Recently, I was involved in some debate about Rich Harden. On one side, the case was being made that he might/should be a pitcher that teams should look to acquire for 2010. And, the point on my side was that he cannot be counted on to give you a regular turn for a full season - despite how well he may pitch when he does take toe to the rubber.

And, this whole thing got me wondering: Which starting pitchers were the ones that you could least rely on to give you a full season of taking a regular turn?

This is where Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season finder comes in handy. Using it, and setting the filters for "For single seasons, From 1901 to 2009, (requiring GS>=5, IP<=150, GS<=25 and At least 100% games started), sorted by greatest Seasons matching criteria" for each league, I came up with these lists:

American League:

National League:

Granted, this is far from being very scientific. It doesn't really factor in partial seasons that are the result of a pitcher breaking into the major leagues, for example. But, it's a nice, fun, quick way to look at this question.

It's interesting to see names here that you would expect - like Aaron Sele, Jason Bere, Juan Guzman, Sid Fernandez and Randy Wolf.

It's worth noting that Pedro Martinez makes the N.L. list because of his seasons from 2006 through 2009. Clearly, the Red Sox made the right call after the 2004 season by letting him go elsewhere.

In fact, many of the leaders on these lists had these types of seasons come towards the end of their career.

The one thing, above all others, that stands out to me here is that it's such a "modern" event to have pitchers post these types of seasons. You don't see any names on these leader boards of guys who pitched before 1984.

Of the four types of hit in baseball, triples are by far the rarest. In 2009, there were 949 triples out of 43,524 total hits (2.18%). I went back and calculated historical values for some past years:

1999: 931/45,327 (2.05%)
1989: 868/36,293 (2.39%)
1979: 1,066/37,911 (2.81%)
1969: 849/32,581 (2.61%)
1959: 591/21,636 (2.73%)
1949: 761/22,168 (3.43%)
1939: 916/23,371 (3.92%)
1929: 1,166/24,642 (4.73%)
1919: 1,048/19,624 (5.34%)
1909: 1,002/19,655 (5.10%)

As you can see, triples used to be more than twice as common as they are today. Although many factors are involved, the single-biggest is the much smaller size of ballparks today as compared to back then. These days, outfielders cover a lot less territory and many balls that could have once gone for hits are either caught or go over the fence for homers. A typical triple requires a certain amount of open space on the field where the ball can get to a position in fair territory that's somewhat far away from all of the fielders. That's a lot rarer these days than it used to be.

Anyway, once upon a time, there were lots of guys who had more triples than doubles in a season.

Here are players from the 40-year period 1901-1940 who had more triples in a season than doubles, ranked by triples:

Notice too that all of these players had more triples than homers.

Now here is the same list compiled from the 40 most recent seasons (1970-2009):

As might be expect, these guys have much lower totals for extra-base hits and played in many fewer games than their counterparts from about 70 years earlier.

Here are the career leaders (1901-present) for most triples with a fewer number of doubles:

As it turns out, #3 Frank Shugart is a bogus entry because most of his career came before 1901 and he finished with 79 career triples and 110 career doubles.

Among active players, the only guys with more triples than doubles are as follows:

Slim pickings there, folks. And before anybody asks, B-R.com lists guys as active until they officially announce their retirement.

Among players with more career triples than homers, the leaders 1901-present include many of the greatest players of the early 20th century:

Even the list of leaders among active players is somewhat impressive:

I'm inclined to guess that Carl Crawford will eventually fall off this list. Generally speaking, he's hit fewer triples in recent seasons while his homers have remained fairly constant. (That's a very rough analysis.) If he loses a little speed in the coming years, which is likely, I'd expect his triples to drop even more. However, I think Juan Pierre is safe

As a final tidbit, there are six players in baseball history to finish their career with more than 1 triple, and also more triples than singles. Limb McKenry leads the way with 7 career hits that included 4 triples. It was done most recently by Gary Moore of the 1970 Dodgers. Moore had 3 career hits: a single and two triples.

