The 2022 post-season is underway and, as in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the first round is a best-of-three wildcard series. This time there are four teams involved in each league instead of the eight that qualified two years ago. The other difference is that this time there are fans in the stadiums. More after the jump.
Continue readingThe 122nd season of the modern era is underway. This post takes a look at opening day games of the past, and some of the more memorable accomplishments in those games.
Continue readingOver 200 players made their major league debuts this season. A few will go on to enjoy success over long careers, but most will have careers memorable only for their friends and family members. Following are some notable career debuts, some never before seen in the major leagues.
Continue readingOne game to go on the schedule, and the contestants for both wild card games are still to be determined. The only certainty is the St. Louis Cardinals will be the visiting team in the NL contest. All the combinations and permutations are after the jump.
Continue readingRichard Chester is a regular contributor to the HHS blog and the HHS Twitter feed. Many of the unusual factoids he comes up with are gleaned from his own homegrown game log database (think of it as Play Index or Stathead on steroids). For your enjoyment, here are some statistical nuggets he has recently unearthed.
Let’s get it out of the way: batting average is not one of the five most important offensive stats. It’s not one of the ten most important. It might be in the top 20. But regardless, we all grew up knowing “.300 hitter=good,” and we still talk about the batting average leader as the “batting champion.” So even though it’s not “important,” batting average can still be fun and interesting. So I’ve been looking into some batting races to see if there’s anything “there” for me to post about. I’ve come up with a few that might be worth discussing.
But as is my wont, I feel a need to learn as much as possible about a topic before I’m ready to write about it. In this case, that meant analyzing batting races. So one of the questions that was burning in my mind was the counterpoint to which batting races were interesting: which batting races were the most lopsided in history?
While researching my latest post, I came across a name that loomed large in my childhood, about whom I haven’t thought in a long time. Andres Galarraga is probably, at this point, the second-most-famous “A. Galarraga” in your baseball encyclopedia/brain. But while Armando may be more famous today, the Big Cat belongs to a couple specific groups. I’m hoping you can figure out what they are in these trivia questions.
Note: I’ve never done one of these trivia things before, as you know, so they’re not going to be as hard or clever as Doug’s… or maybe they’ll be too hard. I genuinely don’t know, but I hope it’s fun either way.
Christian Yelich launched home run number 14 on Saturday, a blistering start to this season that is much like the way he finished last year. After the jump, find out which other power hitters have followed a hot finish to one season with a hot start to the next.
Chris Davis earned some unwanted notoriety this month with the longest oh-fer in majors history, racking up 54 consecutive hitless AB before finally snapping the streak with a 3 for 5 game on April 13, leading the Orioles to a 9-5 win over the defending champion Red Sox. The other members of the 0 for 40 club are after the jump.
After an opening act in Japan, the 119th season of the modern era is now fully underway. Here are some game notes from today’s action.