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.

1. Use the Game Finder called Player Batting.
2. select "Find Players with Most Matching Games in a Season"
3. Limit your search to Visitor
4. Search for H>=1

That will provide you with this list:

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:

Brock drops down to #22 and Ichiro now tops the leader board!
Let's do the same thing for hits at home:

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.

Wow...what a World Series!

Lots to talk about. Let's start with Andy Pettitte.

From the post-season leaders page, we can see some of Pettitte's all-time post-season rankings.

He's first in wins:

Wins

Those 18 wins came over 249 IP in 40 games and starts. So that's a little over one regular season's worth of starts, and he's managed 18 wins, which is very good. (Remember that in the post-season, you're facing all good teams, so he has no doormats with which to pad his win total. Winning at a rate of 15-16 games for a full-year equivalent is impressive.)

Pettitte is also up there in losses:

Losses

At 18-9, he's won twice as often as he's lost, which again is very good.

Check out the all-time leaders in games pitched:

Games Played

This table summarizes the baseball playoffs nicely. In the Wild Card era, there are so many more games that all the records belong to modern guys, and over that same period, it's been pretty much all Braves, Yankees, and Red Sox.

Pettitte is number 1 in homers allowed:

Home Runs

However, 5 of the top 10 guys above actually allowed homers at a higher rate than Pettitte (including, obviously, Jaret Wright--wow!) Catfish Hunter sticks out as the only holdover from prior to the Wild Card era.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Pettitte has been very impressive. He's pitched in 8 World Series (including with Houston in 2005.) True, he's been lucky to be on such good teams, but A) he had a lot to do with them being so good and B) regardless of how he got the opportunities, he has done well with them.

It's interesting to debate his Hall of Fame credentials. His position as a top pitcher on 8 World Series teams goes a long way, in my opinion. He's got the 63rd-highest win total of all time, but only the 229th-highest loss total (translation: he's got a great winning percentage.) He has two 20-win seasons (actually 21 both times) and finished in the top 6 in Cy Young voting in 5 different seasons.

The marks against him are primarily these:

• He has only 229 career wins (as mentioned, 63rd all time) which would be a very low total for a Hall of Famer.
• His excellent W-L record seems to be at least partially a product of playing on such good teams. He came to the Yankees in 1995 when they made the playoffs for the first time in a long time and has never pitched for a poor team. His ERA+ is only 116 which, while very respectable, is not excellent. His neutralized pitching totals tell the story. They say his record should be (gulp) 162-146, a whopping 67 wins fewer than he has. This means that if he hadn't been on the Yankees, he'd be much closer to a .500 pitcher in all likelihood. This would give him numbers more like Tim Wakefield, Livan Hernandez, or Kevin Millwood. These are all good pitchers but clearly not HOFers.

What do you think?

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:

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 Essegian ,  Bernie Carbo 2

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the players who were leading baseball in various offensive categories in the '00s. Here is the pitching version of that article. The leaders are much  more predictable than the last one.

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Today's MLB Oriole's Game Notes has a paragraph chronicling all the doubles lists that Brian Roberts is climbing this season. Here is a closer look courtesy of the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index:

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Same columns as the earlier post, but from the pitching team's perspective.

Team	Lk_hm	Lk_rd	Bls_hm	Bls_rd	%L_hm	%L_rd	HFA	HFA_hi_lev
SFG	2136	1967	3967	4104	35.00%	32.40%	2.60%	0.80%
PHI	2093	1894	4056	3975	34.04%	32.27%	1.77%	0.39%
CIN	1972	1948	3995	4265	33.05%	31.35%	1.69%	2.26%
STL	2073	1829	3776	3581	35.44%	33.81%	1.63%	3.97%
HOU	2115	1799	4116	3767	33.94%	32.32%	1.62%	4.62%
MIN	2016	1727	4021	3705	33.39%	31.79%	1.60%	2.46%
TOR	1919	1859	4016	4136	32.33%	31.01%	1.32%	0.79%
PIT	1690	1703	3831	4107	30.61%	29.31%	1.30%	1.37%
WSN	1890	1835	4082	4206	31.65%	30.38%	1.27%	0.84%
CLE	2032	1879	4179	4063	32.72%	31.62%	1.09%	-1.75%
SDP	2135	1820	4425	3966	32.55%	31.46%	1.09%	2.13%
NYM	1895	1812	4162	4188	31.29%	30.20%	1.09%	1.65%
ATL	1973	2038	3728	4028	34.61%	33.60%	1.01%	2.28%
DET	1899	1829	4112	4140	31.59%	30.64%	0.95%	1.65%
LAD	2090	1906	4223	4007	33.11%	32.23%	0.87%	2.93%
TBR	1893	1992	3823	4133	33.12%	32.52%	0.60%	1.06%
MIL	1921	1885	4190	4215	31.44%	30.90%	0.53%	-0.47%
CHC	1981	1864	4230	4065	31.90%	31.44%	0.46%	-0.40%
LAA	1972	1995	4122	4246	32.36%	31.97%	0.39%	-0.06%
KCR	1987	1836	4414	4145	31.04%	30.70%	0.34%	0.84%
BOS	1946	2032	4010	4253	32.67%	32.33%	0.34%	-0.95%
FLA	2130	1841	4482	3919	32.21%	31.96%	0.25%	-1.86%
ARI	2001	1948	4054	3991	33.05%	32.80%	0.25%	0.90%
BAL	1975	1884	4238	4073	31.79%	31.63%	0.16%	-1.16%
NYY	2188	1920	4566	4035	32.40%	32.24%	0.15%	-1.12%
OAK	1813	2011	3919	4366	31.63%	31.54%	0.09%	1.44%
CHW	1901	1787	4144	3892	31.45%	31.47%	-0.02%	1.75%
SEA	1788	1845	4104	4224	30.35%	30.40%	-0.05%	-1.01%
TEX	2041	1831	4518	3870	31.12%	32.12%	-1.00%	1.48%
COL	1732	1841	3941	3965	30.53%	31.71%	-1.18%	-1.92%

Actually on the face of it there may be a park effect here. As the Rockies and Giants had almost the same spread in the opposite direction. Pitchers get more calls in San Fran and hitters get more calls in Colorado? Any ideas why?

