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Homers in wins and losses

18th November 2009

Let's take a look at post-1954 HR leaders in their team's wins and losses. For starters, here's a little lesson about new capabilities of the PI.

For a long time, we could search for career games in which players hit at least one home run. Here are the top 20:

But this doesn't tell the entire story since it doesn't take into account multi-homer games. With the new Batting Game Finder, the total stats in such games are also provided and can then be sorted. Re-running the list above and then sorting for total homers gives a new top 20:

Rk Player #Matching PA AB H 2B 3B HR RBI
1 Hank Aaron 461 Ind. Games 2090 1837 855 72 7 512 1005
2 Barry Bonds 437 Ind. Games 1975 1560 780 74 12 493 917
3 Willie Mays 396 Ind. Games 1784 1582 772 66 11 447 827
4 Manny Ramirez 362 Ind. Games 1626 1390 688 89 5 405 870
5 Ken Griffey 358 Ind. Games 1643 1431 657 72 1 402 805
6 Frank Robinson 350 Ind. Games 1576 1347 673 61 12 396 792
7 Reggie Jackson 363 Ind. Games 1593 1398 660 64 6 396 792
8 Jim Thome 347 Ind. Games 1552 1294 614 72 4 382 727
9 Mark McGwire 327 Ind. Games 1455 1190 543 41 2 381 730
10 Mike Schmidt 340 Ind. Games 1524 1284 585 58 9 381 737
11 Harmon Killebrew 336 Ind. Games 1470 1223 563 30 0 375 743
12 Alex Rodriguez 332 Ind. Games 1576 1376 660 52 5 373 762
13 Sammy Sosa 317 Ind. Games 1447 1289 612 63 7 365 745
14 Rafael Palmeiro 320 Ind. Games 1468 1263 586 56 6 349 685
15 Willie McCovey 307 Ind. Games 1273 1092 521 32 4 346 696
16 Eddie Murray 318 Ind. Games 1427 1265 588 46 1 344 712
17 Gary Sheffield 313 Ind. Games 1422 1196 596 59 4 343 705
18 Willie Stargell 312 Ind. Games 1366 1192 579 59 11 342 694
19 Mickey Mantle 296 Ind. Games 1321 1092 546 35 7 334 612
20 Fred McGriff 290 Ind. Games 1284 1122 546 47 6 325 611
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Reggie Jackson drops from 4th down to 7th. If I had to guess why, I'd say it's because he played longer than most and added on more games with single homers.

Now here are the most total homers in team losses:

Rk Player #Matching PA AB H 2B 3B HR RBI
1 Barry Bonds 250 Ind. Games 1087 892 411 38 5 269 427
2 Sammy Sosa 217 Ind. Games 946 853 370 21 3 244 394
3 Hank Aaron 230 Ind. Games 1012 930 400 30 5 242 416
4 Ken Griffey 215 Ind. Games 951 832 351 29 3 228 379
5 Rafael Palmeiro 215 Ind. Games 921 829 350 24 3 220 357
6 Alex Rodriguez 194 Ind. Games 886 769 346 31 2 210 347
7 Mark McGwire 184 Ind. Games 800 684 287 18 0 202 319
8 Ernie Banks 185 Ind. Games 804 757 320 21 6 202 345
9 Frank Thomas 186 Ind. Games 818 711 302 27 1 198 297
10 Harmon Killebrew 187 Ind. Games 792 692 276 11 1 194 312
11 Frank Robinson 181 Ind. Games 790 707 296 20 4 190 286
12 Willie Mays 175 Ind. Games 775 689 302 13 4 189 293
13 Jim Thome 171 Ind. Games 721 617 262 25 0 182 290
14 Dave Kingman 160 Ind. Games 673 634 253 20 5 175 277
15 Willie McCovey 167 Ind. Games 714 617 257 16 0 175 270
16 Fred McGriff 163 Ind. Games 689 612 248 17 0 168 283
17 Reggie Jackson 156 Ind. Games 668 599 226 22 1 167 257
18 Mike Schmidt 160 Ind. Games 683 602 254 22 3 167 283
19 Gary Sheffield 158 Ind. Games 703 606 261 18 0 166 280
20 Dave Winfield 158 Ind. Games 694 634 282 17 1 166 280
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Hmm, wow, this is interesting. Firstly, Bonds and Sosa pass Aaron for more total homers in losses. I think that can be attributed to 2 general factors: 1) I'm guessing that Aaron's teams had a better overall W-L% than Bonds' or Sosa's teams. Obviously, all other things being equal, playing on better teams makes it harder to hit home runs in losses. 2) In Aaron's day, one guy hitting a home run gave his team a much better chance of winning. With so much more offense these days, a single home run does less to win games for your team and means that guys like Bonds and Sosa tend to have their homers spread more evenly across wins and losses.

