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Cool! I like how the replies and numbering work. Best of both worlds!
Yeah, I believe it was BSK who made the suggestion on the old blog. As soon as I saw it, I filed it away for future use for when the day came that we went to our own site. It’s clearly the very best way to do comments…makes it very easily to find new ones, follow certain comment threads, or ignore threads you don’t care about.
Prominently displaying the “Recent Comments” section in a can’t-miss place makes this whole site extremely accessible. Love the numbering also, is it asking too much for there to be a way to click on the text of a post and be transported to that particular part of the conversation? Maybe too much of an ask.
BTW, it took me six friggin weeks to find you guys. Per usual, I am all over B-ref every day but I could not find evidence of where you guys had gone until I stumbled upon it a few days ago. Granted, I’m notorious for being impatient and not snooping long enough, but I wish S-ref would display where you guys are now on the home page.
If you click on the poster’s name on any recent comment, it will take you directly to that particular post. Sometimes it’s a bit slow to load, especially if it’s a long post with a lot of comments..you have to give it 3 or 4 seconds to fully load. I could make the entire text clickable but thought it was a bit much.
Oh, awesome. I assumed it would take me to that poster’s profile. Excellent!
Let us comment with BBCode!
I’ve looked into this a little and it’s not straightforward. If others want it, I will consider getting it implemented.
Andy-
I don’t know if you have any control over this, but when I added this site to my bookmarks bar, the RSS logo comes up instead of the HHS logo. If you know of a way to change this, that would be awesome.
When did you do it? I added the favicon a few days ago. I just added the site as a bookmark and it uploaded the HHS logo for me.
Just something curious I noticed on Matt Cain’s page: he has at least 1 complete game in each of the 7 seasons he has pitched in (it stands out because he has exactly 1 CG in five of these years). I supposed this wasn’t too special, but of the 100 active leaders in complete games (anyone with 4 CGs or more), the only other person to have a complete game in each year pitched is Brad Bergersen, he of three years experience and since demoted to relief pitcher. Some pitchers miss out because they pitched limited innings in their first year (as did Cain) but I was still surprised at how basically nobody active has done this. I’m not really sure if this point can be expanded much, but I found it interesting nevertheless.
As I type this, no comments have been posted to the site for the past 11 hours and 25 minutes. I tried posting a comment several times about nine hours ago and couldn’t get it to go through. Obviously if this gets posted the problem will have been fixed; if it doesn’t, I’ll try e-mailing one of the authors.
For some reason the spam filter was catching all comments…I have restored all lost comments, and hopefully it will stop doing it at this point.
I have found the problem. It should be resolved within minutes.
Andy, John — Here’s the result of some research I’ve done. Feel free to use, as you think appropriate, as a possible blog post or as material for potential posts.
One might argue that the Yankees have constructed a perfect machine for producing ,590 winning percentage seasons:
Over the five regular seasons from 2007 through 2011, the Yankees had the best overall record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.
Over the five regular seasons from 2006 through 2010, the Yankees had the best overall record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.
Over the five regular seasons from 2005 through 2009, the Yankees had the best overall record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.
A .590-winning percentage represents an average of between 95 and 96 wins a season. Over the two seasons 2010-2011, the Yankees won 192 regular season games, a 96-win average. Over the two seasons before that, 2008-2009, the Yankees won 192 regular season games, a 96-win average. Over the two seasons before that, 2006-2007, the Yankees won 191 regular season games, a 95.5 -win average. Stadiums come and go, owners come and go, managers and players come and go, but the Yankees in recent years seem, after you filter out the small random fluctuations that appear in a single season’s standings, to have perfected (with the help of a bottomless payroll) the art of delivering the same number of wins off the assembly line year after year.
It may seem like it, but the Yankees have not always been the top team in baseball at producing the most reliable year-in, year-out quality performance. One can go back through history and look at which team, at the end of each season, was then the “Best Team of the Past Five Years”. This method gives a look at which team was most consistently at or near the top of major league baseball during various eras. Here’s a full list, beginning with 2011 going back to the beginning of modern baseball, showing for each year the team that had the best overall record over the five then most recent regular seasons. So, for example, when the list below shows the Yankees as the “Best Team of the Past Five Years” in every season from 2004 through 2011, that means the Yanks had the best five-season record overall during the following five-year periods: 2000 to 2004, 2001 to 2005, 2002 to 2006, 2003 to 2007, 2004 to 2008, 2005 to 2009, 2006 to 2010 and 2007 to 2011.
With that introduction, here’s a summary of which team has held the “Best Team of the Past Five Years” crown after each season, going back to the beginning of the 20th century:
Yankees, 2004 through 2011
Braves, 2003
Yankees, 2002
Braves, 1994 through 2001
Blue Jays, 1993
A’s, 1991 and 1992
Mets, 1988 through 1990
Tigers, 1985 through 1987
Orioles, 1981 through 1984
Yankees, 1980
Reds, 1975 through 1979
Orioles, 1969 through 1974
Giants, 1968
White Sox, 1967
Dodgers, 1966
Yankees, 1950 through 1965
Cardinals, 1944 through 1949
Yankees, 1934 through 1943
A’s, 1929 through 1933
Yankees, 1927 and 1928
Giants, 1925 and 1926
Yankees, 1923 and 1924
Giants, 1921 and 1922
White Sox, 1919 and 1920
Red Sox, 1916 through 1918
Giants, 1915
A’s 1913 and 1914
Cubs, 1907 through 1912
Pirates, 1905 and 1906
The string of dominance by the Yankees on this list since 2004 is actually in danger of being broken this coming season. Overall over the past four seasons – 2008 through 2011 – the Yankees and Phillies are in an exact tie, each with an overall record over those four regular seasons of 384 wins and 264 losses (.593 winning percentage). Whichever of those two teams emerges from 2012 with the better regular season record will likely hold the 2012 crown as the top team of the past five years.
