HHS reader Paul E recently identified that Adam Dunn is on pace to obliterate the record for the highest season total of strikeouts and walks, believed to be Mark McGwire‘s 317 (162 BB, 155 SO) in 1998, one of only a handful of seasons above 300. Dunn, though, is currently on pace for 133 BB and 260 SO, perilously close to the 400 mark.

Strikeouts and walks are two of the TTOs (three true outcomes – HRs are the third), so named because a batter’s PA does NOT result in a batted ball being put into play (at least not so that the defense can do anything about it). McGwire’s total in 1998 for all of the TTOs was 387, a mark that Dunn, barring injury, is certainly likely to challenge, if not surpass.

But, what about the opposite end of the spectrum – which hitters have accumulated the lowest TTO totals? I’ll take a look after the jump.

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Some quick math, 1962-present

Mets: 26 complete-game 1-hitters

All other teams: 467 complete-game 1-hitters

Mets: 8,020 total games

All other teams: 201,898

So all other teams have produced 467 1-hitters in 201,898 games, or a rate of 0.23% of the time.

The Mets have produced 26 1-hitters in 8,020 games, or a rate of 0.32% of the time.

It may not sound like a lot, but it means that the Mets should have had 18 or 19 1-hitters in their existence instead of the 26 they’ve actually had. What does this tell us? What we already knew–they had been overdue for a no-hitter.

A variously detailed look at a selection of non-no-hitters….

@White Sox 7, Mariners 4: You win this kind of game when you’re on a streak. Jake Peavy cruised into the 7th with a 4-0 lead (1 hit, 2 walks), but it slipped away over the next 2 innings, mainly on big hits by Kyle Seager (who’s hitting lefties as well as righties). Chi fans needn’t have fretted: M’s CF Michael Saunders (who made a great catch in the 7th to start a DP) took an embarrassing facial to start the 8th, and Chicago scored 3 unearned runs after 2 were out.

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I had to separate this from the “…by decade” post, due to data limitations. Here are all individual shutout streaks of 3 or more since 1918. Streaks spanning years are included.

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By request of HHS reader Brett, here are the longest individual shutout streaks since 1918, broken down by decade. Note that streaks spanning two seasons are included, except those that spanned two decades (because I don’t want to spend my morning editing tables). See separate post for composite list of all shutout streaks of 3 or more since 1918.

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Johan Santana frothing at the mouth in excitement after his no-hitter / USPRESSWIRE

Here are 10 facts about The Mets and Johan Santana following his no-hitter for the Mets. Continue reading →

The 8,020th time was the charm.

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Only 3 games were played Thursday. Let’s see how much can be squeezed out of those box scores.

Tigers 7, @Red Sox 3: Miggy stole, Prince tripled, Delmon homered, Pods hit one over the CF, and the Tigers won a game — what the Sam Hill is goin’ on here?

• For the second time this year, Josh Beckett had just 1 strikeout in an outing of 7+ IP. In each of his 112 prior starts of that length, he had at least 2 Ks. His current K rate, 6.5 SO/9, would be the lowest of his career and 2 Ks below his prior career average.

More K-rate madness: Max Scherzer leads MLB with 11.7 SO/9, and his gross K rate of 29% of all batters faced ranks 3rd among qualifiers (behind Gio & Strassy). Yet he has allowed 10.7 H/9 and a .296 batting average. That combination is completely unprecedented:

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Writing about the traditional Triple Crown of baseball — one hitter leading his league in batting average, homers and runs batted in in the same season — may seem like a corny throwback to some readers on this site, as many of you have long since learned to replace batting average and RBI with more nuanced statistics for evaluating player performance.  But nostalgia and tradition have their own attractions, and perhaps once we become sufficiently comfortable with the fact that batting and RBI are simply eccentric old stats that are more trivia than important measures of talent, we can also relax and have a little harmless fun with them.

In that spirit, I propose to revive the old Triple Crown, which seems to have become well nigh un-achievable in its traditional, league-leadership form, by moving it to the division-leadership context, where a Triple Crown remains very difficult to pull off in contemporary baseball but is at least possible.  It seems to me acceptable to treat the six divisions as the equivalent of the old pre-1969 leagues in this respect.  After all, the divisions have served much the same purpose since 1969 as the leagues did from 1901 through 1968.  The six divisions are the current settings for the race to first place over the long regular season, just as the leagues were before 1969.  If a player can lead his division over a full season in BA, HRs and RBI, I would argue his achievement is reasonably comparable to the league-wide Triple Crown of pre-division days.  Details, including the historical division Triple Crown winners,  after the jump. Continue reading →

Here’s a great photo of Carlos Gonzalez catching a fly ball yesterday.

Photo credit: Chris Humphreys-US PRESSWIRE