David Cone’s Perfect Game in 1999

Use a phrase once, it is an article. Use it twice, it’s a series.

Last time, I asked the brilliant commentariat to discuss the late Thurman Munson. wWAR (my system of weighted wins above replacement, based on WAR figures from Baseball-Rederence) placed Munson squarely on the Hall of Fame borderline—without giving him any extra credit at all for how he may have finished his career. Today, I give you another player that wWAR sees as Hall-worthy. In fact, this pitcher clears the hurdle by a substantial margin. I was, to be honest, a little surprised.

It’s David Cone. Continue reading →

Taken from the Baseball-Reference.com bullpen, here are a few interesting things that happened in MLB on September 13, 1983.

Dan Quisenberry became the all-time single season saves leader

Makes sense, right? Quisenberry was one of the preeminent closers of the 1980s. On this date in 1983, he saved his 39th save of the season. Thirty ninth! That was all it took for the all-time record!

Now here’s the interesting part. Guess where a 39-save season would rank now. The answer is that it would tie for138th-most in MLB history.

Yes, folks, the way closers are used has changed a lot.

Rickey Henderson stole his 99th, 100th, and 101st bases of the season, giving him 3 straight seasons with 100

Since that 1983 performance, the only player to top 100 stolen  bases in a season was Vince Coleman, and in the last 20 full seasons the highest total is 78, by Jose Reyes in 2007.

One can’t help but wonder when we’ll next see a 100-SB performance in the majors. (Raise your hand if you just thought of Billy Hamilton.) Will we ever again see a guy have 3 such years in a row? I find it hard to believe but I’ll never say never. The game has shifted a lot since the early 1980s, but nothing says it can’t shift back.

The Mets’ Mike Fitzgerald homered in his first career plate appearance

Fitzgerald is one of 4 Mets to accomplish the feat:

It’s interesting that all 4 of these guys spent very little time with the Mets (Matsui had the most with 3 seasons) and all of them were considered significant disappointments.

For my High Heat Stats debut, I’m continuing a series I started on my personal blog, Left Field, in which I’m naming an all-time team for each of the 30 current MLB franchises, and in the process, offering my opinion as to their greatest eligible player who is not in the Hall of Fame. Continue reading →

Athletics 6, @Angels 5: A 9th-inning roller-coaster left the Halos queasy and their fans downright nauseous. After the visitors tacked on 2 runs while the best Angel reliever sat idle, Anaheim quickly got those runs back and — with no outs — had the tying run on 3rd, and the winner on 1st in the speedy form of Peter Bourjos.

Continue reading →

For my first post on High Heat Stats, I’m taking a shortcut and recycling something I wrote for Replacement Level back in April.  It’s no more or less relevant today, but I think it’s worth a little more discussion than it got in my dark corner of the blogosphere.

Bonds 73, McGwire 70, Sosa 66…
Gibson 1.12, Gooden 1.53, Maddux 1.56…
Hornsby .424, Sisler .420, Williams .406

There are single season numbers like the home run totals listed above that the average baseball fan has committed to memory (even if some fans would prefer to remember Maris 61, Ruth 60, Ruth 59…). There are others, like Gibson’s 1.12 ERA and Williams’s .406 batting average, that may not actually be all-time records, but if we look past the deadball era, they stand out so far above more recent accomplishments that we can’t forget them.

Read the rest to see the numbers you should really know.

Continue reading →

Athletics 3, @Angels 1: The fourth time was the charm for Jarrod Parker. Given just 2 runs total in his 3 prior starts against Anaheim, Parker had gone 0-2 (and the A’s 0-3) despite his run average of 3.05; and when he gave back an early 1-0 lead on a 2-out rally in the 3rd that began with a walk to Mike Trout, it seemed more of the same was in store. But Parker allowed just one more hit through 7, Brandon Moss did his thing, and the bullpen closed it out, pulling Oakland within 3 games of idle Texas and dropping the Angels to 1.5 games out of the wild card.

• With 17 HRs in 217 PAs, Moss’s .302 isolated power ranks 2nd among all hitters with 200+ PAs. He’s broken out of a slump by hitting .353/1.083 in his last 14 games (5 HRs, 23 R+RBI); the A’s went 11-3 in those games and are 37-14 in his starts this year.

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With Buster Posey’s homer and two singles last night, Baseball-reference now has the Giants’ backstop with 5.8 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for the 2012 season.

Here are the highest WAR seasons by a Giants catcher, over the history of the franchise (minimum, one game caught during the season):
1. Buster Posey (2012) 5.8
2. Roger Bresnahan (1908) 5.6
3. Walker Cooper (1947) 5.1
T4. Buck Ewing (1883 and 1888) 4.6
6. Buck Ewing (1884) 4.5

In-season WAR can do down as well as up. So it’s possible that Buster could, if he slumps in this last few weeks of the season, drop from the top spot on the list above. But the guy sure isn’t in a slump at the moment.

Highest OPS in the Majors Since the All-Star Break (min. 100 PAs):
1. Buster Posey 1.118
2. Miguel Cabrera 1.047
3. Giancarlo Stanton 1.012
4. Albert Pujols 1.011
5. Josh Donaldson 1.007

Earlier this month, Rangers’ second baseman Jurickson Profar (an early finalist for the All-Name team) made his major league debut, homering in his first PA, only the third time since 1918 that a player under age 20 has done that.

The player on the list above who didn’t homer in his first PA is pitcher Denny McLain, who nonetheless homered in his first game and (as it turned out) for the only time in his career.

After the jump, I’ll look at bit more at these and other precocious players.

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We have added 5 new writers! Please join me in welcoming them to the team.

Ashley  (Twitter: @wcoastfangirl)

Stacey Gotsulias (Twitter: @StaceyGotsulias)

Dalton Mack (Twitter:@dmack1291)

Dan McCloskey  (Twitter: @_LeftField)

Bryan O’Connor  (Twitter: @replevel)

You can read all about these fine folks on our About page.

Yankees 13, @Orioles 3: Fourteen hits, 7 with RISP, pulled the Bombers clear of their see-saw tie for 1st place. Curtis Granderson came off the bench for 3 hits and 5 RBI, tying the season high for a non-starter in both categories; Derek Jeter added 2 to his MLB-best hits total, pulling him within 4 hits of the Say-Hey Kid for #11 on the all-time list; and Alex Rodriguez scored 3 runs and stands 2 behind Lou Gehrig for #10 on that list (and 28 ahead of the Captain).

• Continue reading →