Just a quick hit from me today:

Oakland Rookie Pitcher Vin Mazzaro set a record this season for most PAs in a season without recording an AB. Over the course of 2 inter-league games Mazzaro came to the plate 4 times, each with a runner on first, and successfully sacrificed the runner over each time. Here are the most PAs without an AB:

Read the rest of this entry »

The new PI arithmetic function (which is my new favorite thing in the world, by the way) allows us to do lots of quick searches for things we always wanted to know.

How about this?

Here are the 130 times since 1954 in which a pitcher had more shutouts than losses in a season. This includes guys with the same number of shutouts and losses, and I did this by setting the arithmetic criteria to SHO > .999 * L (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to review my last post on the new arithmetic function.)

(As an aside, I am willing to bet this feat was MUCH more common before 1954 as complete games were much more common. Guys tended to pitch a lot more shutouts but not necessarily lose a lot more games.)

As you can see, many of those seasons involved a guy having 1 shutout and 1 loss and aren't that interesting. So let's limit it to seasons with at least 4 shutouts:

Here are the top 25 most recent such seasons. See what I mean about this new arithmetic tool finding hidden gems? Most of us could probably have guesses that this feat was achieved by Hershiser in 1988 or Fernando in 1981, but who had Knepper in 1980 or Reuss in 1980?

To have more shutouts than losses over a career is impossible. I checked and the most anybody since 1954 has is 1 shutout and 1 loss. However, some of the really great pitchers managed a shutout total as high as 30% of his career losses:

Note that Ford, Wilson, and Reynolds played before 1954 as well and therefore the numbers above don't actually cover their entire careers. (Karl Spooner pitched in only 1954 and 1955 so his numbers are complete.)

Data for complete games is available way back, so check out the leaders for pitchers, over their career, with at least 50% more complete games than losses:

As expected, these are just about all names from long ago, with only Spahn and Feller pitching in the latter half of the 20th century. Limiting the years to the last 50 seasons (1960-2009) gives only 3 guys with more than 2 complete games: Marichal, Koufax, and Fidrych. Again, these are guys with at least 50% more complete games than losses.

Among active pitchers, nobody comes even close to qualifying for the list. In fact, we need to drop the ratio way down and look at the only 3 active pitchers who have half as many complete games as losses:

Incidentally, the list above is minimum 37 IP. Two guys (Wade Davis and Devern Hansack) each have 1 complete game and 1 loss.

In 2009 Dane Sardinha had a short, but freaky season. Sardinha played 12 games for the Tigers and barely hit, batting a whopping .097  in 31 AB. However, Sardinha did hit a couple of sacrifice flies. Combine that with the fact that he never walked and Sardinha posted an On Base Percentage that was actually lower than his batting average.  Sardinha's season was freaky, but hardly unique. In fact since 1901 (although for many of those years there were no SF recorded), 27 position players have had more PA in a season while posting a higher BA than OBP. Here are the top 10:

Incidentally, only one player has ever accomplished this feat after taking a walk:

This list was complied with the Baseball Reference Play Index Batting Season Finder.
Sort by PA and search for BA>1*OBP

One of the additions to the PI (rolled out this morning by Sean) is a neat arithmetic function that allows comparison of two stats as one of the search criteria for batting or pitching seasons. I've been hoping for something like this for a while.

Here are some of the neat things you can do with it.

First, go to the Batting Season Finder.

In the criteria selection area (the white area in the lower right), you'll see that the fifth line down contains an equation. I've highlighted it for you:

This entry allows the user to compare one stat to another stat, and optionally to add in a multiplying factor.

Here's an example. Let's take a look at guys who have driven in a lot of runs per plate appearance. In the box I've highlighted red above, I'm choosing RBI on the left and PA on the right. I'm also changing the multiplying factor from the default of 1.0 to a value of 0.2. Finally, I'm changing the sign from the default of "=" to a ">" sign. This, then, looks for seasons in which the players RBI total is greater than 20% of his plate appearance total.

I changed the years to search just in 2009 and here are the results:

I've sorted the results by plate appearance. So, again, this shows guys who batted in a run at least, on average, once every 5 plate appearances. It's not such an easy thing to do. One note is that the search uses a greater-than sign, and not a greater-than-or-equals sign. This means that guys with an RBI total that is exactly 20% of their PA total don't show up. There's an easy fix to this, and that's changing the multiplying factor from 0.2 to 0.1999. Here is the new list in that case:

This adds a bunch of players with exactly 5 times the PA as RBI, headed by new #8 Ryan Rohlinger.