A bunch of new names pop up on this top 20 list for homers in losses: Banks, Thomas, Kingman, and Winfield. I suspect that these guys turn up here but not on the top 20 list for team wins because of the same 2 factors I mentioned above.

Posted in Game Finders | 5 Comments »

Single Game Percentages

17th November 2009

The recent addition of the arithmetic option to the PI created the possibility of searching for rate stats on a game by game basis. For example, if I wanted to find all of the teams since 1954 that had a  batting average of .500 during the course of a game, I could search for H=.5*AB.  Here are the results of a few of these searches.

Batting Average

Since 1954 there have been 84 teams that have had a batting average of more than .500 in a game.  Another 97 teams have hit exactly .500.  The teams did it in different ways, some with reduced ABs with multiple sacrifices and some with an explosion of hits. 180 of the teams won, one did not.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB #
1 2006-07-22 BAL TBD L 12-13 51 41 12 22 4 0 0 12 9 0 5 0 0 1 0 4 1 2 12 11
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/20/2009.

The highest single game batting average since 1954 belongs to the 2003 Boston Red Sox who went 28-46 against the Florida Marlins on June 27th. Their .609 batting average was the only time since 1954 in which a team hit over .600.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB #
1 2003-06-27 BOS FLA W 25-8 57 46 25 28 8 1 3 25 7 0 7 1 0 3 0 1 0 0 8 11
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/20/2009.

Slugging Percentage:

Since 1954 there have been 67 teams that posted a single game slugging percentage of 1.0 or higher. The only team to lose is the one with the fewest at bats:

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR TB RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB #
1 1997-09-19 CHC PHI L 5-10 23 22 5 9 1 0 4 22 5 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 3 14
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/20/2009.

The highest single game team slugging percentage since 1954 was posted by the '87 Blue Jays whose 53 total bases with only 44 AB were god for a slugging percentage of 1.205

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR TB RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB #
1 1987-09-14 TOR BAL W 18-3 48 44 18 21 2 0 10 53 18 4 0 4 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 6 14
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/20/2009.

TOB/PA

While we can't sort by OBP for an individual game, we can use a similar stat of  Times on Base/Plate Appearances. This ratio is similar to OBP, but will reward a team for reaching on an error and penalize it for a sacrifice bunt. Still it can be revealing, nonetheless.
The highest TOB/PA produced by a team in a game since 1954 was by the 2008 Cardinals who combined 9 walks with 26 hits in a single game against Atlanta.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB TOB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB #
1 2008-08-22 STL ATL W 18-3 55 44 18 26 5 0 0 18 9 35 2 6 0 1 1 0 1 0 2 13 14
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/20/2009.

Posted in Game Finders | 1 Comment »

All of a team’s hits (or both teams’ hits) are XHB

17th November 2009

This is another study that was done a while ago using the old version of the PI. It's much easier to do with the new version.

Using the Team Batting Game Finder and my favorite new feature, the arithmetic criterion, I have done several searches setting H = XBH (extra base hits) to achieve the following results.