Wow, the Yankees of the 00′s and the Braves of the 90′s have the same exact number of years of being the best team. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. Yankees: 5 titles, Braves 1. So my instincts were correct when I saw the whole ‘Team of the Decade’ thing flash before my eyes in the 1996 World Series. Damn, if only Mark Wohlers hadn’t hung that slider to Jim Leyritz in game 6……
Re: Wakefield’s retiring….
Based on some quick research, the top 10 players in wins in MLB history for Boston teams: 1. Kid Nichols, 329; 2. Cy Young, 196; 3. Roger Clemens, 192; 4. Tim Wakefield, 186; 5. Tommy Bond, 162; 6. Vic Willis, 151; 7. John Clarkson, 149; 8. Jim Whitney, 133; 9. Charlie Buffinton, 133; 10. Jack Stivetts, 131.
Hi, Andy. Perhaps you’ve noticed that you’re getting spammed (or whatever the proper name for it is) by pseudo posters at articles like “More complete games than wins?! (It’s not only possible–it used to be commonplace)” making vapid and even superficially complimentary posts in order to publicize links to their commercial websites via their screen names. I’m sure you do not intend this.
Feel free to blank this post after receiving it.
Keep up the good work at HH.
Cheers.
Andy ,John; this is maybe a little out of your sweet spot, But you guys are my sole window into serious baseball discussion; so I’d like your opinion.
I’ve been musing about intelligent base running, and its effect on team success. I know there are folks out there measuring how often people go from first to third on a single and stuff , but mostly skill as a baserunner is measured by SB and CS. The trouble with this is; if we imagine that base running ability is like an iceberg, with the few guys that steal bases sticking out above the waterline; the event-based stats essentially treat everyone else as equal, and yet if this ability is like every other one we measure, there will be a big difference between good, but not especially fast guys, and guys who are slowwww. Both of these latter groups avoid getting any base running events at all, but there may be a handful of runs (or a W or two) difference over the course of a season. I’ve been toying with using runs scored to gain some insight into this.
Now once a player reaches base , his job is to do everything in his power to touch home plate ; obviously whether he does or not has a lot to do with what the people coming up behind him do with the bat; but it must also depend to some extent on how well the player runs the bases. Given a large enough sample size, other things might tend to even out, and we could gain some insight with a metric that answers the question ; “given that player x is on base, how likely is it that he is going to score? Obviously , for average players, we have run expectancies , given the base-out situation — but what if it’s not an average player, but Paul Konerko?
I’ve been messing with something I’m calling Scoring Average ( someone else has surely done it before and called it something else ) defined as (runs minus home runs)/(times on base minus home runs) . For the AL as a whole last year, the scoring average was .308 , the aforementioned Mr Konerko came in at .175 , an appalling number. Playing full time and hitting about evenly out of the 3 or 4 hole (not down in the order) he crossed the plate only 38 times when he wasn’t trotting; out of 217 non-homer times on base.
Of course, maybe a season is a small sample size , but there is a definite decline with age – Paul has very similar stats for his first 3 full seasons (age 23-25) , to the last 3 (ages 33-35) , allowing for the normal growth in power and walks, EXCEPT for scoring average – which declines from .303 to .189. If he had retained the .303 scoring average ,while keeping everything else the same, he would have scored 68 more runs the last 3 years. Now of course it is hard to score when you have a 2011 model Adam Dunn hitting behind you, but if even a minority of the decline is due to Paul slowing up, his 3.6 BWAR may be an overestimate of his contribution. Put another way, Paul’s OBP of .388 is outstanding, but maybe not as productive as your mental image of a .388 OBP season.
Can you guys see any meat on this chicken bone, or are runs scored just too indirect a stat to shed light on base running in your opinion?
thanks and keep up everything you’re doing
I’d have to give this some more thought, but my guess is that the result, as you say, is a very complicated one in terms of what it tells you. Certainly whether a player on base scores depends A LOT on what the guys behind him do. I have no doubt if you put Rickey Henderson and Paul Konerko in the exact same situations, i.e. batting on the same team in front of the same guys, that Henderson would score more runs than Konerko. But on totally different teams, it’s difficult to say what fraction of the difference in their RS totals are due to their own baserunning.
Just to name a few other complications…keep in mind that a base-stealing threat will cause the defense to line up differently and will change the holes available to the batter. A runner may be more likely to try going 1st-to-3rd if the 7th-place hitter is batting next, instead of the 3rd-place hitter (and therefore may get thrown out more and look like a worse baserunner, when in fact he’s been told to run.) How the outfield chooses to play a batter has a huge effect on what the baserunners can do…
In short, it’s all very complicated and your system may not isolate enough stuff to generate anything useful. Things like 1st-to-3rd percentage is quite simple, but at least you can have a better idea of what you’re getting at.
I do like the way you’re thinking, though.
PS — PK finished 13th in MVP voting — A guy with similar BA/OBP/SLG slash , Alex Gordon had a .328 scoring average , and finished 21st — about a 25 run difference, in Gordon’s favor, I think
Thanks — I’ll see if I can hone my thinking a little — but basically , I wasn’t trying to measure the difference between Rickey and Paul in the same situation – i think for a base stealer, – there are a lot of base running events to hone in on– but trying to tease out a difference between 24 yr old PK (no base running events) and 34 yr old PK , still no events, but probably slower. Of course Batting order position has an enormous impact, but for a guy who’s hit 3/4 all his career, it’s probably a wash.
I would guess if you did compile a list of career leaders on “Scoring Average”, you’d find great OBP guys with speed who played on great teams; I would think a list might include Joe Morgan, Tim Raines, Rickey of course, maybe even Ozzie Smith. Jeter would probably be up there too, with all the big bats batting behind him over the years.
Andy, John , can you see my email? If so , can you sent me a place where I could send something a little longer than the usual post for your criticism? I’m not ready for prime time, but my gut tells me this is the start of something worth working on, and I’d love your eyeballs on it.. In answer to bstar, Raines career SA=.368 , Jeter =.382, Ozzie =.347, Rickey =.396, Morgan “only” .333 ( Paul Molitor, one of my original motivations for looking at this =.366) lowest HOFer i’ve found so far =killebrew =.226 .Bstar, You actually don’t need a high OBP for SA , the two are independent.
Otis Nixon , career OBP = .343 had an incredible .443 SA , no doubt helped by being a pinch runner a lot..
Ignoring pinch running and home runs for the moment, (and Otis’ HR are easy to ignore) . Otis had a run expectation of .443X.343= .15 runs every time he stepped to the plate, which is pretty darn good, and exactly the same as if his OBP had been .443 and his SA a still darn good .343 — I know, I know , lineup order, team scoring rate , league scoring rate, etc. etc. but this is why major league managers put rabbits with only average OBP numbers at the top of the lineup ,and still keep their jobs .. the rabbits actually do score runs..
I hope nobody thinks by the above that I’m somehow implying that Otis Nixon was in any way comparable as a ballplayer to those other guys.. just that his ability to score is not fully captured in his base running “events” , so maybe he was a little more valuable than we think., since RS as a counting stat doesn’t get all that much attention, for guys who score 80 runs, but “should” have only scored 65, given their other stats..
Kevin Cash has announced he is retiring. So now, finally, Bill Bergen can rest easy.
Having seen him play when he was with Toronto and Boston, Cash’s lack of hitting prowess was truly extraordinary. I’ve been trying to find a non-pitcher since Bergen who had a lower batting average over 500 or more career at-bats (or 700 or more PAs). So far, Cash’s .183 is holding up. But maybe you folks can find someone who qualifies?
These are the non-pitchers hitting under .190 in 500+ ABs.
John Vukovich, 0.161
Bill Bergen, 0.170
Ray Oyler, 0.175
Tommy Dean, 0.180
Tony Smith, 0.180
Mike Heydon, 0.181
Kevin Cash, 0.183
Brandon Wood, 0.186
John Gochnaur, 0.187
Corky Miller, 0.188
J.R. Phillips. 0.188
Bill Plummer, 0.188
Fritz Buelow, 0.188
Ron Clark, 0.189
Thanks! Shoulda remembered Ray Oyler’s amazing stats…
HI there,
I was looking at the Molina brothers and stumbled along Gustavo Molina. He is not one, but has played with 5 teams without ever being an official rookie. A total of 26 games and high of 10 with the White Sox in 2007. Is he the record holder for most “cups of coffees” in the majors without having a rookie season? So in starbuck terms, his career would be a five shot espresso.
John Williams
Great question. I have the answer. Writing a post shortly.
How about a HOF case for Al Oliver?
Aside from Pete Rose, Oliver is the only retired player with 2500 hits and career .300 BA (min. 5000 PAs) who is not in the HOF. Leaving aside PED considerations, active players who are currently at this level (Manny, A-Rod, Chipper, Vlad, Jeter) are all (I think) likely HOFers.
Doug,
I brought up Al Oliver in the “Hall of Very Good” article and cited him as a guy who has been completely ignored by the sabermetric community, mainly because of his low walk total.
Kind of like Ichiro … without the speed or defense.
The 38.8 WAR doesn’t help either, lowest of all the 2500/.300 guys. Only Heinie Manush (44.1) is also under 50 WAR.
What happened to the Like button?
I disabled the like button because A) ironically I didn’t like it and B) it was interfering (via Jscript) with a much cooler feature–the ability to insert custom sortable tables. We will be rolling that into our posts in the next few days.
Has anyone done any research on pitchers and Tom John surgery? There seems to be more and more guys having it done. I guess I am asking does it make sense to “buy” a guy who has gone through TJ versus one who hasn’t? Does average performance drop-off at a faster or slower rate than regular aging? Or does the year out with rest and rehab play as much of a role?
I am not sure that this event is captured though.
