Not every career is long and illustrious, never mind legendary. Many, of course, are short and unremarkable. But, sometimes, players have short careers that are quite unusual and worthy of a closer look. This post is about one of those players.

I happened upon Frank Fernandez recently. That’s his 1969 Topps card.

Frank was a catcher and outfielder in the late 60s and early 70s, mostly for the Yankees and As. A reserve, his career totals over 6 seasons (4 seasons really – he had cups of coffee in his first and last years) amount to about a season and a half as a regular.

Here’s his career line. Notice anything unusual?

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In my first post, earlier today, I pointed out that the Yankees led the majors in regular season wins over the five-year periods from 2007 through 2011, 2006 through 2010 and  2005 through 2009 — with exactly the same number of total wins over each of those five-year periods.   One can look at the full sequence of such five-year periods  through baseball history, and by doing so look at which team, at the end of each season, was at that moment the “Best Team of the Past Five Years”.

This method gives a look at which team was most consistently around the top of major league baseball during various eras. After the jump, you’ll see a full list, beginning with 2011 and going back to the beginning of the 20th Century, showing for each year the team that had the best overall record over the five then-most-recent regular seasons.  So, for example, when the list below shows the Yankees as the “Best Team of the Past Five Years” in every season from 2004 through 2011, that means the Yanks had the best five-season record overall during each of the following five-year periods: 2000 to 2004, 2001 to 2005, 2002 to 2006, 2003 to 2007, 2004 to 2008, 2005 to 2009, 2006 to 2010 and 2007 to 2011.

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This quiz may be a little tougher (I think). But you guys are sharp, so no doubt you’ll surprise me.

Here’s a list of really good players (okay, maybe one exception) from the last 50 years. No duds or cup-of-coffee  guys here – all are recognizable names, even some HOFers.

But, these players, and only these players, have accomplished one particular feat.

Hint: the feat is in two related parts characterized by a common, non-sabermetric, statistic.

The quiz has been solved. Congratulations to Evil Squirrel. Continue reading →

Here are the 2011 leaders for most games with at least 0.10 WPA in team losses: Continue reading →

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 →