You Are Here > Baseball-Reference.com > Blog > Baseball Stats and Analysis

B-R Blog & Stat of the Day

Numbers, News, and Notes

Archive for the 'Home Runs' Category

WS Home Runs by Second Baseman

2nd November 2009

Chase Utley's World Series Career has been relatively brief. Utley's 9 career World Series games tie him for 37th among  second baseman. Yet, no second baseman has hit more World Series home runs. Utley's Game 4, 7th inning blast was his 5th, tying him with Billy Martin for most ever by a second baseman. It should be noted that it took Martin 27 games at second to reach that total. Here are the leaders:

Billy Martin 5
Chase Utley 5
Joe Gordon 4
Tony Lazzeri 4
Davey Lopes 4

If 5 home runs doesn't sound like enough to be the all-time leader in a category, check out the leaders at third base and shortstop. Here are the  World Series Home Run leaders at the other positions:

Pitcher: Dave McNally , Bob Gibson 2

Catcher: Yogi Berra 9

1st Base: Lou Gehrig 10

Shortstop: Derek Jeter 3

3rd Base: Gil McDougald , Scott Brosius 4

Left Field: Babe Ruth 9

Center Field: Mickey Mantle 15

Right Field: Frank Robinson 8

DH: Ryan Klesko 3

Pinch hitter: Chuck EssegianBernie Carbo 2

Posted in Event Finders, Home Runs, Leaders, Postseason | 3 Comments »

How’d They Do That?

23rd September 2009

One of the fun things to do with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index is to just look for crazy things and see how many games or seasons or careers fit that bill.  Today, I wondered:  Has a team ever allowed 15 walks or more, in a game of 9 innings or less, and won?  Well, thanks to B-R.com PI's Team Pitching Game Finder, we can see the answer:

From 1954 to 2009, Only 9-inning games, Team Won, (requiring BB>=15), sorted by greatest BB in a game

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  IP   H  R ER **BB** SO HR Pit Str IR IS  BF  AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk Ptchrs   ERA
+----+-------------+---+----+-------+----+--+--+--+------+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+------+------+
    1 1992-05-07    CHW  BOS W  7-6   9    6  6  4   15    9  0 206 105  4  1  47  32  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  2  0      5   4.00
    2 1959-07-31    BOS  DET W  6-5   9    5  5  5   15    4  3          7  0  47  29  0  0   1   0  2  1   0  0  0  1      5   5.00

Games found: 2.

So, since 1954, it's only happened twice - once in 1959 and once in 1992.  How cool is that?  And, it's interesting that both games involved the Boston Red Sox.  And, to the question "How's they do that?," the answer is simple:  Don't allow a lot of hits and get the other team to run up their LOB totals...and then maybe the walks won't kill ya...

Posted in Home Runs | 5 Comments »

Productive Gardening

30th June 2009

On Friday night Brett Gardner of the Yankees went 5 for 6 with a triple and a home run. It was the third game this year in which Gardner has both homered and tripled (thanks to Peter Abraham for opening my eyes to this). His third such game occurred in the Yankees' 73rd game of the season and the 106th game of Gardner's career.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Game Finders, Home Runs, Leaders | 5 Comments »

Baseball’s most exciting play — The Hardball Times

2nd June 2009

Baseball’s most exciting play -- The Hardball Times

Nice article using our home run encyclopedia.

When setting up the HR Encyclopedia, I was using pbp data for 1954 on and HR log data pre-1954 (essentially). Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the pbp data was missing a good number of inside-the-park notations, but the HR log had them. This didn't affect everyone, but did affect some players.

So I've had to go back and get those noted appropriately. Dan Wilson was one such player affected and he now has the correct 2 IPHR's for his career. Everybody should be up to snuff tomorrow when the site regenerates. Active guys may still have an incorrect number.

Sorry, Chris.

Posted in Home Runs, Media Mentions | 2 Comments »