Gap analysis:
High Heat Stats deals to a large extent with player performance. Something I saw in the newspaper this morning made me think about the before-and-after scenario when a player leaves the majors and later returns. A player might leave for many reasons: being sent to the minors, being out for an injury, being recruited for military service, perhaps even going to Japan to play for a while. Can the statistical tables that are available show what players have had the longest gaps in the major league careers? Can they then show the quality of their performance before and after the gap?
I would eliminate players that have played in just a few games. One can easily imagine a minor league player who is occasionally called up to the majors with long gaps between appearances, but whose importance is very limited. But what about players that have had good, legitimate major league careers with gaps?
Kenny, this is something we looked at on the old B-R blog.
This post:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/7138
and its comments contain most of the relevant players you’re asking about.
There aren’t all that many players, so it’s tough to gather any real statistical sense about that, except that it’s pretty much unheard of for a really good player to have a long layoff of more than a year for any reason other than military service.
I watch this website, but I’m not really very sophisticated, and I don’t try to follow all the details of the discussions, databases, etc. I do, however, sometimes come up with questions that would interest me. Here’s such a case:
There several kinds of truly exciting moments is baseball, some on offense and some on defense, such as…
(a) a no-hitter
(b) a triple-play
(c) A squeeze bunt that scores a run
(d) a successful steal of home plate
(e) an inside-the-park home run
…and probably a few more like those.
These are all infrequent occurrences, and it would be rather rare for two or more of these things to occur in the same game. So, can the databases to which you have access answer the questions…
1. What are the instances in which any two or more of (a, b, c, d, or e) occurred in the same game?
2. Has (b, c or d) ever occurred more than once in a single game?
Kenny, there’s no automated way to search for that, with the exception of no-hitters or hitting for the cycle (an omission from your list) occurring twice in the same game, which has never happened. But I will open up your request on a new post asking for reader suggestions–our knowledgeable group of people here often have good memories for such things.
Random suggestion for an article:
I was curious about the careers of the 29 players who can claim to have played in 4 different decades. You would think that the majority of players who scraped together a career of 22 or more years would be hall of fame material but only 9 of the eligible 26 have actually made it to the hall and only 1 of the three not yet eligible is a definite lock (Griffey, though Vizquel is likely). I’m also curious as to the likeliest people to join the list after this decade is over. I think the likeliest are Adrian Beltre, Aramis Ramirez, Kerry Wood, Vernon Wells, and Rick Ankiel (!).
Travis Dawkins, stuck in the minors since 2004, will be 40 as the 2020 season starts. It would be far-fetched, but he COULD stick around until then, getting a cup of coffee in 2016 or something, and then be called up for a day as a publicity stunt.
Also, although Octavio Dotel will be 45 that opening day, I’m pretty sure he’ll still be around, putting in the finishing touches on his quest to play for every single team.
Stretching Exercises – OUCH!
When a batter gets a base hit, and tries successfully to extend it by one more base, we see it recorded as a double. But when in the same situation the batter is tossed out at second, it’s recorded as a single. Is there any particular record showing that the batter tried unsuccessfully to stretch the hit? I guess the same can be said about trying to stretch a double to a triple, and a triple to an IPHR. Also, I would guess it’s one of the jobs of the first- and third-base coaches to help the runner decide whether to stretch.
Do we know…
…what batters have the poorest records, i.e., who have been thrown out the most trying to stretch?
…what coaches have the poorest and/or best judgment in these cases?
I have seen some the Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck and read a few of the novels written by Robert Parker; they are both worth the time. In the stories, Jesse Stone is a former minor league baseball shortstop, who injures the shoulder of his throwing arm. The Dodgers farm system is referenced and playing in the city Albuquerque. Does anyone know if this based on a real player since I see now Jesse Stone listed. Also I thought it maybe cool to came up with starting line up of fictional characters. The only restriction could be one player from each movie or book; this way the wealth is spread around for the source material. So I suggest Charlie Sheen as Ricky Vaughn for the closer, but we then could lose Wesley Snipes as Willie “Mays” Hayes in CF since from the Major League movies. This restriction will be lifted if some enough names are found.
Seeing as how there are tons of baseball movies, this actually wouldn’t be impossible.
Just using fictional characters: The Natural, For Love of the Game, Bull Durham, Mr. Baseball, Mr. 3000, Little Big League, Bang the Drum Slowly, Major League, Major League II…
Below is something I posted in the comment section for Roger Clemens and unluckest pitchers blog entry from over the weekend. I have looked at the names on the list some, but am not really good with the newer, advanced metrics to analyze the results or see what else maybe close. Please feel free to use it as a starting piont for this question.
With WAR, ERA+ and K/9 as newer metrics; could be see a starting pitching with .500 or even a losing record win or finish in the top 5 or so for a Cy Young? Félix Hernández won in 2010 with 13-12 2.27.
Below is a list of the .500 and under starting pitchers with votes for the Cy Young Award. 12 are on the list with 9 in the NL and half since 2000. Also, 9 were finished 6th place or lower in the voting and none in the top three. 2 are Hall of Famers (Ryan and Perry) and 2 are borderliners for the Hall (Hershiser and Mussina). Perry (twice),Lincecum, and Hershiser won the Cy Young other seasons; while Nolan Ryan was a runner up 1973 and half 6 top 5 finishes.
Dave Roberts 14-17 2.10 in 1971 finished 6th for the Padres.
