Don Mincher died a few days ago. He’s among a handful of players whose names instantly bring Jim Bouton‘s Ball Four to mind. Here’s a look at some of Mincher’s career achievements. Continue reading →

Icon SMI

Before I regale you with my strange tale (and explain the selection of the photo at the left), let me set the stage a bit. Some may recall a B-R Blog post last year on the unusual circumstance of 4 players having 2500 or more hits appearing in the same game. In the game-searchable era, this has happened involving only two different sets of players.

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Recently, Raphy posted a blog concerning the oldest pair of players to start a game at each position. Not surprisingly, the position of pitcher had the oldest starters, with one instance of a game with each starting pitcher over 44 years old – Jamie Moyer vs. David Wells on July 21, 2007.

That got me to thinking about what would be the oldest matchup of batter vs. pitcher. After some research, it appears the answer is also 44 years – that is, both batter and pitcher at least 44 years old. Note that I’m referring to an actual plate appearance, not just players appearing in the same game. Here are those games, indicating the final career matchup for each pair, with the oldest matchup highlighted.

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A word of introduction about myself. I’m Doug, a regular participant on this Blog. Andy has been gracious enough to invite me to write a bit for HHS. I hope you find my posts interesting, and that you’ll be gentle with me (at least to start).

To begin, I’m going to go with something really easy – a quiz. Oh, and I think the quiz is also pretty easy, so don’t dismay. Here goes:

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Eric !

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A bit of news… Continue reading →

This one gets trotted out every year, so why not now? On September 27, 1963, the Houston Colt .45’s started an all-rookie lineup, all age 21 or under. Here’s their box score, with age (years.days), year in MLB, career game number, and a few notes: Continue reading →

If asked to name a team with a young starting lineup, you might think of last year’s Royals (with 2 first-year players, and no regulars over age 27); or one of the famous “fire-sale” remnants like the 1999 Marlins or 1917 Athletics (neither had a single PA by a nonpitcher who had seen his 30th birthday); or the 1950 Phillies‘ “Whiz Kids”; or maybe the ’78 Tigers, breaking in Alan Trammell (20), Lou Whitaker (21) and Lance Parrish (22) alongside veterans Jason Thompson and Steve Kemp (both 23).

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You probably know that if you type a search term into Google, it will give you a few autocomplete suggestions for that search, giving you an indication of the most popular searches done by the public.

Here’s an example: Continue reading →

It’s hard to believe that Jorge Posada and Jason were once considered to be in a similar class. But through most of the early-to-mid 2000s, the two players were often lumped together as star catchers for teams that were in contention every year.

However, looking at each guy’s final line, they ended up worlds apart. Continue reading →

If a pitcher never gets more than 17 wins in a season and retires at age 34, what are his chances of winning 200?

Since 1945, eleven pitchers have reached 200 wins by their age-33 season. Ten of them had a 20-win season by the time they won #200, and nine did it more than once, totaling forty-four 20-win seasons. The 11th guy just plugged away: Continue reading →