On June 6th 2007, just over five years ago, I wrote a short blog entry titled “A-rod’s 9th inning performance“. That was my first contribution to the now-defunct Baseball-Reference.com blog.

More than 2,000 posts later (between the B-R blog, the temporary home of High  Heat Stats over at Blogspot, and its permanent home right here) I have decided to hang it up and retire from baseball writing. Even as I write that–it’s not a full retirement. See below for more information.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve gotten to do some really fun things. Aside from working with the great folks who run Sports Reference (Sean and Neil mainly) and the numerous fantastic writers I’ve rubbed shoulders with for each blog, I’ve had the opportunity to write pieces for the New York Times, USA Today’s baseball preview issue, and appear on a local ESPN radio affiliate. I got to visit MLB Network’s headquarters and studios.

Perhaps the thing that has brought me the most joy is the gradual development of a loyal audience. My fellow writers each deserve as much credit for that as I do. If you go back and look at that A-rod post, it received zero user comments. Most of the posts from the first couple of years received fewer than 5 comments, and more often than not, it was Raphy or me commenting on each other’s posts. Flash forward, and now most posts on this blog get quite a few responses, with just about all of them containing some useful information or opinion. That’s an amazing and wonderful thing. And while I love sharing this space with so many like-minded people, it’s actually our differences that make this place so great. (After all, we can agree on how much Joe Carter sucks for only so long…)

Going forward:

• This blog will remain open and all the other authors will continue to publish on whatever schedule they choose. I will keep footing the bill to keep the blog open even though we don’t get nearly enough in the way of donations to cover costs or pay our writers.
• You can still reach me at my email addressed (posted in the right sidebar) for any issues–admin, contributions, etc.
• I will be keeping a Twitter presence (@HighHeatStats) although at a lower volume than before. You can still expect to see daily tweets there.
• I will finish off the Mount Rushmore post series, so those are still coming and will be published here.
• I will continue to write the occasional odd post, but I don’t expect that to be even as often as 1 post per week.
• I will also continue to do some outside work with other publications, as well as book reviews. I remain available to do guest spots in print and live media.

So this isn’t really goodbye. I’m just taking myself out of the lineup and moving to the end of the bench. I’ll be like Pete Rose as a player-manager, overseeing things and on rare occasions inserting myself into the action…only I have a much better haircut, and I don’t plan to bet on any of the action here.

So far in 2012, more major league homers have been hit from the third spot in the order (346 homers) than the fourth spot (337 homers).  It is quite rare over a full major league season for the cleanup spot not to be the place in the batting order with the most dingers.  Over the past seventy full seasons, only in 1955 and 2001 has any spot in the order other than cleanup been the source of the most homers in the majors.   But the percentage of homers that are hit from the fourth spot, as compared to the rest of lineup, has been headed generally downward for decades.    Some details after the jump. Continue reading →

@Orioles 2, Nationals 1: After Washington equalized on an error in the 5th, J.J. Hardy answered with a 2-out scoring double in the home half, ending an 8-game RBI drought. Hardy had been 3 for 18 (all singles) with 2 outs and RISP.

• For a veteran pitcher with consistently mediocre seasons, where is the line between “off to a good start” and “totally different pitcher”? If last Saturday’s 1-hitter in Atlanta didn’t mark that point for Jason Hammel, tonight’s 8-IP, 10-K, no-ER, no-walk outing surely must. Hammel is 8-2, 2.61 through 14 games, and 6-2 in 11 starts against winning teams.
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With R.A. Dickey scheduled to start Sunday night on 5 days’ rest, let’s look at the “days of rest” splits of the most prominent recent knuckleballers (in starts only). I have included all splits that cover at least 10 starts, but my comparative statements are based only on those lines with at least 30 starts.

Even if you care nothing for this topic, I urge you to savor the line of Wilbur Wood on 2 days’ rest.

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“Pinstripe Empire” by Marty Appel chronicles the Yankees. And I mean the entire franchise from its start in 1901 (as the original Baltimore Orioles), to its rebranding in 1903 (as the New York Highlanders), to its eventual transformation into the New York Yankees.

Appel’s qualifications for writing such a book are without equal. He was the Yankees’ PR Director from 1973 to 1977, but started his association with the team as early as 1968, when he handled Mickey Mantle’s fan mail. Later he was the executive producer of WPIX Yankee telecasts, among numerous other high-ranking jobs within the sports industry.