I think we can all agree that many of these players are irrelevant for this particular search, so let's make two more changes. Let's limit the plate appearances to 100 or more and let's expand the search to the last 10 seasons:

Pretty neat, huh? While there are a lot of expected seasons in there (mainly big-HR total seasons such as Ortiz in 2005 and Sosa in 2001) we find a lot of hidden gems. How about Alex Ochoa in 2000 (#49)?He batted in 58 runs with just 275 plate appearances. A lot of us probably remember Tony Clark in 2005, who batted in 87 runs in just 393 plate appearances. Even more memorable is Clark's 2007, where he got 51 RBI in just 245 PAs. Once upon a time, Mike Jacobs looked pretty promising too, when he batted in 25 runs in just 112 plate appearances.

We can't yet sort the list by the arithmetic criteria, but this new feature does let us discover lots of new interesting things. I will be featuring lots of searches using the arithmetic function over the next week or so.

With all the attention that Roy Halladay is going to get this off-season (and probably into the 2010 season as well) I thought it might be interesting to guess how the rest of his career is going to turn out.

With the similarity scores recently updated to include 2009 stats, let's first look at the 10 most similar pitchers through age 32:

1. Tim Hudson (964)
2. Mike Mussina (939)
3. Bret Saberhagen (935)
4. Dizzy Dean (933) *
5. Don Newcombe (923)
6. John Candelaria (921)
7. Andy Pettitte (921)
8. Jim Bunning (914) *
9. Jimmy Key (913)
10. Dennis Leonard (911)

I found this list very surprising as I expected to see higher quality pitchers, on average. Mind you, I'm not suggesting that being similar to Mussina, Dean, or Key is a bad thing, but let's look a bit more closely.

Hudson, as one of two active players on this list, isn't much help. The point of this post to to try to guess how the rest of Halladay's career is going to go but Hudson is only one year older (and was injured most of that year) so he doesn't give us much data on the future for Halladay.

The two current HOFers on the list, Dean and Bunning, are interesting examples. Dean was essentially finished as a pitcher by age 30, pitching only 5 more innings in the majors after that. Dean had a great career but very short and also doesn't tell us anything about what to expect for Halladay in the future. Bunning is generally regarded as one of the weakest pitchers in the HOF (as is Dean, in fact, in his case based only on brevity of career.) Bunning had a few outstanding years, a handful of good years, and bunch of average years. He pitched 7 seasons after his Age 32 year. The first 3 of those (1965-1967) were all excellent, but he never pitched a full season (or a particularly good one) after that.

The fact that there are no other HOFers other than the two mentioned is, I think, a bad sign for Halladay's HOF chances. More on that below.

Mike Mussina was up and down after his Age 32 season (which came in 2001) and never pitched as many as 220 innings in any of those seasons. He averaged 189 IP over the 7 subsequent seasons.

Saberhagen was injured during his Age 32 season, joining the Red Sox the next year in 1997. Although he pitched fairly well (including a 0.8 BB/9 in 1998!) he totaled only 335 innings more in his career, spread over 4 injury-riddled seasons.

Newcombe's Age 32 season came in 1958, the year he was traded from the Dodgers to the Reds (or Redlegs as they were still officially known back then.) After that, he lasted only 2 more seasons, pitching 358 innings total.

Candelaria bounced around for 7 more seasons after age 32 (1986 with the Angels), eventually becoming a lefty relief specialist. He started only 44 games after 1986 but appeared in 206 others. His numbers were decidedly average.

Pettitte was injured in his Age 32 season and didn't pitch much. Since then, he's averaged 210 IP. His Age 33 season was superb but he's been average in his last 4. He'll probably be back with the Yankees next year but isn't likely to be much more than an average pitcher. (That being said, Pettitte hit a ton of milestone incentives this past season that boosted his salary significantly.)