Anyway, since 1954, a team has had all of its hits go for extra bases a total of 901 times.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR XBH RBI BB IBB SO
1 2009-09-09 CIN COL L 3-4 35 31 3 5 4 0 1 5 3 3 0 11
2 2009-09-07 PIT CHC L 2-4 31 28 2 2 1 0 1 2 2 3 0 10
3 2009-09-07 MIL STL L 0-3 29 27 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 10
4 2009-09-04 NYY TOR L 0-6 31 28 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 3 0 9
5 2009-09-03 PHI SFG W 2-1 30 28 2 4 3 0 1 4 2 1 0 12
6 2009-08-29 CHW NYY L 0-10 30 28 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 6
7 2009-08-20 SEA DET L 6-7 34 30 6 5 1 0 4 5 6 1 0 6
8 2009-08-04 SDP ATL L 2-9 34 31 2 4 2 1 1 4 2 3 0 8
9 2009-07-29 CIN SDP L 1-7 30 27 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 2 0 4
10 2009-07-23 TBR CHW L 0-5 27 27 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6
11 2009-07-17 NYM ATL L 0-11 31 28 0 2 2 0 0 2 0 3 0 2
12 2009-07-10 SDP SFG L 0-8 28 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11
13 2009-06-29 SDP HOU L 1-3 31 28 1 2 2 0 0 2 0 2 1 8
14 2009-06-25 MIL MIN L 4-6 34 31 4 5 2 0 3 5 4 3 1 8
15 2009-06-21 OAK SDP L 1-4 30 29 1 2 2 0 0 2 1 1 0 8
16 2009-06-19 BOS ATL L 2-8 32 29 2 2 1 0 1 2 2 3 0 11
17 2009-06-19 FLA NYY L 1-5 31 31 1 3 2 0 1 3 1 0 0 8
18 2009-06-18 BOS FLA L 1-2 17 17 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 5
19 2009-06-10 COL MIL W 4-2 41 31 4 6 4 0 2 6 4 8 0 9
20 2009-06-08 (2) DET CHW L 1-6 30 29 1 2 1 0 1 2 1 1 0 3
21 2009-06-05 ATL MIL L 0-4 32 28 0 2 2 0 0 2 0 4 0 7
22 2009-05-29 MIL CIN W 3-2 30 25 3 3 1 0 2 3 3 4 0 4
23 2009-05-25 TEX NYY L 1-11 33 31 1 4 3 0 1 4 1 1 0 7
24 2009-05-20 PHI CIN L 1-5 32 29 1 4 3 0 1 4 1 2 0 10
25 2009-05-19 TEX DET L 0-4 30 28 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 8
Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR XBH RBI BB IBB SO
26 2009-04-29 PIT MIL L 0-1 31 30 0 2 2 0 0 2 0 1 0 12
27 2009-04-29 HOU CIN L 0-3 30 28 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 7
28 2009-04-22 (2) BOS MIN W 7-3 34 27 7 5 4 0 1 5 7 4 0 9
29 2009-04-19 ARI SFG L 0-2 28 25 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 9
30 2009-04-11 COL PHI L 4-8 32 31 4 4 1 0 3 4 4 1 0 9
31 2009-04-08 MIL SFG W 4-2 34 31 4 5 3 0 2 5 4 2 1 8
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/14/2009.

These are the 31 times from just 2009. Right away you'll notice that most of these games were losses. That makes sense--if all your hits are for extra-bases, there's a good chance that you didn't get a lot of hits. It's pretty hard to have 7 or more hits all go for extra bases and it's tough to win games with 6 or fewer hits.

In 2009, teams achieving this "feat" went 5-26 (.161). It's easy to find the overall record in such games since 1954 by limiting the searches to just wins or losses.  Since 1954, teams have won 189 such games while losing 712 games (.265 winning percentage.)

The highest number of hits in game where all hits were XBH was 9:

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR XBH RBI BB IBB SO
1 1998-08-18 ATL SFG W 8-4 38 31 8 9 9 0 0 9 8 4 1 1
2 2002-09-18 STL COL W 8-5 38 35 8 8 3 0 5 8 8 2 0 2
3 2004-07-02 SFG OAK W 7-3 37 30 7 7 3 0 4 7 7 6 2 1
4 2006-06-30 MIN MIL W 8-2 36 32 8 7 3 1 3 7 8 4 1 5
5 2001-09-26 OAK ANA W 3-1 32 30 3 6 3 0 3 6 3 2 0 7
6 2003-08-10 BAL BOS W 5-3 35 33 5 6 4 1 1 6 5 2 0 7
7 2006-04-05 KCR DET L 3-14 33 33 3 6 3 1 2 6 3 0 0 11
8 2006-06-29 WSN TOR L 4-8 33 32 4 6 4 0 2 6 4 1 0 6
9 2007-08-05 CHW DET W 3-1 36 27 3 6 5 1 0 6 3 6 2 4
10 2008-05-18 MIN COL L 2-6 34 32 2 6 3 2 1 6 2 2 1 9
11 2009-06-10 COL MIL W 4-2 41 31 4 6 4 0 2 6 4 8 0 9
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/14/2009.