“Pinstripe Empire” is a monumental achievement: a narrative history covering more than 100 years that makes mention of every significant event from the team’s past. This includes every manager hiring or firing (of which there have been, ahem, quite a few…), trade, free-agent signing or departure, individual or team achievement or blunder, memorable play, and anything else that contributed to the fascinating, complex story of the team.

Perhaps the greatest aspect of this book is not what Appel is, but rather what he is not. He’s not a booster. He’s not a fanboy. He didn’t write this book to hype the team. For example, when writing about Derek Jeter’s famous “flip” of Shane Spencer’s errant throw in the 2001 playoffs, you might expect him to describe those events for a couple of pages. Nope. The whole thing gets 6 sentences, appropriately describing the event as an “unfathomable defensive gem”, but also referencing the claim and subsequent skepticism that the team had practiced the play. Two pages later, Appel spends just as many words describing the Yankees’ losses in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series after all the mid-series heroics the team displayed.

Appel does not waste a single word in this book. Where he could have opted to spend half a page describing a positive or negative event with lots of overblown adjectives and pasted-on emotions, he instead uses one or two precisely-crafted sentences that perfectly capture the events. He manages to pack a tremendous amount of information into one book without it ever being boring or reading like spin.

If you’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Appel, as I have, you know he’s a warm, well-spoken man. When he became part of the Yankees’ organization in the 1960s, he had the opportunity to learn from folks with ties to the team as far back as the 1920s. In his acknowledgments, Appel lists nearly a full page of names of people he interviewed for this book, and the bibliography cites more than a dozen pages of books that served as sources. That’s a lot of research, folks, and it shows.

If you’re a Yankees fan, this book is an absolute must-have (and it would make an awesome gift!). If you’re a baseball fan but not a fan of the Yankees in particular, the book is still a wonderful piece of baseball history that provides a fair account of the franchise, warts and all.

“Pinstripe Empire” is available from Amazon.com here.

I haven’t kept up with the recaps due to a busy week — haven’t seen a single pitch since Dickey’s last. Here’s what I’ve got for tonight, with assorted scraps from the last few days:

Thursday

@Pirates 9, Twins 1: The first complete game of James McDonald‘s career was also the first by a Pirate since last July. The middle of the order brought the lumber, led (as usual) by Andrew McCutchen, who went 4-2-3-3, 3B, 2B.

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Paul Konerko / US PRESSWIRE

The White Sox are an  original American League team dating back to 1901. The had a good amount of success early on, winning the World Series in both 1906 and 1917. Then came the infamous 1919 World Series, which they lost ostensibly because several players were paid to tank. The team then entered a long dry spell, without a 1st-place finish from 1920 to 1958. In 1959, they lost another World Series (presumably played on fair terms). The team experienced another long drought until a first-place finish in 1983, when they lost the ALCS to the eventually-champ Baltimore Orioles. From 1990 to 2006, the team never finished lower than 3rd, including a World Series win in 2005. Since then, they’ve been about a .500 team.

Let’s take a look at the best personnel this team has had. Continue reading →

Reading the title of this post, you might be asking “Haven’t there always been intimidation pitchers?”. What I’m referring to, though, are pitchers who intimidate batters not only with their stuff, but also because the batter isn’t always sure where the next pitch may be headed.

To this point in the 2012 season, these three pitchers (min. 80 IP) are having dominating seasons, as evidenced by their ERAs and strikeout totals.

But, they’re also on pace for allowing 50% more walks than earned runs, something that hasn’t been accomplished by 3 pitchers in the same season in more than 20 years (if it happens this year, the trio will have to include someone other than Beachy, who was shelved for the year today pending Tommy John surgery).

After the jump, I’ll take a closer look at this unusual pitching profile.

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Asked right after the Tampa game how it felt to lose his Mets-record scoreless string on an unearned run in the 9th, the ever-placid Dickey said only, “It’s a good time to start another one.”

And how.

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Here’s a collection of hitters including All-Stars, journeymen, and even a player many might regard as obscure. But, there is a common link connecting them, a feat accomplished since 1918 only by these players. What is this feat?

Hint: the feat is in two related parts.

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Richard Chester and Nick Pain, who identified that these are the only players since 1918 to homer in both their first career regular season game, and also in their first career post-season game.