Key follows a similar pattern to Pettitte, with a great season the year after his Age 32 season. In 1994 at age 33, Key led the league with 17 wins (remember that year was strike-shortened and could have cost Key his only real shot at 20 wins) and finished second in the Cy Young voting. After that, though, Key was slightly above-average pitcher who couldn't stay healthy. He pitched only 4 more years, averaging just 123 innings per season.

Finally, Leonard was injured in his Age 32 season and missed all of his Age 33 season. He came back to pitch just 194 innings more later in his career.

So, we see from this group of 10 that Halladay compares to a lot of guys who didn't pitch all that much or all that well after their Age 33 season (one year older than Halladay right now.) A few of the guys had very short careers after Age 32 and only Mussina, Pettitte, and Bunning had long careers as starters after that age.

This group is similar to Halladay, though, in that these guys were mostly very good pitchers who missed time due to injury early in their careers. That doesn't apply to everyone on the list--some of the guys compare to Halladay at Age 32 because they started their major-league careers a little later. But at this point, Halladay is a bit of a statistical oddity, being a top-tier pitcher over a long period of time despite having missed significant portions of 6 seasons (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2005.)

This sort of thing can go two ways: 1) He's prone to injury and therefore may continue to have a lot of missed time for the rest of his career or 2) He doesn't have a lot of innings on his arm despite his age and therefore, if he can stay healthy, can put up some big numbers in the rest of his career.

Injuries are impossible to predict so it's impossible to say for certain which path he'll follow. For my money, though, looking at his comparison group above, I think future injuries are more likely than future excellent seasons. Sadly, I see Saberhagen as an excellent comp for Halladay.

Halladay's injuries are also why his HOF chances are slimmed down somewhat. He is going to have a hard time reaching significant career numbers because of the missed time earlier in his career. He has only 148 career wins now, making 300 impossible unless he has a miraculous run. Even 250 wins is fairly well out of reach unless he can string together 7-8 more seasons averaging 13-14 wins. That's certainly possible but not all that likely based on the comparison group above.

Let's take a look at a different comparison group. Here are all the pitchers since 1901 to throw at least 700 innings over their Ages 30-32 seasons with a cumulative ERA+ of at least 140.

  Cnt Player            Year ERA+   IP   From  To   Ages   G   GS  CG SHO  GF  W   L   W-L%  SV   H    R   ER   BB   SO    ERA   HR   BF  HBP
+----+-----------------+----+----+------+----+----+-----+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+-----+---+----+----+----+----+----+------+---+-----+---+
    1 Roy Halladay      2009  142  710.1 2007 2009 30-32   97  96  25   7   0  53  28  .654   0  686  271  243  122  553   3.08  55  2877  20
    2 Tom Glavine       1998  151  704.2 1996 1998 30-32  102 102  10   5   0  49  23  .681   0  621  244  220  238  490   2.81  47  2898   6
    3 Greg Maddux       1998  178  728.2 1996 1998 30-32  102 102  19   8   0  52  24  .684   0  626  218  193   93  553   2.38  33  2858  16
    4 Tom Seaver        1977  141  812.2 1975 1977 30-32  104 103  47  17   0  57  26  .687   0  627  242  227  231  674   2.51  44  3225   8
    5 Bob Gibson        1968  159  760.1 1966 1968 30-32   93  93  58  20   0  56  28  .667   0  559  201  172  180  640   2.04  41  2983  15
    6 Bucky Walters     1941  149  926   1939 1941 30-32  112 107  87  10   4  68  36  .654   2  783  301  260  289  381   2.53  44  3742  13
    7 Carl Hubbell      1935  151  924.1 1933 1935 30-32  136 102  71  16  28  67  36  .650  13  856  294  247  133  424   2.40  50  3726   8
    8 Lefty Grove       1932  185  871.1 1930 1932 30-32  135  92  76  10  40  84  19  .816  21  791  286  240  201  572   2.48  31  3558   7
    9 Walter Johnson    1920  181  760   1918 1920 30-32   99  73  68  19  26  51  37  .580   8  611  212  144  148  387   1.71   7  3010  20
   10 Hippo Vaughn      1920  146  898   1918 1920 30-32  113 108  76  16   5  62  40  .608   1  781  271  202  219  420   2.02  15  3625  21
   11 Christy Mathewson 1913  160  923   1911 1913 30-32  128 106  81   9  20  74  36  .673   9  905  303  211   93  368   2.06  19  3696   3
   12 Ed Walsh          1913  144  859.1 1911 1913 30-32  134  92  72  12  39  62  38  .620  15  750  287  213  205  543   2.23  11  3470  13
   13 Mordecai Brown    1909  177  888   1907 1909 30-32  128  92  79  23  34  76  24  .760  15  640  193  137  142  402   1.39   4  3363  18

This reflects, then, the 3 most recent seasons for Halladay and it casts him in a much better light. The only guys on this list not in the Hall of Fame are Glavine, Maddux, Walters, and Vaughn. Maddux is going to be there in 4 years, and I think Glavine will get in easily too.

More importantly for Halladay, only 3 of the 13 comparables on this list failed to put up at least 3 really good seasons after the age of 32 (Vaughn, Mathewson, and Walsh.)

However, the quality of this comparison group is debatable. Halladay has just finished what was arguably the healthiest 3-year period of his career. Most of the guys on the list above consistently pitched a lot of innings. It would be foolish to assume that Halladay will continue with what he's done over the last 3 years and ignore the 6 problem years he had previously.

If I had to guess, here's what I would project for Halladay: an excellent Age 33 season coming up in 2010. All of the comparables on both lists above support that notion, plus Halladay will be in a contract year unless he signs an extension before then. After that, who knows? I'm inclined to predict some injuries and maybe only 1000-1200 IP in the rest of his career afterward. Taken together, that should be good for another 90 wins or so, putting him at 238 for his career.

We'll see...

Bobby Abreu re-signed with the Angels for 2 years yesterday,which surprised me. He had a nice year for a 35-year-old guy and I thought would have wanted to test the open market. Of course, he did that last year after having a good year and had to wait until just before spring training to get signed. Maybe he was happy to jump at a 2-year contract offer.

Anyway, most people know that he's got a long active streak of 100-RBI seasons. Here are the guys with the most 100-RBI seasons in the last 7 years:

                   From  To   Ages Seasons Link to Individual Seasons
+-----------------+----+----+-----+-------+------------------------------+
 Alex Rodriguez    2003 2009 27-33       7 Ind. Seasons
 Albert Pujols     2003 2009 23-29       7 Ind. Seasons
 Bobby Abreu       2003 2009 29-35       7 Ind. Seasons
 Mark Teixeira     2004 2009 24-29       6 Ind. Seasons
 Miguel Cabrera    2004 2009 21-26       6 Ind. Seasons
 Carlos Lee        2003 2009 27-33       6 Ind. Seasons

Only Abreu, A-rod, and Phat Albert have 100-RBI seasons each year.

The PI doesn't yet enable us to search for seasonal streaks, although I am hoping that this is coming down the pike. (I can tell you for sure that many significant additions are in fact coming down the pike, as I have seen the beta of the new version...) I don't know how many players have had 7-season 100-RBI streaks, but it's probably been done a fair amount.

Anyway, the last time Abreu didn't have 100 RBI in a season was 2002, but check out his stats that year. He played in 157 games, had 685 plate appearances, batted .308, slugged .521, and had an OPS+ of 151 (a career best.) And yet, he totaled only 85 RBI. Isn't that crazy? If he got 100 RBI that year, he'd have a streak of 9 such seasons going into next year.

Check out the guys over the last 20 seasons to have at least 600 PAs and an OPS+ of 150 or better but not reach 100 RBI:

  Cnt Player            Year OPS+ RBI  PA Age Tm  Lg  G   AB  R   H  2B 3B HR  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+----+----+---+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
    1 Joe Mauer         2009  177  96 606  26 MIN AL 138 523  94 191 30  1 28  76  14  63   2   0   5  13   4  1  .365  .444  .587 1.031 *2D
    2 Adrian Gonzalez   2009  163  99 681  27 SDP NL 160 552  90 153 27  2 40 119  22 109   5   1   4  23   1  1  .277  .407  .551  .958 *3/D
    3 Todd Helton       2004  165  96 683  30 COL NL 154 547 115 190 49  2 32 127  19  72   3   0   6  12   3  0  .347  .469  .620 1.089 *3
    4 J.D. Drew         2004  157  93 645  28 ATL NL 145 518 118 158 28  8 31 118   2 116   5   1   3   7  12  3  .305  .436  .569 1.005 *9/8D
    5 Bobby Abreu       2002  151  85 685  28 PHI NL 157 572 102 176 50  6 20 104   9 117   3   0   6  11  31 12  .308  .413  .521  .934 *98
    6 Ryan Klesko       2002  152  95 625  31 SDP NL 146 540  90 162 39  1 29  76  11  86   4   1   4   7   6  2  .300  .388  .537  .925 *39/D
    7 Brian Giles       2001  150  95 674  30 PIT NL 160 576 116 178 37  7 37  90  14  67   4   0   4  10  13  6  .309  .404  .590  .994 *78
    8 Edgar Martinez    1999  152  86 608  36 SEA AL 142 502  86 169 35  1 24  97   6  99   6   0   3  12   7  2  .337  .447  .554 1.001 *D/3
    9 John Olerud       1998  163  93 665  29 NYM NL 160 557  91 197 36  4 22  96  11  73   4   1   7  15   2  2  .354  .447  .551  .998 *3
   10 Mo Vaughn         1997  152  96 628  29 BOS AL 141 527  91 166 24  0 35  86  17 154  12   0   3  10   2  2  .315  .420  .560  .980 *3/D
   11 Barry Larkin      1996  154  89 627  32 CIN NL 152 517 117 154 32  4 33  96   3  52   7   0   7  20  36 10  .298  .410  .567  .977 *6
   12 Bobby Bonilla     1995  151  99 614  32 TOT ML 141 554  96 182 37  8 28  54  10  79   2   0   4  22   0  5  .329  .388  .576  .964 5973
   13 Andy Van Slyke    1992  151  89 685  31 PIT NL 154 614 103 199 45 12 14  58   4  99   4   0   9   9  12  3  .324  .381  .505  .886 *8
   14 John Kruk         1992  150  70 607  31 PHI NL 144 507  86 164 30  4 10  92   8  88   1   0   7  11   3  5  .323  .423  .458  .881 *39/7
   15 Will Clark        1992  150  73 601  28 SFG NL 144 513  69 154 40  1 16  73  23  82   4   0  11   5  12  7  .300  .384  .476  .860 *3
   16 Rafael Palmeiro   1991  155  88 714  26 TEX AL 159 631 115 203 49  3 26  68  10  72   6   2   7  17   4  3  .322  .389  .532  .921 *3/D
   17 George Brett      1990  153  87 607  37 KCR AL 142 544  82 179 45  7 14  56  14  63   0   0   7  18   9  2  .329  .387  .515  .902 *3D/975
   18 Fred McGriff      1990  153  88 658  26 TOR AL 153 557  91 167 21  1 35  94  12 108   2   1   4   7   5  3  .300  .400  .530  .930 *3/D
   19 Eddie Murray      1990  158  95 645  34 LAD NL 155 558  96 184 22  3 26  82  21  64   1   0   4  19   8  5  .330  .414  .520  .934 *3

Most of these guys either had fewer PAs than Abreu's 685 or got a lot closer to 100 RBI.

So why did Abreu fall short of 100 RBI in 2002? The Phillies were an average team that year with a record of 80-81. Abreu batted 3rd almost the entire season except for a stretch where he hit 4th. It would seem that he was in good position to drive in 100 runs.

It seems to me that the key is the guys who were hitting in front of him. Jimmy Rollins hit 1st or 2nd almost the entire year but managed only a .306 OBP, a pathetic value for a leadoff guy and Rollins' worst until this year's abysmal .296 OBP. The guy hitting second was often Doug Glanville, he of the .292 OBP that season.

Check out Abreu's splits for the last 9 seasons batting with runners on base:

Yeah, it looks like Rollins and Glanville not getting on base too much was the difference. In 2002 Abreu had an average number of games with runners on base (145) but the fewest total plate appearances (313). He also had a low total of homers with runners on base (7) despite having an average year in total number of homers (20, not visible in the chart above.) This was a contributing cause to his low RBI total.