As has been noted on this blog a few times by bloggers and readers alike, game #1 on the above list is highly notable as not only the most hits in a game where all hits were extra-base hits, but also because all nine of the hits were doubles. Notice that in these 11 extraordinary games, the teams went 8-3 (.727) meaning that in games with 5 hits or fewer they went 181-709 (.203.)

Again as has been mentioned elsewhere, since 1954 there have been 4 games where all the hits in the game (by both teams) were extra-base hits. These are really easy to find by doing the same kind of Team Batting Game Finder search but clicking on the bubble near the top to sort by greatest number of teams matching the criteria.

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 CLE DET 2007-08-21 2
2 CHC LAD 1965-09-09 2
3 BAL KCA 1964-09-12 2
4 BAL CHW 1956-06-21 2
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/14/2009.

The 3 older games were all 1-0 scores and the game from 2 years ago was a 2-1 game. Not surprisng.

I ran a bunch of other searches looking just at games where all of a team's hits were singles. Since 1954 there have been 19,139 such games. Of those, 3,860 were wins and 15,253 were losses, yielding a win percentage of .201. It's interesting that getting either all singles or all extra-base hits is bad. It's getting a combination of both that is needed. Makes them sound like food groups.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB 1B R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO
1 1988-06-03 LAD CIN W 13-5 50 45 22 13 22 0 0 0 11 3 1 8
2 1973-05-24 LAD NYM L 3-7 82 71 19 3 19 0 0 0 2 9 3 7
3 1992-09-11 DET BOS L 6-7 47 39 18 6 18 0 0 0 6 5 0 5
4 1984-07-08 LAD STL L 6-8 55 50 18 6 18 0 0 0 6 2 1 6
5 1984-05-10 CLE NYY L 6-7 68 61 18 6 18 0 0 0 5 5 0 7
6 1978-09-10 NYY BOS W 7-4 47 38 18 7 18 0 0 0 7 8 0 3
7 1973-06-18 LAD ATL W 13-3 43 41 18 13 18 0 0 0 12 2 1 4
8 2004-08-31 KCR DET W 9-8 46 42 17 9 17 0 0 0 8 3 0 6
9 1993-04-11 CIN STL W 4-3 43 41 17 4 17 0 0 0 4 2 0 7
10 1986-04-30 SFG PIT W 6-5 57 46 17 6 17 0 0 0 5 7 3 6
11 1985-06-11 SFG ATL W 5-4 79 65 17 5 17 0 0 0 5 10 2 15
12 1982-06-19 NYY BAL W 4-3 64 59 17 4 17 0 0 0 4 4 1 3
13 1982-05-03 NYM LAD W 6-3 54 47 17 6 17 0 0 0 6 3 1 8
14 1979-08-06 KCR TOR W 16-12 52 42 17 16 17 0 0 0 16 7 0 2
15 1979-05-31 SFG LAD L 10-12 48 42 17 10 17 0 0 0 10 5 0 9
16 1970-09-08 KCR CAL W 12-0 45 40 17 12 17 0 0 0 11 5 0 6
17 1969-05-30 (1) WSA CHW W 5-4 45 42 17 5 17 0 0 0 4 0 0 5
18 1966-05-14 NYM SFG W 11-4 43 37 17 11 17 0 0 0 10 4 0 4
19 1959-07-10 CLE CHW W 8-4 42 38 17 8 17 0 0 0 6 2 0 5
20 2002-08-20 TOR KCR L 5-6 55 51 16 5 16 0 0 0 5 4 1 8
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/14/2009.

Here are the most hits in games where all of a team's hits were singles. Man, games #2 through #5 were some bad luck! Getting 18 or 19 hits and still losing is rough.