Fred Norman 13-13 3.60 in 1973 finished 6th between the Padres and Reds.
Gaylord Perry 19-19 3.38 in 1973 finished in 7th with the Indians.
Orel Hershiser 16-16 3.06 in 1987 finished 4th with the Dodgers.
Nolan Ryan 8-16 2.76 in 1987 finished 5th for the Astros.
Orel Hershiser 15-15 2.31 in 1989 finished 4th with the Dodgers.
Mike Mussina 11-15 3.79 in 2000 finished 6th with the Orioles.
Ben Sheets 12-14 2.70 in 2004 finished 8th with the Brewers.
Kevin Millwood 9-11 2.86 in 2005 finished 6th with the Indians.
Roy Oswalt 13-13 2.76 in 2010 finished 6th between the Astros and Phillies.
Tim Lincecum 13-14 2.74 in 2011 finished 6th with the Giants.
Madison Bumgarner 13-13 3.21 in 2011 finished 11th with the Giants.
The old cliche is that pitchers in the old days were willing to pitch inside and hit batters, if needed. Don Drysdale was often used as an example. He lead the league in hitting batters 5 times and had 10 or more in 10 season. He was hit by a pitch only 5 times in 1309 PA. Did pitchers throw at each other that much? It seems like tough guys would be tough on each other and not just the next poor sap who is first up at the plate in the next inning.
Just request for someone to look up. Did pitchers get hit when they hit a batter. HBP for and against taking place in the same game? And what percent of the time is the first batter up HBP after another player was HBP the previous inning? The cliche is that teams would get into the beanball wars in the past; you plunk one of mine and I hit one of yours. Was this more often in the past or were they hitting each other at the same rates as those modern days of yours.
Thanks in advance. I have questions, but not the skills to answer them.
This is a test.
As of this morning, the Orioles have allowed 82 runs. 30 of those came in the 6th inning. The Orioles have held opponents scoreless in the 6th only 9 times in 22 games. Does this kind of weird anomaly this late in the season have any precedent?
On BR there is a section on the boxescores site called Top 5 Plays
for pitchers you can easily find games, where one pitcher is involved in all 5.
when i searched for the batters title, in the the third game´s boxscore, i found this for Ron Davis – CLE/CLE198406270
but for batters it is a more difficult search.
Searching for top-WPA games (looking only in the top 20 games) brings
Dante Bichette – COL/COL199806100
Ken Boyer – SLN/SLN196109142
Will Clark – SFN/SFN198806220
with 3 out of 5
The 4-homer games(what intented my research thanks to Josh Hamilton) came up with no 3 of 5 top 5 plays game.
searching for HR and GDPs
Hector Lopez – KC1/KC1195806260
Willie Kirkland – CLE/CLE196306142
since i have no better idea how to search for 5 out of 5 games
here is my question: is there any game, where a batter is involved in 4 or 5 of the top 5 plays of a game according to BR (sorted by WPA)?
PS:
for the links you have to add
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ and .shtml
i dont´t know why, but when i post all six links my comment “seems to look a bit spammy”
Will Middlebrooks has hit 4 HRs in his short career. He has hit them in the following order: Grand Slam. 3-run HR, 2-run HR, Solo shot. Is it possible to determine if that has been done before?
the only other player(post 1901), to get 4 different kinds of HR in 4 Career HR is Eddie Wilson http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wilsoed01.shtml
and he got them in a different order: 3-run shot, solo-shot, 2-run HR and finally a grand-slam.
In the list of recent posts I think it would be beneficial to include the date of the most recent post for each of the items. If we are away from this site for an extended period of time we will miss some of the recent comments.
Does anyone have a recommendation on how to see pitchers’ performance behind a certain pitcher. For example we can use James Shields. In his last start he pitched against the Yankees, and the day after Alex Cobb went up against the Pinstrippers. I’m curious how pitchers pitch behind Shields over his career. Any easy, non-tedious way of doing this?
One statistical observation and one request.
First, Jim Thome, 2500 games, 2500 Ks. Cool.
Second, while watching the Yankees HR-loaded lineup, I wondered: what is the record for the most career homeruns in a team’s starting lineup?
Wondering what are the ten worse starting pitching ERAs in MLB history? !930 Phillies?
Here is a random suggestion/question: Who has gone the longest time after leaving a team before they came back to play in the city they had previously called home? Zack Greinke’s return to KC tonight got me thinking about this, and I looked and found out that Carlos Beltran has not yet played in Kauffman Stadium since being traded to the Astros in ’04, although he will (barring injury) play in KC next week when the Cards come to town. I’m guessing many long streaks will be recent because of interleague play, but there could be older ones when someone later gets traded back to the league they started in.
My suggestion is to add tags or some type of categorization to the posts. I thought of this when trying to go back and check out all the past Mount Rushmore posts and there doesn’t appear to be any easy way to do so. I just noticed the site search, so I’ll try that way, but some navigation that satisfies the browsing (rather than searching) type of user would be helpful. Thanks.
I couldn’t find a place for regular folk to post ideas and observations. Orlando Hudson currently has 7 triples, which is more than his 2 doubles and 2 homers combined. What are the instances in which a guy had 10 or more triples in a season and his combined doubles and homers amount was less than his total triples amount?
