In 2011, Jason Varitek caught Tim Wakefield for the final time of their careers. Their combined age was over 84 years. This season, we should see Henry Blanco catch Takashi Saito. Their combined age will be over 82 years. These are just two examples of what I call the “graying of batteries” that has been going on for the past 25 years, and particularly in the past decade. Not sure if you agree? Then consider this: 

32% of all “old” batteries (combined age of batter and pitcher over 80 years) since 1919 have occurred in the past 10 seasons. That number jumps to 57% looking at the past 26 years.  

If those numbers surprise you (or even if they don’t), why not read some more.

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This post is about two players who had unusual run scoring accomplishments in 2011.

Curtis Granderson joined a short list of players since 1961 whose runs scored were more than half their times on base. Conversely, Casey Kotchman joined an even shorter list of players who failed to score over 80% of the time they reached base. That’s quite a range.

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That’s Shawon Dunston on a 1997 Pacific Silver card, showing him in action for the Giants in 1996.

In 1997 the Chicago Cubs reacquired Dunston and, for the first time in his career, played him at a position other than shortstop. Shawon played a few games in left field in ’97, played a bit in both the infield and outfield in ’98, and then played mostly in the outfield after that.

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Richard Chester.

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Barring injury, Derek Jeter will this season likely pass Cal Ripken and Robin Yount to become the all-time career Hits leader among AL shortstops. Which means, of course, that he will then trail only Honus Wagner, the NL leader. So, will he catch Honus?

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Not every career is long and illustrious, never mind legendary. Many, of course, are short and unremarkable. But, sometimes, players have short careers that are quite unusual and worthy of a closer look. This post is about one of those players.

I happened upon Frank Fernandez recently. That’s his 1969 Topps card.

Frank was a catcher and outfielder in the late 60s and early 70s, mostly for the Yankees and As. A reserve, his career totals over 6 seasons (4 seasons really – he had cups of coffee in his first and last years) amount to about a season and a half as a regular.

Here’s his career line. Notice anything unusual?

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This quiz may be a little tougher (I think). But you guys are sharp, so no doubt you’ll surprise me.

Here’s a list of really good players (okay, maybe one exception) from the last 50 years. No duds or cup-of-coffee  guys here – all are recognizable names, even some HOFers.

But, these players, and only these players, have accomplished one particular feat.

Hint: the feat is in two related parts characterized by a common, non-sabermetric, statistic.

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Evil Squirrel. Continue reading →

Icon SMI

Before I regale you with my strange tale (and explain the selection of the photo at the left), let me set the stage a bit. Some may recall a B-R Blog post last year on the unusual circumstance of 4 players having 2500 or more hits appearing in the same game. In the game-searchable era, this has happened involving only two different sets of players.

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Recently, Raphy posted a blog concerning the oldest pair of players to start a game at each position. Not surprisingly, the position of pitcher had the oldest starters, with one instance of a game with each starting pitcher over 44 years old – Jamie Moyer vs. David Wells on July 21, 2007.

That got me to thinking about what would be the oldest matchup of batter vs. pitcher. After some research, it appears the answer is also 44 years – that is, both batter and pitcher at least 44 years old. Note that I’m referring to an actual plate appearance, not just players appearing in the same game. Here are those games, indicating the final career matchup for each pair, with the oldest matchup highlighted.

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A word of introduction about myself. I’m Doug, a regular participant on this Blog. Andy has been gracious enough to invite me to write a bit for HHS. I hope you find my posts interesting, and that you’ll be gentle with me (at least to start).

To begin, I’m going to go with something really easy – a quiz. Oh, and I think the quiz is also pretty easy, so don’t dismay. Here goes:

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Eric !

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