Given the brouhaha over the Boston/LA of Ana game last night, and spurred by a media request, I looked at the called strike percentages at home and on the road for all 30 teams. The total line is in there as well. The called strike percentage is Called Strikes / (Called Strikes + Balls (not pitchouts or intentional)). The Home-Field Advantage is then the road rate - the home rate, since a lower rate is better for the batting team. I also looked at it in high-leverage situations, though in most cases we are only talking about 700 pitches, so it probably is just noise out there.

Team	SL_hm	SL_rd	Bll_hm	Bll_rd	%Chm	%Crd	HFA	HiLevHFA
COL	1918	2173	4278	4437	30.96%	32.87%	1.92%	1.44%
ATL	1673	1913	3817	4041	30.47%	32.13%	1.66%	0.17%
HOU	1764	1795	3893	3676	31.18%	32.81%	1.63%	1.53%
KCR	1813	1778	3981	3627	31.29%	32.90%	1.60%	2.94%
CHC	1720	1810	4092	4007	29.59%	31.12%	1.52%	2.93%
MIN	1987	1980	4299	4004	31.61%	33.09%	1.48%	1.97%
DET	1679	1751	3984	3883	29.65%	31.08%	1.43%	2.18%
WSN	2023	2154	4161	4155	32.71%	34.14%	1.43%	0.57%
BOS	2095	2248	4359	4408	32.46%	33.77%	1.31%	1.47%
MIL	1976	2183	4084	4254	32.61%	33.91%	1.31%	0.73%
FLA	2095	2024	4476	4087	31.88%	33.12%	1.24%	1.21%
TOR	1902	2036	4125	4173	31.56%	32.79%	1.23%	3.51%
SEA	1724	1884	3745	3885	31.52%	32.66%	1.13%	-1.61%
PIT	1799	2059	3628	3964	33.15%	34.19%	1.04%	0.72%
TEX	1703	1635	4140	3783	29.15%	30.18%	1.03%	0.13%
BAL	1870	1884	4083	3926	31.41%	32.43%	1.01%	-1.41%
ARI	1845	2052	4001	4261	31.56%	32.50%	0.94%	1.37%
SDP	1921	1867	4225	3936	31.26%	32.17%	0.92%	0.55%
Totals	56357	59197	121630	123444	31.66%	32.41%	0.75%	0.87%
PHI	2121	2144	4256	4203	33.26%	33.78%	0.52%	1.87%
OAK	1751	2009	3839	4312	31.32%	31.78%	0.46%	5.80%
NYY	2146	2078	4687	4465	31.41%	31.76%	0.35%	-0.65%
TBR	1863	2071	4256	4714	30.45%	30.52%	0.08%	0.77%
NYM	2079	2203	3967	4204	34.39%	34.38%	0.00%	-0.46%
CIN	1763	1855	3874	4082	31.28%	31.24%	-0.03%	-1.02%
CLE	1998	2155	4185	4542	32.31%	32.18%	-0.14%	1.01%
CHW	1819	1887	3870	4093	31.97%	31.56%	-0.42%	-2.30%
STL	1616	1607	3734	3804	30.21%	29.70%	-0.51%	-1.62%
LAD	2140	2267	4135	4493	34.10%	33.54%	-0.57%	0.38%
LAA	2039	2223	4016	4508	33.67%	33.03%	-0.65%	1.40%
SFG	1515	1472	3440	3517	30.58%	29.50%	-1.07%	-0.32%

I don't see much of a pattern in this data. You've got good and bad teams sprinkled around, you've got east and west coast teams sprinkled around (passionate east coasters vs. dispassionate left coasters). Looks pretty random to me.

With the 00's soon ending, the race is on for players to become the decade long leader in different statistical categories. Here are how thing are shaping up in the race for trivia immortality:

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As Derek Jeter approaches Lou Gehrig's record for hits as a Yankee, I can't help but notice the sheer number of plate appearances that Jeter has accumulated for the team.  Jeter, who leads  all Yankees  ever in AB and is second in PA, has more PA for the Yankees than any other active player has for any other  franchise. Here are the current leaders in plate appearance for a franchise among active players:

Derek Jeter*     New York Yankees   9707
Chipper Jones*   Atlanta Braves     9185
Garret Anderson  Angels             8480
Todd Helton*     Colorado Rockies   7662
Andruw Jones     Atlanta Braves     7276
Ken Griffey Jr.* Seattle Mariners   7070

* active with the team listed

In baseball history only  22  players have had at least 10,000 PA for a franchise. Here are the top ten:

Carl Yastrzemski    Red Sox    13,991
Hank Aaron          Braves     13,089
Cal Ripken          Orioles    12,883
Stan Musial         Cardinals  12,712
Craig Biggio        Astros     12,503
Pete Rose           Reds       12,325
Robin Yount         Brewers    12,249
Ty Cobb             Tigers     12,105
Willie Mays         Giants     12,012
Brooks Robinson     Orioles    11,782

Elias is reporting that Carlos Zambrano has become the first pitcher since Milt Papas in 1973 to hit 20 career home runs.  Overall, among players who have played at least half their games at pitcher, Zambrano is now tied for 12th in career home runs.  (BTW Babe Ruth had 14 home runs as a pitcher.)

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