Finally, of those 19,139 times that team has had all its hits go for singles since 1954, more than 2,000 of the occurrences came in the same game when both teams achieved it. In fact, there have been 1,026 games in which that's happened.

Here are the 13 times it happened in 2009:

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 SDP SFG 2009-10-03 2
2 TBR TOR 2009-09-19 2
3 LAD SDP 2009-09-04 2
4 DET TBR 2009-08-29 2
5 PIT SFG 2009-07-29 2
6 NYM WSN 2009-07-21 2
7 CIN WSN 2009-06-11 2
8 BAL OAK 2009-06-07 2
9 COL SDP 2009-05-29 2
10 MIL STL 2009-05-25 2
11 ATL STL 2009-04-28 2
12 MIL NYM 2009-04-18 2
13 PIT STL 2009-04-09 2
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/14/2009.

The teams achieving the feat went 13-13 in these games. (That's a little humor for you...)

Posted in Game Finders | 10 Comments »

Both teams score more runs than hits

16th November 2009

Here's another use of the arithmetic function in the new version of the PI. In this case I did a team batting finder search and looked for games where both teams had more runs than hits. It hasn't happened very often:

Rk Tm Opp Date
1 FLA LAD 2009-05-17
2 DET OAK 2007-08-10
3 TBD TOR 2002-07-20
4 BAL BOS 2001-08-12
5 CLE KCR 1999-06-26
6 BAL OAK 1999-04-25
7 BAL CHW 1998-04-29
8 ARI STL 1998-04-14
9 PHI MON 1997-04-19
10 BAL TOR 1995-07-02
11 OAK SEA 1989-07-29
12 CIN SFG 1977-06-30
13 CAL MIN 1976-07-04 (2)
14 HOU SFG 1975-05-04 (2)
15 CAL BOS 1966-04-30
16 BAL NYY 1960-04-24
17 MLN CHC 1956-07-08
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/13/2009.

These are the only 17 such games since 1954. In case what I mean is not clear, let's look at the situation with #1 above, a game played this past May between the Marlins and the Dodgers.

The Dodgers won 12-5, scoring 12 runs on 11 hits. The Marlins themselves scored 5 runs on 4 hits.

Each team scored runs without too many hits but my different mechanisms. In the case of the Dodgers offense, they walked all day long against the Marlins pitchers, totaling 8 bases on balls. John Koronka also made two errors, both allowing runs to score while the batter got to first base. In the case of the Marlins, they didn't get many hits or walks all day. In the 9th inning, they grouped 3 hits and a walk to score 4 runs on a grand slam (after the game was already out of hand). Their other run came on a double, groundout, and sacrifice fly. There you have it--4 hits and 5 runs. They didn't have any other hits in the game.

Number 11 on the list above was an interesting game too. Randy Johnson started and issued 7 walks in 6 innings. The Oakland pitching staff was even more generous, issuing THIRTEEN walks in 9 innings. The Mariners also made 3 errors. All that adds up to lots of runs without hits.

Number 16 is the only game in which neither team issued more than 5 walks. Both teams used some home runs combined with walks to score runs. The Orioles managed 9 runs on only 6 hits!

Would you believe that 4 of the games above (numbers 2, 3, 4, and 6) featured both teams scoring at least 10 runs?

Posted in Game Finders | 18 Comments »

Fun With Lineups

16th November 2009

According to my original plan,  yesterday's post was supposed to be all about unique lineups that have occurred since 1954. However, that plan was quickly discarded when I became fascinated by the story of the youngest lineup. Today, I try again. Let's take a look.

33 or Older

Since 1954 a team's starting lineup has only featured players ages 33 or older on two occasions. Both were by the 1998 Baltimore Orioles with the same lineup twice in the same week.