It’s happened 29 times. Largest difference was in 1916 when Edd Roush had 15 triples, 7 doubles and 0 home runs.
In tonight’s Reds Indians game, Justin Masterson completed the first inning throwing only two strikes. Obviously it is possible it could be matched or even bettered, but I would have to think it is extremely rare for a pitcher to start and finish an inning while throwing less than three strikes. Is there any way to check into this? I would be very interested in finding out how rare it is and if anyone has managed to pitch an inning throwing only one (or even no) strike(s). Thanks!
So far in 2012, Craig Kimbrel has appeared in 26 games and pitched exactly one inning in every one. Jordan Walden had a streak of 31 games like that last year from April 1 to June 20. It would be interesting to see a list of the all-time streaks of this nature. Thanks.
I now see that Jacob Peterson did a post on this topic last August in his Junkstats blog. Link:
http://junkstats.com/mlb/the-longest-streaks-of-exactly-one-inning-pitched/
On 7-14-12, Cole De Vries of the Twins pitched 5 innings, gave 6 hits and no walks, but 7 runs, all earned. The other runner was a HBP. I wonder what the record is for most earned runs given up above hits and walks combined?
I found this much.
On 8-13-2009 Cesar Carillo had 2.1 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 2 HBP and 8 ER.
On 5-6-2005 Paul Wilson had 0 IP, 5 H, 1 BB, 2 HBP and 8 ER.
On 4-18-2010 Jason Marquis had 0 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 2 HBP and 7 ER.
On 5-23-1999 Mike Morgan had 0.2 IP, 5 H, 1 BB, 2 HBP and 8 ER.
There are numerous examples of pitchers with 1 more ER than H + BB.
hey andy, john, and all the rest of you guys.
hope you remember me from our old haunt at bbref.
i’ve been self exiled from baseball websites for a while… work, family and real life and all that trivial bull poop stuff that happens in between mets games forced me away from following you guys over here… but i’ve found away back.
i thought i’d like to throw this one out there and maybe you guys can post about it.
this year, making, in my opinion, the greatest come back in baseball history, ADAM DUNN has SO, BB, or HRed in 60% of his PAs. I haven’t run a comprehensive check, but i believe, that is the greatest % of the ‘big three’ in history. a few guys just put up a season over 50%, but no one near 60%. even BONDS’ magical 232 BB year, due to just 41 SO, he just cracks 50%. even true three outcome players like THOME and REYNOLDS.
in a related theme, JIM THOME just edged out BARRY BONDS for the greatest career total of BBs, SOs & HRs, with 4881 to BONDS’ 4859. btw, DUNN is at 50% of the big three for his career. again it was an informal search, but i can’t imagine anyone higher. THOME was at 47%, so if DUNN plays as long as THOME (and this season bought at least one more contract for him) he should eclipse 5,000 ‘big threes’ for his career. MARK REYNOLDS is at 49.8%, but i can’t see him getting 10,000 PAs in his career.
well, glad to be back. love the sight. and thought you guys might like to post on the subject.
its good to be reading you guys again. the withdrawl was awful.
Reading the Hall of Above Replacement, But Below Average got me to thinking about Dave Kingman. The last three years of his career he hit 35, 30, and 35 homers for the A’s; has anyone ever had more home runs in their final year than did Kingman?
What is so amazing to me is that, given the time in which his career ended, it is highly likely he could have continued hitting homers, had he not been such an asshole that no one wanted to sign him. He could have signed with a team like Detroit or the Twins and easily hit the additional 60 homers he needed to reach 500, an accomplishment that, in HOF voting of the ’90′s (before the Steroids era was known), this would have likely ended with him in the HOF. A HOF career, ruined because you were an asshole.
I have two trivia questions that I’d like to see on your blog:
1. Name a major-league Hall of Famer who played his entire career without being teammates with another Hall of Famer.
2. Name the major-league player (current or former) who was teammates with the most Hall of Famers over the course of their career.
Thanks,
Ben
I know there’s a huge amount of attention on Mike Trout right now, but I see on Baseball Reference he currently leads the majors with 9.3 WAR. 2nd best are Robinson Cano and Justin Verlander on 6.2. This means Trout has 50% more WAR than the 2nd best player in the majors. My questions are:
1. Has any rookie ever led the majors in WAR?
2. What is the highest WAR total for a rookie?
3. What is the biggest margin between 1st and 2nd players with respect to WAR?
I thought it would be fun to do a “what if?” thread regarding positions and WAR and how a player’s value might change if he had played a different position, but his non-defensive WAR was the same.
For example, if Jeter had played DH, how valuable would he have been? I’m estimating his WAR at about 55-60, instead of 69. But if he played first base, I think he would come out about the same as now, if he were an average first baseman.
What about if David Ortiz played SS and he had a fielding WAR each year as bad as the worst shortstop season ever? I’m thinking he still comes out with a higher WAR than he has now.
Some kind of stat analysis on Yasmani Grandal might prove interesting. Through his first 59 PAs this year he had zero BBs then as if a switch was flipped he walked 26 times in his next 113 PAs. Maybe his spot in the batting order was changed but even so this seems like what must be an unprecedented start to a career. He did walk quite a bit in the minors so maybe he was just getting his feet wet.
