)

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2015 NL Cy Young Award winner Jake Arrieta is one of the twelve pitchers below to record a certain single game pitching accomplishment in the past twenty seasons (since 1996). What is this unusual feat?

  1. Jake Arrieta
  2. John Danks
  3. Brian Anderson
  4. Kris Benson
  5. Jamey Wright
  6. Brian Moehler
  7. Ross Detwiler
  8. Aaron Laffey
  9. Francisco Cordova
  10. Glendon Rusch
  11. Kevin Millwood
  12. Esteban Loaiza

Hint #1: Roger Clemens is the only other Cy Young Award winner to accomplish this feat.
Hint #2: Since 1914, no pitcher has accomplished this feat on his birthday.

Looks like this one was a stumper. The key to the solution was observing that these twelve pitchers were born on only 6 dates, two pitchers per date. In fact, only these pitchers have started a game since 1996 in which the the two starters shared a common birth date (i.e. born same day and year). More after the jump.

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300 Game Outfields

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As a follow-up to my earlier post on 300 game infields, this piece looks at outfield trios that have played together most often. With one less position, there are more outfield groups with 300 game starts than in the infield, but this is still a very unusual occurrence.

Three hundred games is less than two seasons worth, so it may not seem like a lot. But, with the reality that outfielders tend to be quite interchangeable, having the same set of three outfielders start as many as 300 games together is still quite a rarity.

More after the jump.

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