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 BAL OAK 1998-07-23 9
2 BAL OAK 1998-07-21 9
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

While both these games featured 9 hitters who were 33 or older, the second game was started by a "kid" pitcher, 32 year old Scott Erickson. The first game, however, is the true winner. 36 year old Doug Drabek got the call in that one, completing a true senior moment. Here is the Orioles' starting lineup for that game:

Rk Player Age Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH ROE GDP BOP Pos. Summary
1 Brady Anderson 34.184 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 CF
2 Jeff Reboulet 34.082 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 2 2B
3 Eric Davis 36.053 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 2 3 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 DH
4 Rafael Palmeiro 33.300 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 1 2 0 0 1 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 4 1B
5 Joe Carter 38.136 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 RF
6 B.J. Surhoff 33.351 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 LF
7 Cal Ripken 37.331 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3B
8 Lenny Webster 33.161 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 8 C
9 Mike Bordick 33.000 1998-07-21 BAL OAK W 7-1 4 4 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 9 SS
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Switch Hitting

Since 1954 no team has had 9 switch hitters in its starting lineup. The most was 7 done by the NY Mets 5 times in 1993.

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 NYM CHC 1993-05-31 7
2 NYM CHC 1993-06-02 7
3 NYM PHI 1993-06-10 7
4 NYM CIN 1993-04-16 7
5 NYM SDP 1993-04-25 7
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

The Mets' lineups consisted of lefty Joe Orsulak, the pitcher, and seven of the Mets switch hitters who included Chico Walker, Vince Coleman, Tony Fernandez, Eddie Murray, Bobby Bonilla, Howard Johnson, Jeff McKnight and Todd Hundley.
In the May 31st, April 16th and April 25th games the Mets' pitcher was a lefty and the opposing pitcher a right-hander giving the entire Mets' starting lineup a platoon advantage.

Left Handers

Since 1954 no team has a left handed batter start at every position. However, on 8 occasions a left hand batter has started in 8 of the lineup slots.

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 SDP HOU 1982-09-06 8
2 SDP SFG 1982-09-16 8
3 NYY DET 1979-09-08 8
4 NYY DET 1979-09-15 (1) 8
5 MIL ARI 2004-09-28 8
6 CHW MIL 1988-06-16 8
7 CHW SEA 1988-04-10 8
8 CHW MIL 1988-06-11 8
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Right Handed Batters

There have been many lineups that have featured 9 right-handed batters. However, there have been only five  occasions since 1954 in which both starting line-ups have been full of players who only batted right-handed:

Rk Tm Opp Date #Matching
1 KCR CHW 1971-06-21 18
2 CAL DET 1974-08-28 18
3 DET BAL 1973-09-26 18
4 STL HOU 1998-09-12 18
5 HOU STL 1998-09-23 18
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Posted in Game Finders | 1 Comment »

Letting the Kids Play

15th November 2009

On September 27, 1963, in what has to have been one of the worst match-ups ever, the 64-95 the Houston Colt 45s hosted the 50-109 NY Mets.  The season was just about over and the Colt 45s were looking to boost attendance and so they tried a gimmick, starting an all-rookie line-up and using a total of 15 rookies in the game.  46 years later that team is still  only  team since 1954 to have  ever fielded a starting lineup featuring 9 players younger than the age of 22. The results were not pretty as the Mets walked away with an easy 10-3 victory. You can read more about the game on the Astrodaily website. Here is the Colt .45's starting lineup for that day:

Rk Player Age Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO SB CS BOP Pos. Summary
1 Sonny Jackson 19.080 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 SS
2 Joe Morgan 20.008 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 5 5 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 2B
3 Jimmy Wynn 21.199 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 5 4 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 3 CF
4 Rusty Staub 19.179 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 5 5 1 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 4 1B
5 Aaron Pointer 21.161 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 5 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 5 RF
6 Brock Davis 19.343 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 5 5 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 6 LF
7 Glenn Vaughan 19.223 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 4 4 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 SS 3B
8 Jerry Grote 20.356 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 3 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 8 C
9 Jay Dahl 17.295 1963-09-27 HOU NYM L 3-10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 P
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

As you would expect from a group of prospects, the ensuing careers would turn out to be a mixed bag.  For 17 year old starting pitcher  Jay Dahl, the game was tragically his only game in the bigs. For Joe Morgan, it was only the  6th game in what would become a Hall-of Famer  career. Here's a look at what became of the rookie 9. The player names link to their BR-bullpen pages, the source for much of the included information.

