The Game Notes hard drive died of a nostalgia overdose after watching music videos from the 1970s & ’80s. Je ne regrette rien….
@Rays 4, Yankees 3: In the slim annals of Yankee lead-blowing, there is no sequence as haunting as the one that put the Rays in front Monday: “Roberts steals 2B … Single (groundball); Roberts scores.”
The Giants have opened up a solid lead in the NL West and have the third best record in the NL. It’s been nearly five full seasons since Barry Bonds, the greatest generator of positive sabermetric statistics since Babe Ruth, was left unsigned by the Giants (or anyone else), after an historic 15-year run in San Francisco. As far as winning games is concerned, the Giants have barely lost a beat since Barry left. Some comparative win-loss numbers and other team stats after the jump. Continue reading
On this date in 1975, according to the Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen entry for today:
On the final pitch of his Hall of Fame career, Cardinals great Bob Gibson gives up a grand slam to Pete LaCock. It will be LaCock’s only bases-loaded homer of his career.
I have heard this fact many times–it’s a sad thing.
But a fellow on Twitter named Al Yellon (@bleedcubbieblue) pointed out to me that this “fact” is not a “fact” at all.
Take a look at the box score for the game.
In the 7th inning of the game, here’s how it went:
Bob Gibson replaces Larry Lintz (PR) pitching and batting 9th Fly ball Walk Single Walk Ground out Wild pitch Intentional walk Home run (by Pete LaCock) Ground out (end of inning)
Mike Wallace replaced Bob Gibson to start the top of the 8th.
So, the grand slam clearly did not come on the last pitch of Gibson’s career, since he recorded a ground out following the home run.
What gives? Why does this story about Gibson persist when it is so obviously false?
A quick rundown of games from today’s NL action involving the leading teams.
Nats 4, Cardinals 3 – Stephen Strasburg went 6 scoreless against the Redbirds, who mounted a comeback immediately Strasburg made his departure. But, the Nats restored their lead for good with back-to-back 2-out RBI singles in the 8th off loser Lance Lynn, making his 3rd relief appearance since his removal from the starting rotation. Strasburg is now at 156.1 IP with two more starts promised before the much anticipated season shutdown, or rather the anticipation of whether that shutdown will actually happen.
A quick rundown of games from today’s AL action involving the leading teams.
Tigers 5, White Sox 1 – Detroit closed to within a game of the AL Central-leading White Sox behind Max Scherzer‘s 9 strikeouts and only one walk over eight scoreless innings. It was Scherzer’s 15th win, matching his career high from last season. Since August 15th, Scherzer has four straight starts of 7 innings or more allowing 1 run or less.
A Wins Above Replacement (WAR) number of 8.2 or more is an excellent season number — that’s an MVP-level season performance. But it’s not exactly rare. From 1962 on, the Baseball-Reference Play Index shows 91 seasons by position players that rose to the 8.2 or more WAR level. On average, that’s about two a year, and with two leagues picking MVPs — well, you can see why I described the 8.2 or over level as MVP-type performance.
OK, now how many of those 91 position player seasons of 8.2 WAR over the 1962-2012 period do you suppose have been produced by a position player for a New York City team? Would you believe there have been only three such player-seasons? In 1985, Rickey Henderson in his first year with the Yankees, at age 26, put together an awesome 9.8 WAR year (that was no fluke, as Rickey had another 9.8 WAR year, and grabbed the MVP award, with the A’s in 1990). And A-Rod has produced two seasons over 9 WAR for the Yankees: 2005 and 2007. But that’s it. Other than those three player-seasons, no Yankee position player from 1962 on has produced more WAR in a season than 7.8, achieved by Robinson Cano in 2010, Derek Jeter in 1999 and Bobby Murcer in 1972.
And then there are the Mets, whose top WAR position-player seasons ever are David Wright’s 8.1 in 2007, Carlos Beltran’s 8.0 in 2006 and Bernard Gilkey’s flukey 7.8 in 1996. No other Met position player has topped 7.3 WAR in a season. It is thus not surprising that no Met position-player has ever led the NL in WAR (baseball-reference version) in any season, which happens to be a timely fact because as of now, with a month left in the season, David Wright is actually leading the NL in b-ref WAR, having nudged ahead of the slumping Andrew McCutchen (.588 OPS in McCutchen’s last 21 games).