With much discussion about whether the second wildcard team adds drama to the season, we seem to have lost sight on how the races would be shaping up without any wildcards. In fact, if we go really old school when the race was for the pennant itself (pre-1969) — and obviously void of the exhibitions, aka interleague games — the American League would be in the midst of an epic pennant race. These would be the AL standings with 14 games remaining:
TEAM (W-L GB )
Athletics (74-56 _ )
Rangers (74-56 _ )
Orioles (73-57 1 )
White Sox (72-58 2 )
Yankees (72 – 58 2 )
All things considered, I’d rather be following that.
…and with 12 games remaining:
TEAM (W-L) GB
Athletics (75-57) _
Orioles (75-57) _
Rangers (75-57) _
Yankees (74-58) 1
TEAM (W-L) GB
Orioles (76-57) _
Athletics (75-58) 1
Rangers (75-58) 1
Yankees (75-58) 1
With 10 games remaining:
Athletics (76-58) _
Orioles (76-58) _
Rangers (76-58) _
Yankees (75-59) 1
With 9 games remaining:
Orioles (77-58) _ *
Rangers (77-58) _
Athletics (76-59) 1
Yankees (76-59) 1
* lost next game
With 8 games remaining:
Orioles (77-59) _ *
Rangers (77-59) _
Athletics (77-59) _
Yankees (76-60) 1
* lost next game
With 7 games remaining:
Athletics (78-59) _
Orioles (77-60) 1 *
Rangers (77-60) 1
Yankees (77-60) 1
Rays (76-61) 2
* won next game
With 6 games remaining:
Athletics (78-60) _
Orioles (78-60) _
Rangers (78-60) _
Rays (77-61) 1
Yankees (77-61) 1
Skip ahead…now only three games remaining….
Athletics (81-60) _
Orioles (81-60) _
Rangers (79-62) 2
Rays (79-62) 2
Yankees (79-62) 2
Two games remaining…
Athletics (82-60) _
Orioles (81-61) 1
Rays (80-62) 2
Yankees (80-62) 2
…and then there were two…two teams, that is…with one game remaining….
Athletics (83-60) _
Orioles (82-61) 1
Interesting scenario possible…if the Orioles, Rangers & Yankees win their finales today, the Orioles and Athletics would finish in a first-place tie in these AL-only standings (83-61), and they would actually play their rightful one-game playoff, albeit for a different official reason (wild card game). We’ll see.
Include (chat page) with recent comments On home page?
Would it be possible to have a general comments place that is not tied to an article? Maybe something like “random comments of the day”. For example there was an interesting balk call in the White Sox Angels game tonight that clearly seemed to be a bad call when one reads the rules. It would be nice to get some opinions from the very experienced observers here.
BTW High Heat Stats is a daily must read for me. Keep up the good work.
I don’t know how to email Adam Darowski about his Hall of wWar project, but I think some exploration is needed into the pitchers from 1870 to 1894. War seems to over-represent them. It seems that if you showed up enough to pitch, you accumulated a ton of WAR.
There are 25 pitchers who pitched over 2500 innings before 1894. Nine of them make into the Hall of wWar.
From 1878 through 1910 (I picked 1878 to eliminate Spaulding), out of 53 pitchers with over 2500 innings, 20 make it.
From 1968 through 2000, 63 pitchers accumulated 2500 innings; however, only about 12 or 13 qualify for the Hall of wWar.
Also, from 1878 through 1910, 187 pitched more than 1,000 innings. 20 in Adam’s hall (10.7%).
From 1968 through 2000, 369 pitched more than 1,000 innings. 13 in Adam’s hall (3.5%).
Pitchers back in the day weren’t necessarily “better”–but they did each pitch a higher percentage of their teams innings–or in other words, there were fewer pitchers on each team. For example, in 1880, Mickey Welch pitched 574 of his team’s 738 innings. The team had only 2 starting pitchers. In 1881, Tim Keefe pitched about 60% of his team’s games and with an ERA+ of only 90, picked up 2.4 WAR.
Indeed, from 1871 through 1900, there were 19 seasons wherein pitchers had less than an ERA+ of 90 or less, and accumulated 2 WAR or more. From 1971 through 2012, there were only 6 such seasons–the last of which was 1986.
I think Andy needs to make some sort of adjustment for early pitchers.
Have you ever seen 2 seasons almost identical as Vogelsong in 2011 and 2012…except for the ERA? Explanations?
Nice find…I will write a post about it.
To the “Where Have All the Good Teams Gone?” post here is a general fact:
If the Cards advance, it would be the first full-regular-season-sub-90-wins-World Series matchup ever (even sub 89). The only other two sub-90-wins World Series were 1918 with Boston Red Sox (75-51, AL) vs. Chicago Cubs (84-45, NL) which both would have ended up with more than 90 wins in 155 games (taking their Win-pct.) and the strike-shortened 1981 WS between Los Angeles Dodgers (63-47, NL) and the New York Yankees (59-48, AL), which also would have reached the 90-Win level.
ballparksofbaseball.com has daily updates of team by team attendance compared to same game # of previous year. This was 3rd consecutive year below 74 million after peaking above 78 million in 2007.
Attendance actually peaked above 79 million in 2007. The NFL also had peak attendance in 2007.
In game 2 of the World Series, both teams started pitchers who bat with the opposite dominant hand than they pitch with (Fister throws right, bats left, Bumgarner throws left, bats right). How common is that is a World Series game? Or even in a regular season game for that matter?