In the 8 years above other than 2002, Abreu averaged 93 RBI while hitting with runners on, getting the rest of his RBI each season on solo homers. In 2002, though, he got just 72 RBI with runners on despite having BA, OBP, and SLG just about smack dab on his averages for his entire career in that situation. Had he gotton just his average 93, he would have been over 100 RBI for the year.

While I'm still captivated by the World Series that's going on, anybody who isn't is already thinking about this year's crop of free agents.

(As an aside, how could you not be captivated by tonight's game? One of two things is likely: the Yankees might beat Pedro to win the World Series or Pedro might beat the Yankees to push the series to a seventh and final game...how could you NOT tune in?)

Anyway, it's a pretty thin class for this year's free agents. We'll get into it more during the off-season, but I caught wind of an interesting fact pointed out by an agent. Can you name the only 3 players to have 4 seasons with 30+ HR, 100+ RBI and 100+ runs over the period 2005-2009?

I'll spot you the first two--Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez. Can you name the third? Answer is below...

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this list of most game scores (regular season) of at least 80 during the 2009 season:

This is my second recent post involving the Game Score stat, so in case you're not familiar with it, you can read about how it's calculated right here.

                   Year Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+----+-----+-------------------------+
 C.C. Sabathia     2009     4 Ind. Games
 Tim Lincecum      2009     4 Ind. Games
 Roy Halladay      2009     4 Ind. Games
 Zack Greinke      2009     4 Ind. Games
 Joel Pineiro      2009     3 Ind. Games
 Jake Peavy        2009     3 Ind. Games
 Ricky Nolasco     2009     3 Ind. Games
 Jon Lester        2009     3 Ind. Games
 Cliff Lee         2009     3 Ind. Games
 Felix Hernandez   2009     3 Ind. Games
 Danny Haren       2009     3 Ind. Games
 Yovani Gallardo   2009     3 Ind. Games
 Chris Carpenter   2009     3 Ind. Games
 Matt Cain         2009     3 Ind. Games

Lots of expected names on that list although a few stick out. Ricky Nolasco finished the season with a 5.06 ERA but still managed 3 games with game scores of at least 80. Here are those 3 games:

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt App,Dec    IP   H  R ER BB SO HR Pit Str GmSc IR IS BF AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk BK WP   ERA
+----+-------------+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+--+--+------+
    1 2009-07-05    FLA  PIT W  5-0  GS-8  ,W   8    3  0  0  2 12  0 112  75   86       28 26  0  0   0   0  0  0   1  1  0  0  0  0   0.00
    2 2009-08-18    FLA @HOU W  6-2  CG 9  ,W   9    3  2  2  0 10  1 115  80   83       30 30  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   2.00
    3 2009-09-30    FLA @ATL W  5-4  GS-8  ,W   7.2  4  2  0  2 16  0 123  83   81       29 27  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  1  0  0  0   0.00

Indeed--all great games. The thing that must be remembered about the Game Score stat is that it favors high strikeout games as well as low-hit games.

Jake Peavy makes the list too, despite starting only 16 games this past season.

Joel Piniero's name isn't much of a surprise given the great season he had. Looking at his stats, the thing that sticks out from 2009 was his incredibly low walk rate. Among the 102 active pitchers with at least 1000 career IP, Piniero has the 21st best walk-rate. (Keep in mind that getting to 1000 IP means the pitcher must have at least a someone decent walk rate to start off with.)

But check this out...how many active pitchers have thrown at least 200 innings in a season while walking fewer than 1.2 batters per 9 innings? Would you believe just two?

  Cnt Player            Year   IP   BB/9 Age Tm  Lg  G   GS CG SHO GF  W  L  W-L% SV  H   R   ER  BB  SO   ERA  ERA+ HR  BF  HBP
+----+-----------------+----+-----+-----+---+---+--+---+---+--+---+--+--+--+-----+--+---+---+---+---+---+------+----+--+----+---+
    1 Joel Pineiro      2009 214    1.14  30 STL NL  32  32  3   2  0 15 12  .556  0 218  94  83  27 105   3.49  119 11  865   8
    2 Roy Halladay      2003 266    1.08  26 TOR AL  36  36  9   2  0 22  7  .759  0 253 111  96  32 204   3.25  145 26 1071   9 

Pretty amazing, huh?

