Since 1954, there have been 18 occasions when a team has featured as many as 4 pitchers who appeared in a game for 1 batter or less. In 4 of those games the pitchers pitched consecutively.

April 29, 1981 - Cardinals at Cubs - 8th inning

August 26, 1987 -  Dodgers at Mets - 8th inning (Matt Young is listed as facing 0 batters. I assume he suffered an injury before he could complete a batter.

September 27, 1995 - Tigers vs. Red Sox - 9th inning

August 21, 2007 -  White Sox vs. Royals - 8th inning (The only 1 of these streaks that didn't end the game.)

One of the projects that I've wanted to do since I started to work with the PI was to break down every starting pitcher's line and see how often pitchers with various innings pitched and runs allowed stats won their starts. The recent addition of the CSV option in the PI results has made it particularly easy to grab the information and import it into a spreadsheet. Therefore, the time has come to address the issue. I am going to present the info for the 2009 season and if there is enough interest (please let me know in the comments), future posts will contain information for a larger sampling of years. To do this, I simply used the PI pitching game finder and searched for all starts sorted by IP and (when I reached the results limit) just kept changing the IP requirements until I had a copy of all 4860 starts from 2009. Here is the information in couple of tables:

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Via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Game Finder - since 1954, batters who have posted 2 or more games where they had 7+ PA and reached base zero times and had zero sac bunts and/or sac flies:

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That's the beauty of baseball, huh? On any given day, or two, someone like Carl Yastrzemski can be as bad as someone like Byron Browne...

The Rangers tied a post-1954 record this past season for most games getting at most 1 hit:

There are some bad, bad teams in there, but that does not include the five most recent teams on the list. That's kind of surprising, since these days there's so much offense that I'd think only the really bad teams would get one-hit so often. But I guess that 4 games is too small of a sample for such general trends to apply.

Here are the post-1954 teams to get no-hit twice in a season:

Note that the 1967 Tigers won one of those games. This was the famous game against the Orioles that we've discussed on this blog a few times. The Tigers scored 2 runs in the 9th inning on a few walks, a wild pitch, and a fielder's choice.

A simple but fun list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Post-Season Game Finder...

...most post-season road games won by a team in a given year. Here's the leader board:

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Yes, since the playoffs were expanded in 1995, it's hard for a pre-1995 team to have a chance here. Nonetheless, what the 1996 Yankees did in October is impressive - getting 8 of the required 11 wins needed (for a ring) on the road. And, what about those teams that won 5 post-season road games in a year and who didn't win a ring that season? Yeah, 2002 Giants, 2003 Yankees, 1997 Indians and 1996 Braves and ...I'm looking at you!

One of the most intriguing aspects of PI is the ability to find obscure oddities that have occurred throughout the history of baseball (or at least in the retrosheet era). As intriguing as this is, it can also be quite maddening, as it if often difficult to find the story behind the numbers. Today I present you with one such case and ask for your help in filling in the blanks.

When a starter takes the mound, it is  rare (actually less rare than I would have guessed - around 1 in every 353 starts since 1954) for him to leave without retiring a batter. I assume that there are basically four  reasons a starter would leave without retiring a batter. The most obvious is ineffectiveness. However, a starter can also be pulled for health reasons, a long rain delay or  an  ejection. I guess that it is also possible (although highly unusual) for a manager to start a  pitcher just to face a hitter or two to gain a match-up advantage.

Since 1954, there have been 4 games in which both starting pitchers failed to retire batter.

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The latest rumors have the Red Sox signing Mike Cameron to play left field in a platoon with Jeremy Hermida.

Cameron has had a long strange career.

For starters, he's a pretty unlikely member of the 4-homers-in-a-game club.

Here's a reminder of the post-1954 members of that group:

I suspect that Cameron's name will be the oddest one in this group for many years to come, although Whiten and Horner also had comparatively short major-league careers.

Here's another thing about Cameron. While he's not a terribly good hitter, his OPS values always end up above average. He has a string of 11 straight years with an OPS+ of at least 104 and his career value is 107. He's no superstar with the bat but he's solid and, perhaps more importantly, consistent.

Since 1901 here are the players with the most seasons having an OPS+ of at least 104 but a batting average no higher than .273.

Interesting group, eh? Joe Morgan is the odd man out here because, as the only middle-infielder on the list, he was actually an above-average offensive player (for his position) and managed to make the group. The rest of these players were all good, most had a couple of excellent seasons, but none was a superstar.

Cameron and the rest of these guys all fit a similar mode: decent power and decent walk rate. Bumps to OBP from walks or to SLG from occasional homers--that's how these guys kept their OPS+ values on the good side of 100 despite having lower batting averages. (I know the search limited to .273, which is not a bad batting average, but keep in mind that Cameron's career BA is .250. Most of the guys on the list above were below .260 in their careers.)

Here's another club for which Cameron carries a membership card: striking out in at least 24% of one's plate appearances (minimum 3000 PAs):

This is kind of surprising, isn't it? It makes Cameron seem like a pretty good slugger and run-producer, at least if you cherry pick Jim Thome and Ryan Howard off here. On the other hand, grouping him with Jose Hernandez and Pete Incaviglia paints a different picture, as far as perception goes.

You can put me down in the Mike Cameron fan club. He's not a perfect player, but he provides significant offense and is very consistent. At the right price, I'd take the guy on my team.

On Sunday, we looked at the players since 1954 with the most home runs in their first 162 games. Today, let's look at the hits leaders.

Ryan Braun makes both  lists. Here are Braun's totals for his first 162 games:

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Via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Game Finder - "teenage" (meaning age 19 or younger) starters - since 1954 - to have a start in the big leagues where they fashioned a Game Score of 70 or better:

Dwight Gooden, Gary Nolan, Larry Dierker and Wally Bunker had some amazing games as youngsters, huh? What a thrill those games must have been for them. I mean...imagine yourself when you were 19 (or slightly younger). And, now, put yourself on a mound in a major league ballpark throwing a great game against big league hitters. Man, it had to surreal for these four...and the others on this list, when they had it all working for them those days, no?

One of the new PI features is to group Game Finder results by the most players achieving the criteria in the same game for 1 team or for both teams. That lets us find crazy things like this.

Most different pitchers throwing a wild pitch in the same game for one team:

Since 1954 the record is 4 different pitchers, done 15 times. In that most recent game from 2009, the Angels actually tossed 6 wild pitches total.

And how about most pitchers throwing a wild pitch for either team in the same game (also post-1954):

The record here is 6 pitchers, done in the 1998 Red Sox-White Sox game. That was one of the wilder games in recent years, with the Red Sox winning 15-14 despite Chicago putting up an 8-run sixth inning. In addition to all the wild pitches, both teams homered and hit at least one batter.

Just for laughs, here are the leaders in game with the most different pitchers issuing a balk. First for just one team:

Is it any surprise that so many of these games are from 1988? If you recall, that's the year that MLB issued instructions to the umpires to be more diligent about calling balks and also modified the rule a little bit.

The record for both teams in 4, also occurring mainly in games from 1988:

So there you go.