Below are a list of similar hitters. Except for maybe one, that first guy. All but Pepi have had seasons of 40 HRs, over 100 RBI, or over 100 Ks.

So what is it that only this group of hitters has accomplished in a full season (502 PA) since 1901?

Congratulations to Paul E. He correctly identified these players as the only hitters since 1901 having a season (502 PA) with home runs comprising more than 55% of runs scored. Here’s the list.

Out of all the retired pitchers in MLB history, there are 2,191 who logged at least 400 innings through age 34.

Of that group, 317 fared so poorly that they had a career WAR value of less than 1.0 WAR through age 34.

With such a poor performance in a reasonably long trial, it’s no surprise that just 21 of them pitched in the majors from age 35 onward. Most of them were finished before they turned 30.

And of those 21 who did pitch at age 35 or older, only one ever had a season worth at least 3.0 WAR.

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What is the 4×100 season? I’m talking about seasons with triple-digit totals for runs, RBI, walks and strikeouts. There were no such seasons in 2012, and only four seasons by three players in the past 5 years, which is quite a departure from the recent past.

• 2008-2012: 4 seasons by 3 players
• 2003-2007: 16 seasons by 10 players
• 1998-2002: 22 seasons by 11 players

After the jump, a bit more on another sign of the changing face of the game.

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The Baseball Writers Association of America, whose contract with Major League Baseball references as many third-party transactions with Satan as Fox’s World Series contract and the liner notes to a Robert Johnson collection combined, has declared its intentions to make future baseball award votes more transparent than in the past.

Sure enough, the BBWAA released all individual ballots for last night’s Rookie of the Year voting.  While it seems like transparency can only help to legitimize a process that has been under scrutiny longer than Strom Thurmond’s voting record, a glance at the RoY voting suggests that we may be in for some trouble.  See why after the jump.

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Tom Glavine was among the finest pitchers of his time, compiling a distinguished 20-year, 300-win career likely to be recognized with his enshrinement in the HOF. Among Glavine’s many accomplishments was a season performance which, at the time, had not been achieved in either league in almost 60 seasons. What was this accomplishment?

We are now in the tenth decade of the live-ball era, generally acknowledged to have begun in 1920. Offensive and defensive periods have come and gone within this era, even to extremes like the 1960s, sometimes referred to as the second dead-ball era, and the homer-happy 1990s and 2000s.

With those changes, the use of starting pitchers has also changed. This post will explore those changes and look at the pitchers who have most frequently exceeded and most frequently fallen short of the changing performance standards expected of starting pitchers.

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The highest WPA-rated hitting performance by a pitcher in 2012 was this game by Anthony Bass, the only pitcher with a game WPA score above 0.3.

We know how many players are in the Hall of Fame. But have you ever wondered what percentage of eligible players is represented by those inductees?

I did, so I decided to figure it out. Click through for my results.

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I’ve been in a bit of a baseball-writing hibernation lately. Today I’m happy to show you why.

Over the last couple years, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of a Hall of Fame populated by a single statistic. I whipped up a little stat called wWAR and built a small site called The Hall of wWAR. But I wasn’t done yet. The formula needed tweaking. The site could be better.

I enlisted the help of a couple dear friends who happen to be the best software developers I’ve ever seen—Jeffrey Chupp and Michael Berkowitz. We’ve been hard at work and have a little something to share with you.

The Hall of Stats

There are so many things here that I’m proud of, so I’ll just share a few in some bullets…

• Like the Hall of wWAR, the Hall of Stats kicks everybody out of the Hall of Fame and re-populates it based on a formula.
• That formula is expressed as “Hall Rating” and uses WAR and WAA (from Baseball-Reference) as the main inputs.
• A Hall Rating of 100 represents the Hall of Fame borderline. Over 100? You’re in. Under 100? You’re out.
• The site features every player in history, from Babe Ruth to Bill Bergen.
• Every player page features visualizations of the player’s career run values and year by year WAR and WAA stats.
• Some players (just a few so far) feature a short bio and (around 400) a photo.
• Perhaps my favorite part of the project is our value-based similarity scores. While Bill James’ scores are based on raw statistics, these are based on WAR run value components.
• There are a bunch of other articles so far, too.
• If you’re into the nitty gritty, there About page is super-detailed.

I invite you to take a look, poke around, and let me know what you think. Thanks!