Fireworks Night at the ol’ ballpark!
@Brewers 13, Marlins 12 (10): They had it all the way. After blowing a 9-2 lead, the Crew fell behind in the 10th on a Jose Reyes HR, Miami’s 5th of the game. But they came back and rang the Bell: After a leadoff 5-pitch walk to Carlos Gomez (how could you?), the struggling-again closer got the next 2 men before Aramis Ramirez mushroomed an 0-1 pitch way out to CF for his first game-ending hit as a Brewer.
Sunday afternoon, on the way home to NY from a family function in the Philly area, my grown nephew John and I stopped in Camden, NJ to see an Atlantic League game between the hometown RiverSharks and the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
Field level, behind the plate, day of game: $1,300 at Yankee Stadium; $13 at Campbell’s Stadium.
(And nice work with the cellphone camera, young John Autin!)
Bryce Harper is thus far the only player born in 1992 to reach the majors. His current Wins Above Replacement (WAR) (Baseball-reference version) career total of 1.4 is thus tops by default so far for his birth year.
Five players born in 1991 have reached the majors, but Mike Trout is the only one with positive WAR. At 4.8 career WAR with half a season still to play, Trout is on pace to have one of the great very-young-career starts ever, according to b-ref’s WAR. The only MLB hitters in history to reach more than 6.5 career WAR through the end of his age 20 season have been Ott, Cobb, Kaline, A-Rod, Mantle, Junior Griffey and Ted Williams.
Among players born in 1990, b-ref has Brett Lawrie as the career WAR leader with 8.3 WAR, ahead of Starlin Castro at 7.2. Fangraphs, however, has Castro ahead with 7.6 to Lawrie’s 5.5. Averaging b-ref and fangraphs puts Castro ahead 7.4 to 6.9.
More year-of-birth WAR leaders after the jump. Continue reading
Monday in Oakland, Jarrod Parker hurled 6.2 innings of 1-run ball in beating the Red Sox for the 2nd time in as many tries.
It’s the 9th time out of 14 career games that he’s gone 6+ IP allowing 1 run or less. No other pitcher from 1918 to the present had as many starts of 6+ IP and 1 run or less through 14 career games.
Three pitchers had 8 such starts: Jered Weaver, Orlando Hernandez and Dwight Gooden.
A discussion started on yesterday’s Strikeout Milestone post concerning players who have appeared in the most games on the winning side. That topic arose in response to media coverage of Derek Jeter appearing in his 1500th winning game last week.
After the break are the top 5 winningest players for each franchise, during the game-searchable era (since 1918).
Following up on a post by birtelcom concerning the continually increasing trend to more strikeouts in the game, I noticed that there is likely to be a lot of action on the strikeout milestone list this year. After the break, I’ll take a look at today’s career strikeout kings and their predecessors.
DeWayne Wise is 34 years old. He’s played for 6 teams over 10 years, has never had as many as 200 plate appearances in a season, and has an abysmal 62 OPS+.
And yet, for a guy whose baseball card tells a truly unremarkable story, the guy has been involved in quite a few memorable events:
Taken separately, none of these 3 things is all that unusual. Put together, though, and Wise is going to be remembered far longer than most other players with similar numbers.
No time for full game recaps. Here’s what I’ve got from players in action Friday:
Aaron Hill is the only player since at least 1918 to have 2 cycles with no other cycle(s) in between by anyone else.
Jim Johnson held on, and the Orioles are now 14-6 in one-run games, while the Tribe fell to 12-4. The run allowed by Johnson raised his ERA to 1.30, while Pedro Strop lowered his to 1.25. The only teammates with 60+ IP and ERAs of 1.35 or lower were Jack Pfiester and Carl Lundgren of the 1907 Cubs (team ERA 1.73).
This isn’t really a quiz, just a wry chuckle about the limitations of Win Probability Added (WPA) for measuring a player’s game impact.
In Thursday’s 5-2 win, Miguel Cabrera went 4 for 5 with a HR and a double. His only out was a line drive; he was never picked off or caught stealing; and he made no errors.
So what was his WPA?
Ewell Blackwell
Baseball-Reference.com
Sidearmer Ewell Blackwell was a top NL pitcher of the late 40s and early 50s (he may also possibly be a relative of Don “Ears” Mossi, don’t you think?). Nicknamed “The Whip” for his unusual delivery, Blackwell’s best season was 1947, when he led the senior circuit in wins and strikeouts, was the All-Star game starter and, in a close MVP vote, placed 2nd to Bob Elliott of the Braves. That season, Blackwell also nearly duplicated Johnny Vander Meer’s 1938 feat of consecutive no-hitters. After no-hitting the Braves on June 18, Blackwell took a no-hitter into the 9th inning against the Dodgers on June 22, only to be foiled by an Eddie Stanky single.
Blackwell is the subject of today’s quiz because of a peculiar singularity. He is the only pre-expansion pitcher in the game-searchable era to accomplish a particular feat.
What is it that Blackwell achieved, and that no other pitcher from 1918 to 1960 could duplicate?
Congratulations to Richard Chester! He identified that Ewell Blackwell in 1950 was the only pitcher from 1918 to 1960 to record more hit batsmen than wild pitches in a season with 10 or more of each.