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?
I recall when the Braves tied that record. Greg Myers went 0-for-2 after coming in for Eddie Perez. Had he gotten a hit, the Bravos would have the record all to themselves.
Here are the top games since 1954 for totals hit by different players on either team:
Game #1 was a blowout where the Dodgers Giants went up 13-0 after 4 innings. I guess that makes sense--given that it was a September game, both teams opted to bring in lots of reserve players.
The other two games tied for first place were both second halves of double-headers AND both games went to extra innings! The teams must have been playing on fumes by that point. These also make sense as games where lots of different players got hits.
The 1996 isn't all that interesting. The Dodgers went ahead in a slugfest, 14-4, after 5 innings. This was after Mitch Webster pinch-hit for Chris Gwynn and homered. In the bottom of the 6th, John Vander Wal hit a pinch 3-run homer to make the score 14-7 Dodgers. Then in the 7th, after two Rockies homers, Mike Kingery hit his own pinch-hit job to make the score 14-10. A few more runs got tacked on and the final score was17-11 Dodgers. None of the pinch homers were particularly meaningful.
But that game was high excitement compared to the 1999 snoozefest. The Padres were already up 12-2 when Jeff Barry pinch hit for Dante Bichette and homered to make it 12-3. In the top of the 9th, Phil Nevin and Carlos Baerga hit back-to-back pinch-hit homers, which is kind of interesting and must be a pretty rare feat.
A single team has had two pinch homers in the same game 75 times since 1954. The full list is here. It happened most recently in this game between the Cardinals and Diamondbacks, the only time in 2009 it occurred. Check out that box score, and you can see that the pinch homers made all the difference in the world. First, Mark Reynolds hit a 2-run pinch homer in the bottom of the 5th. He batted for starting pitcher Max Scherzer, made the score 3-2 in favor of the Cardinals, and increased the Diamondbacks' chances of winning the game from 27% to 42%. Later, in the 8th inning and with 2 outs, Conor Jackson pinch hit with the score 4-3 Cardinals, two runners on, and the D-backs having just a 30% chance of winning the game. Jackson homered and put his team's chances up to 90%. The Cardinals ended up tying the game in the 9th but Arizona won it in the 10th on an Eric Brynes single. Say what you will, but those two pinch-hitting appearances were quite effective.
One of the interesting new features of the PI is the sortable summary provided when using the game finder. This summation provides the total statistics of the games found can be ranked by a variety of different stats. I find this very exciting because it represents the first step in searching splits. Let me explain with an example.
Suppose we wanted to find the player with the most hits on the road in a single season.
Use the Game Finder called Player Batting.
select "Find Players with Most Matching Games in a Season"
Until now we had to stop at this point and say that "Lou Brock had the most road games with a hit in a season (since 1954)". However, the new version of PI lets us take this a step further. Assuming that it is logical that the player with the most hits on the road in a season would be among the top 300 in games with a hit, we can find that player by sorting for hits. After completing the above search, simply click on the column heading "H" and you will be presented with this list:
Clearly, this technique is limited. It can't be used for stats that usually occur in bunches (most pitching stats). It also can't be used for rate stats like batting average. However, for a lot of hitting stats it can be a fun and useful new tool.
One of the new features that will be available in the upcoming version of the PI will be the ability to search games for multiple matching criteria. This means that we can pick a stat and find the number of times it occurred for both (or one) teams in a game. I thought it might be fun to preview this feature by taking a look at some of the best pitching duels of all time.
For starters here are the games which featured Games Scores of 100 or more by both pitchers:
The third game listed was actually the best duel of the three. On October 2, 1965Chris Short and Rob Gardner went head to head in the second game of a double header. (In game 1, Phillies starter Jim Bunning had recorded a game score of 92 by throwing a 2 hit shutout.) Neither team was able to score that game and it was called after 18 innings of scoreless ball. Both Short and Gardner went 15 and put up these lines:
IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA BF Ct·Sw·LkGB·FB·LD· ?GmScC Short15 9 0 0 3 18 0 2.82 56 49·21· 9 17·13· 2· 5 114R Gardner15 5 0 0 2 7 0 3.21 53 49· 6· 5 18·22· 5· 4 112
The other 2 games did reach a conclusion, albeit after many, many innings. On August 13, 1954 Al Aber and Jack Harshman exchanged zeros for 15 innings until a Minnie Minoso triple off Aber in the bottom of the 16th drove in the winning run for Chicago. Both pitchers pitched the entire game, giving them the following lines:
The last of these games was the also the longest. However, the starters did not last as long. On July 9, 1971 Rudy May and Vida Blue squared off for 11 innings, with neither yielding a run. Blue exited after 11 and May pushed on for another inning. However, both were long gone by the time Angel Mangual drove in the games only run in the bottom of the 20th inning. Here are the lines for the starters:
One of the themes in the media during last week's World Series was the "core four" , the four players who linked the Yankees championships of the '90s to this year's team. Several of those players moved up the charts for playing time in the World Series and I thought it might be interesting to see whom they passed and who is still in the lead.
After tonight, Pedro Martinez is going to be #6 on this list and Andy Pettitte will be the new #8, slotting between Spahn and Stewart (who slide down one spot after Pedro goes in at #6.)
Among the top 10 games above, we don't see a lot of great performances. Only 3 of the starters went at least 7 innings and half the guys gave up at least 4 ER. The starters earned a cumulative 2-4 record and the teams went 4-6 in the 10 games. We know that after tonight, the top 10 record will still be 4-6, as the current #9 and #10 are 1 win and 1 loss, and the same game will slot on the new list with a win for one team and a loss for the other.
Players for the Phillies have the last 5 such games, which is pretty amazing. They're players have done it a total of 6 times in the last 2 seasons. (Keep in mind I'm talking about a single player having at least 2 homers in a game, not the team hitting at least 2 homers, which of course happens quite frequently.)
This year, Chase Utley and Jayson Werth have joined this pretty exclusive club of players with at least 2 multi-homer playoff games.
Finally, here's a nice piece of playoff trivia. Can you recall the last guy to hit THREE homers in a single playoff game? I couldn't. It's been done a total of six times in history (by five different players)...how many of those guys can you name? The full list is after the jump.
Using Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Game Finder, for the both the regular season and the post-season, I decided to look at starting pitchers employed by the Steinbrenner family to see which were the most "Jack Morris-like" in both the regular and post-season for the Yankees since 1973. (By, "Jack Morris-like" I mean going at least 7 innings in a start and allowing four earned runs or less while doing it.)
From 1973 to 2009, Playing for Yanks, as SP, (requiring IP>=7 and ER<=4),
sorted by greatest number of games matching selected criteria in a regular season
From 1973 to 2009, Playing for Yanks, as SP, (requiring IP>=7 and ER<=4),
sorted by greatest number of games matching selected criteria in a post-season
There's a lot of imports on these lists - as far as the Yankees are concerned. Note: Catfish Hunter, Tommy John, Ed Figueroa, Mike Mussina, Orlando Hernandez, David Wells, Mike Torrez, David Cone and Roger Clemens...and...of course, there's CC Sabathia. (Note that Sabathia's post season numbers, here, are only through Game 4 of the 2009 World Series.)
So, is CC Sabathia the most "Jack Morris-like" pitcher...or, "ace"...that the Yankees have imported, overall, including both the regular season and post-season, since Mike Mussina and, before that, Catfish Hunter?
Looking at these leaderboards, what would you say?
Last week I mentioned the 12 players who won the first game of more than one World Series. Here are the nine pitchers have won the final game of more than one World Series. Only Bob Gibson appears on both lists:
