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ShareThisMost games with a SB in the first 50 games of a career
Following on to my post about 4-hit games within the first 50 games of a career, here are the leaders since 1957 in games with at least 1 stolen base among the first 50 games of a career:
Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+ Vince Coleman 25 Ind. Games Tim Raines 24 Ind. Games Alex Cole 21 Ind. Games Alan Wiggins 19 Ind. Games Jeff Stone 19 Ind. Games Pat Listach 19 Ind. Games Luis Castillo 19 Ind. Games Quilvio Veras 18 Ind. Games Gary Redus 18 Ind. Games Donell Nixon 18 Ind. Games Allan Lewis 18 Ind. Games Bob Dernier 18 Ind. Games Willie Wilson 17 Ind. Games Juan Samuel 17 Ind. Games Eddie Miller 17 Ind. Games Mike Felder 17 Ind. Games John Cangelosi 17 Ind. Games Ced Landrum 16 Ind. Games Milt Thompson 15 Ind. Games Terry Pendleton 15 Ind. Games Davey Lopes 15 Ind. Games Curtis Goodwin 15 Ind. Games
So, yeah yeah, we'll talk about the leaders in a minute, but there's that man, Jeff Stone, again at 19!
Using the unbelievably awesome gamelog summation tool, here's Jeff Stone's line over his first 50 games, which spanned from September 1983 to September 1984:
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS +---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+ 50 156 148 23 55 4 5 1 14 5 0 17 2 0 1 1 24 3 .372 .397 .486 .883
Not too shabby, eh?
(See here for more on the gamelog summation tool.)
Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand, we find that Vince Coleman had the most games with a SB among his first 50 (at least since 1957.) In those 50 games, he had a whopping 42 stolen bases, with a.276 BA and .342 OBP. He also scored 43 runs. (I got that data from, you guessed it, the gamelog summation tool.)
Meanwhile, Timmy Raines 38 SB in his first 50 games, batting .307, OBP of .429, and scoring 31 runs.
In many ways, those two lines tell the story about Coleman vs Raines in their careers. No doubt Coleman was faster, but Raines was a far superior hitter. No wonder it was Coleman, not Rock, throwing firecrackers at kids in the Shea Stadium parking lot.
It's not all that surprising to see that pretty much everybody on that list above was a very fast guy. Most of them had only speed among their excellent attributes, but obviously a few (Raines, Wilson, Samuel, Pendleton, Lopes) had some hitting and defensive talents too.
Related posts:
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Game Finders, Gamelogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
The story of Jeff Stone:
http://www.pitch.com/2004-07-15/news/field-of-broken-dreams/full
January 11th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Wow, that is a FANTASTIC article. Thanks for the link.