Here are the last 20 such seasons:

  Cnt Player            Year  BB/9   IP  Age Tm  Lg  G   GS CG SHO GF  W  L  W-L% SV  H   R   ER  BB  SO   ERA  ERA+ HR  BF  HBP
+----+-----------------+----+-----+-----+---+---+--+---+---+--+---+--+--+--+-----+--+---+---+---+---+---+------+----+--+----+---+
    1 Joel Pineiro      2009  1.14 214    30 STL NL  32  32  3   2  0 15 12  .556  0 218  94  83  27 105   3.49  119 11  865   8
    2 Brad Radke        2005  1.03 200.2  32 MIN AL  31  31  3   1  0  9 12  .429  0 214  98  90  23 117   4.04  110 33  831   7
    3 Brad Radke        2004  1.07 219.2  31 MIN AL  34  34  1   1  0 11  8  .579  0 229  92  85  26 143   3.48  136 23  901   6
    4 Roy Halladay      2003  1.08 266    26 TOR AL  36  36  9   2  0 22  7  .759  0 253 111  96  32 204   3.25  145 26 1071   9
    5 David Wells       2003  0.85 213    40 NYY AL  31  30  4   1  0 15  7  .682  0 242 101  98  20 101   4.14  106 24  887   8
    6 Brad Radke        2003  1.19 212.1  30 MIN AL  33  33  3   1  0 14 10  .583  0 242 111 106  28 120   4.49  101 32  888   5
    7 Curt Schilling    2002  1.15 259.1  35 ARI NL  36  35  5   1  0 23  7  .767  0 218  95  93  33 316   3.23  142 29 1017   3
    8 Brad Radke        2001  1.04 226    28 MIN AL  33  33  6   2  0 15 11  .577  0 235 105  99  26 137   3.94  116 24  919  10
    9 Greg Maddux       2001  1.04 233    35 ATL NL  34  34  3   3  0 17 11  .607  0 220  86  79  27 173   3.05  146 20  927   7
   10 Brian Anderson    1998  1.04 208    26 ARI NL  32  32  2   1  0 12 13  .480  0 221 100 100  24  95   4.33   97 39  845   4
   11 Greg Maddux       1997  0.77 232.2  31 ATL NL  33  33  5   2  0 19  4  .826  0 200  58  57  20 177   2.20  189  9  893   6
   12 Greg Maddux       1996  1.03 245    30 ATL NL  35  35  5   1  0 15 11  .577  0 225  85  74  28 172   2.72  162 11  978   3
   13 Greg Maddux       1995  0.99 209.2  29 ATL NL  28  28 10   3  0 19  2  .905  0 147  39  38  23 181   1.63  262  8  785   4
   14 Bob Tewksbury     1993  0.84 213.2  32 STL NL  32  32  2   0  0 17 10  .630  0 258  99  91  20  97   3.83  103 15  907   6
   15 Bob Tewksbury     1992  0.77 233    31 STL NL  33  32  5   0  1 16  5  .762  0 217  63  56  20  91   2.16  157 15  915   3
   16 Zane Smith        1991  1.14 228    30 PIT NL  35  35  6   3  0 16 10  .615  0 234  95  81  29 120   3.20  113 15  916   2
   17 Greg Swindell     1991  1.17 238    26 CLE AL  33  33  7   0  0  9 16  .360  0 241 112  92  31 169   3.48  120 21  971   3
   18 Jimmy Key         1989  1.13 216    28 TOR AL  33  33  5   1  0 13 14  .481  0 226  99  93  27 118   3.88   94 18  886   3
   19 La Marr Hoyt      1985  0.86 210.1  30 SDP NL  31  31  8   3  0 16  8  .667  0 210  85  81  20  83   3.47  103 20  839   2
   20 La Marr Hoyt      1983  1.07 260.2  28 CHW AL  36  36 11   1  0 24 10  .706  0 236 115 106  31 148   3.66  115 27 1034   1