A St. Patrick’s Day Tribute to players born in the Emerald Isle.

Here’s the All-Ireland All-Star team

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Here’s an unusual collection of pitchers. There are starters and relievers. Their careers ranged from two seasons to more than twenty. They pitched in ten decades, from the 1910s to the 2000s. There are players you probably have never heard of – and there’s a HOFer.

But these pitchers, and only these pitchers, have accomplished a feat no other pitcher has achieved. What common thread unites this group?

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to the team of Richard Chester and Nadig!

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For those of you who have been following High Heat Stats on Twitter, you’ll already get how this game works. For those who haven’t, here’s the deal. Continue reading →

Which starting pitchers have been shelled most often? I’m not talking about guys with careers of only a handful of starts. No, I’m thinking more about established pitchers. Which of those pitchers have most frequently had a tough day at the office?

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John’s post here Monday, discussing Roy Halladay’s chances of reaching 300 wins, had me thinking about Doc’s well-known ability to pitch deep into games, racking up a lot of innings pitched in the process.  Here’s one example.  Most games of at least 9 innings pitched, 2005-2011: Halladay 49, Cliff Lee 27, Sabathia 22, Chris Carpenter 20.

Perhaps having pitched so many innings affects Halladay’s chances to continue to pitch at a high level at the later stages of his career?  Of course, being able to pitch so many innings in a game has helped Halladay win so many games in the first place, as the deeper a starter goes into the game the more likely he is to get the decision.  But set that aside, as  I was focused not on the past benefits of his innings numbers but on the possible future effect of his high number of innings pitched.    With that in mind I wanted to check how many innings Doc had actually racked up, compared to his contemporaries.   But thinking about  that I realized  I should also, and perhaps even more importantly, check how many pitches he had thrown, as that seemed as if it might be more relevant than his innings pitched.  My findings are after the jump. Continue reading →

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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When Major League Baseball re-aligned into three divisions per league in 1994, the AL West and NL West were assigned only four teams each.  These two divisions thus became the smallest units of regular season competitive standings at the major league level of baseball since such leagues have existed.  The NL West enjoyed this cozy arrangement only until 1998, when a new baby arrived in the form of the Arizona expansion team.  The AL West, on the other hand, has remained undisturbed as a family of four for eighteen seasons.

2012 will, however, be the last year of splendid isolation for the Angels/Mariners/A’s/Rangers as the emigrating Astros arrive on the AL West’s shores beginning in 2013.  In addition, 2012 brings, to the AL West, the Player of the Century thus far (WAR 2000-2011: 1. Pujols 88.7, 2. A-Rod 78.5, 3. Bonds 64.4, 4. Halladay 58.9, 5. Beltran 56.2).  So it seems an opportune time to look back at some stats-based history of the four-team AL West, which you can read after the jump. Continue reading →

Following up the Halladay/300-win discussion, here are two age-based graphs of the 18 modern* 300-game winners: wins by seasonal age, and cumulative wins by age
.

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Sam West had a nice career playing for the Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.

Check out his 1935 and 1936 seasons, which perhaps look identical:

1935:  527 AB  .388 OBP  4 triples  10 homers  70 RBI

1936: 533 AB  .386 OBP  4 triples   7 homers 70 RBI

Pretty much identical, right?

Wrong. Continue reading →