Rk Player Career Summary
1 Sonny Jackson Jackson made his major league debut in this game, but wouldn't be  rookie until 1966. In '66 he hit .292 with 49 stolen bases and finished second in the  ROY voting. However, he was never much of a hitter after that. He  finished his career with a 73 OPS+ in 3390 career PA.
2 Joe Morgan The Hall-of-Fame second baseman and controversial announcer. Morgan was a 2 time MVP and 10 time all star. This game was the 6th of his career, but it wasn't until 1965 that he had his official rookie season.
3 Jimmy Wynn Winn was a three time All-start who had a career OPS+ of 128 in 8010 career PA
4 Rusty Staub Staub was a 6 time All-star who had 2716 hits and 1466 career RBI.
5 Aaron Pointer Only played in 40 big league games. Pointer later became an NFL referee and is known for some other interesting bits of trivia which can be found on his Wikipedia page.
7 Brock Davis Played in parts of 6 different seasons, producing an OPS+ of 80 in 611 career PA
8 Glenn Vaughan Never played in the majors beyond 1963. Vaughan died in 2004 at the age of 60.
9 Jerry Grote A catching defensive whiz and a 2 time all star, Grote played 1421 career games. However, Grote is most famous for being  a member of the '69 Mets.
10 Jay Dahl The last 17 year old player to appear in the big leagues. Dahl never pitched again in the majors primarily because he was killed in an auto accident less than 2 years later.
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2009.

Posted in Game Finders, History | 11 Comments »

Rocktober Men

15th November 2009

This post-season, Alex Rodriguez played in 15 games and reached base at least twice in 12 of them. Is that some sort of a record? Well, thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Post-Season Game Finder, we can figure these sorts of things out. And, here's the leader board list of "Post-season games, 1903 to 2009, most games with TOB>=2, sorted by greatest number of games in a single season" -

Of course, with the post-season expanded in 1995, to include the LDS, you're going to see more "modern" players on the top of this list.

Now, for fun, let's take the guys on this list with 10+ such games and sort them by OPS and then look at just the ones with an OPS that rounds to 1.5 or greater:

Now, these guys really rocked an October, didn't they? By the way, there's quite a few confirmed or suspected PED users on this list as well. But, I'll leave that debate to the conspiracy theory guys...

Posted in Game Finders | No Comments »

Do-over: All of a team’s hits are homers

14th November 2009

More than two years ago, I posted on this blog about games in which all of a single team's hits were home runs. Check out the old post right here.

It turns out that with the new version of the PI, this entire study can be done in a single search.

Just go to the Team Batting Game Finder, set the arithmetic criterion in the lower right box to H = 1* HR (which boils down to hits = homers) and here are the results:

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO
1 1989-06-24 CLE TEX W 7-3 35 33 7 6 0 0 6 7 2 10
2 2004-07-15 NYY DET W 5-1 34 32 5 5 0 0 5 5 2 7
3 2002-06-14 LAD ANA L 4-8 32 31 4 4 0 0 4 4 1 8
4 2000-04-03 OAK DET L 4-7 34 31 4 4 0 0 4 4 3 9
5 2001-08-12 OAK NYY W 4-2 30 29 4 3 0 0 3 4 1 11
6 1987-05-27 TEX DET L 3-4 32 30 3 3 0 0 3 3 2 5
7 1987-04-13 CLE NYY L 3-11 32 30 3 3 0 0 3 3 2 10
8 1986-09-24 OAK CHW W 4-2 32 26 4 3 0 0 3 4 6 5
9 1964-08-14 SFG MLN W 3-0 30 28 3 3 0 0 3 3 2 4
10 2007-05-31 TOR CHW W 2-0 26 26 2 2 0 0 2 2 0 6
11 2006-08-27 BOS SEA L 3-6 35 28 3 2 0 0 2 2 7 7
12 2005-05-01 LAA MIN W 2-1 30 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 2 7
13 2004-08-10 STL FLA W 2-1 35 32 2 2 0 0 2 2 3 9
14 2004-08-01 BOS MIN L 3-4 31 27 3 2 0 0 2 3 1 13
15 2004-06-15 PHI DET L 3-10 34 29 3 2 0 0 2 2 3 10
16 2003-09-02 BOS CHW W 2-1 29 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 1 5
17 2002-04-09 TOR NYY L 2-5 31 30 2 2 0 0 2 2 1 11
18 2000-05-20 PHI COL L 3-4 32 29 3 2 0 0 2 3 3 5
19 1999-07-10 STL SFG L 2-4 31 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 2 11
20 1998-07-03 CLE KCR W 2-1 32 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 4 7
21 1998-06-22 NYM BAL L 2-7 29 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 0 7
22 1996-04-12 MIN BAL L 2-3 29 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 1 5
23 1994-07-05 SFG NYM L 2-4 29 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 0 9
24 1990-07-24 BAL DET L 2-8 36 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 6 7
25 1987-09-13 CHW SEA W 2-0 33 30 2 2 0 0 2 2 3 9
Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO
26 1987-09-09 MIN CHW W 2-1 27 25 2 2 0 0 2 2 2 3
27 1986-04-24 SEA OAK W 3-1 33 28 3 2 0 0 2 3 5 16
28 1985-04-14 CHC MON W 4-2 29 27 4 2 0 0 2 3 2 7
29 1983-07-17 PHI CIN L 2-5 32 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 4 4
30 1981-10-03 SEA TOR L 3-4 33 27 3 2 0 0 2 3 5 4
31 1975-07-03 NYY CLE L 2-3 30 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 1 5
32 1975-07-02 (1) MIL BOS L 3-6 33 30 3 2 0 0 2 3 3 6
33 1974-07-31 CHW CAL L 4-14 34 29 4 2 0 0 2 4 4 7
34 1974-05-15 SFG CIN L 3-4 35 31 3 2 0 0 2 3 4 4
35 1973-09-23 BAL MIL W 2-1 32 29 2 2 0 0 2 2 3 6
36 1970-09-23 OAK MIN L 4-7 38 29 4 2 0 0 2 4 9 9
37 1963-05-22 NYM LAD L 3-7 32 29 3 2 0 0 2 3 3 6
38 1962-06-20 (2) MLN NYM W 3-2 25 20 3 2 0 0 2 3 5 6
39 1960-06-14 MLN CHC L 2-3 32 28 2 2 0 0 2 2 3 5
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/13/2009.

To keep the table short, I lopped off all the results with 1 homer and 0 homers. You can view the full list here.

Incidentally, at the top of the Team Batting Game Finder, you can select to find games where the most teams (i.e. 2) have accomplished the given criteria in any game. I checked, and there has never been a game where both teams have had all their hits go long.

Posted in Game Finders | 8 Comments »

16 TB, The Somewhat Hard Way

13th November 2009

Sometimes the simple searches via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index are still the most fun ones...

...such as show me all the players to hit 4 homers in a single game since 1954:

And, sometimes these quick and easy lists can lead to more fun - and some good trivia...

For instance, seeing the above group it's clear that you cannot hit 4 homeruns in a game and not have at least 16 total bases in the contest. After all, four times four is sixteen. But, how many players, since 1954, have had 16+ total bases in a game regardless of their homerun totals that day? Here's that list:

Note Fred Lynn and Edgardo Alfonzo here. They had 16 total bases in a game without hitting 4 homeruns that day. And, that's a nice little trivia question: Name the only two players in the last 56 years to have at least 16 total bases in a game without hitting four homeruns in the contest. Go ahead and try that one on your friends - and see if they can answer it with Play Index!

Posted in Game Finders | 1 Comment »

When Lima & Lamp Were Lousy

13th November 2009

When folks talk about "20-game losers," it's often said that they must be pretty good pitchers - or else a team would not keep running them out there to the point where they pitch enough to lose twenty games. This got me wondering about which pitchers were given lots of chances to start games in a season - even though they were not picthing a lot of great games that year. Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Game Finder, it's easy to come up with a list to find an answer to questions like these. In this case, I looked for SP who had the most games in a season with a Game Score of 40 or less. Here's the leaderboard for the result of that query:



Yikes! Look at those lines for Jose Lima and Dennis Lamp. What were their managers thinking, giving them so many turns those seasons?

Posted in Game Finders | 8 Comments »