HIGH HEAT STATS — Notebook. For some of us old timers that are not to handy with a computer yet.
I would love a high heat stats notebook of baseball scorecards.
Stats on HIGH HEAT STATS Revenues,Merchandise sales after 1st fiscal year ends.
Paperback Version of “THE HALL OF NEARLY GREAT”
Got some refrigerator magnets already. Nice, but hard to handle for an old man like myself. More Magnet Varieties.
Fast delivery by the way. Ordered magnets on 10-24-2012. Got them today in Ohio from California. (San Jose)
While writing my blog today on Dave Stapleton, I touched on how he finished 2nd in AL ROY voting to Joe Charbonneau and how the rest of the class seemed pretty weak as far as career length and value.
1. Charbonneau Last year 1982, career 8.2 WAR
2. Stapleton ’86, 1.1
3. Doug Corbett ’87, 8.7
4. Damaso Garcia ’89, 5.5
5. Britt Burns ’85, 16.8
6. Rickey Peters ’86, 2.9
7. Rich Dotson ’90, 14.0
Seems like a worthwhile topic to explore, ranking rookie classes according to career WAR. I don’t have the time, but if someone else wants to take the ball, go ahead.
Guest writers in the off-season.
Basketball & Football Stats
College Baseball Stats
World Baseball Classic Stats.
An ongoing “open thread” to allow people can post on other topics would be a good idea IMO.
Any thought for a starting-point post on free agent signings?
TEST POST
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA199809260.shtml
I arrived at this game purely by accident. My father laid out plans sometime in July or August for the three of us – my father, mother, and me – to take a bus from Wilkes-Barre to Yankee Stadium, which is about a three-hour drive with stops and traffic. I was probably supposed to go to this game
I’m reading The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz (a history of stats and baseball, but not the actual numbers as much as the people behind the stats and such… pretty good) and they talk about a particular stat that could make a decent post… or maybe just interest me. From the book:
“…Ted Oliver self-published a pamphlet-sized book, Kings Of The Mound, in which he unveiled his Weighted Rating System for pitchers. Oliver hated how good pitchers stuck on bad teams tended to have mediocre won-lost records. … Oliver instead looked at the difference between every pitcher’s won-lost percentage and that of his club, which unveiled the [Hugh] Mulcahys of baseball as surprisingly competent, while pitchers like Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez of great Yankees teams were exposed as rather run-of-the-mill.”
Seems kinda interesting, even if in the end it doesn’t mean much. And I haven’t found any information on it anywhere, and frankly, I’m not knowledgeable enough to pull of the research on my own.
test post:
testtest post
I read your article titled RBI Totals often are misleading in Sports Weekly.
I would like to share my opinion on that topic.
I work in life insurance. The basic of life insurance is to quantify the actual claims vs the expected claims. Expected are based on a mortality table and the actual are the observed claim in a period.
I think the same principles should be aplpied to baseball when looking at RBI.
To determine if a batter is a good run producer, we should look at his actual RBI vs expecetd RBI. RBIs are function of the batter ability, but also function of the opportunities. Basically, you need runners on to get more RBI…but the batter has almost no control on having runners on when he comes to the plate.
Here what I think we should do to calculate the expected RBI for a batter. We should start by bulding the equivalent of a mortality table but baseball related. First step would be to determine the output of every situation of every plate appearance in the MLB. By situation I mean this: where are the runners, and how many outs. Let’s say that there have been X plate appearances with a runner at 1st base with 1 out and on Y occasion the runner scored. For this situation, the expected RBI for the batter would be X/Y + probability that he hit a home run. The probability of hitting a home run is simply the total home run divided by plate appearances.
There are 8 different runners combination(empty, 1, 2, 3, 1-2, 2-3, 1-3, 1-2-3) and 3 out combination (0,1,2) for a total of 24 combined situation.
When we have the tables values, we can go to step 2 which assessing every plate appearance for a batter. When have to determine how many plate apperances the batter had for every one of the 24 plate apperances and multiply all this by the expected RBI for every situation.
Final step is to divide actual RBI by expected RBI. Players with a ratio over 1 are better than average. The higher the ratio, the more clutch a player is…if clutch hitting really exist.
I have never performed any calculation about that because of lack of data. maybe you guys have in hand in the required data.
When analysing baseball, we should never look at the total number but always at a rate.
Maxime
Random question: Will there be more FanFuel leagues this year?
If not, I will be setting my own free leagues from time to time, typically named “Five Playing Free” or similar.
*FanDuel, sorry
I was watching the Braves broadcast this afternoon and their team quoted an ESPN article (top of the 7th, Andrelton Simmons AB) talking about offense reduction in the last 6 years (runs, OBP, BA with two strikes down, strikeouts up). Per Tony Gwynn they said that most of that had to do with batters approach with two strikes “hitters are still hitting like it’s the steroid era and going for a HR with two strikes instead of shortening their swing and going the other way”. Does contextually adjusted wOBA confirm that (if there is such a thing)? It would just seem to me that the value of getting a home run a few times outweigh a little/maybe equal the value of a few more bloop singles and make the league wOBA with two strikes stay about the same relative to other counts each year. What are your thoughts on this claim by Gwynn? Thanks.
Tim