I was just looking at Tommy Henrich's stats. Raphy already put together a nice post showing how productive Henrich was later in his career. His 1948 season shows a rare combination of power, speed, and production.

Below I have listed all batting seasons since 1901 in which the batter had at least 14 triples, 100 RBI, and no more than 42 strikeouts. As you can see, this used to be very commonplace but has virtually disappeared since 1948, when both Henrich and Stan Musial accomplished the criteria. The only guy to do it since was George Brett in 1979. Chances are slim that we'll ever see such a season again as very few players hit 14 triples in a season and not too many guys drive in 100 runs without striking out at least 43 times (the only guys do to this last feat since 1979 are Brett, Cecil Cooper, Bill Buckner, Don Mattingly, Mike Greenwell, Gary Sheffield, Tony Gwynn, Nomar Garciaparra, and Barry Bonds. See here for the full list.)

After the jump is the full list of the 14 3B, 100 RBI, < 42 K players.

Read the rest of this entry »

A simple list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder - most seasons, non-pitcher, with 502+ PA and an OPS+ of 75 or worse. (Yes, I know, how many pitchers have 502 PA in a season anyway? But, I threw that filter in there nonetheless.) Here's the "leader" board for this:

Ozzie Guillen can thank the shortened season in 1995 for not tying Larry Bowa for the "lead" on this list.

What if we took shortstops out of the list? Here's the result:

Note Bob Boone here. He and Larry Bowa were teammates in 1974 and 1980 when they posted these types of seasons. Add Garry Maddox to the two of them in 1980 (with his OPS+ of 80) and it is clear that World Champs that season put a premium on defense, over offense, at C, SS, and CF that season.  (Yes, I know that Manny Trillo was on the 1980 Phils too.  But, he was actually a decent hittter that season.  Go figure!)

It appears that Chone Figgins is close to signing a free-agent contract and I've been looking a little bit into his numbers. He has a career OPS+ of 99 suggesting that he's just about an average player offensively, but an argument can be made that he's not all that productive.

For example, his seasonal total base numbers aren't that good, having not cracked 250 in each of the last 4 years. Dividing his career total bases by his career plate appearances yields the number 0.342, meaning he gets one base for roughly every 3 plate appearances. (For point of comparison, Albert Pujols' value is 0.531, meaning more than 1 base every 2 PAs and Willy Tavarez is at 0.299.)

I did a season finder search for career totals of active players who had a TB/PA ratio of less than 0.35 and ranked them by most career plate appearances:

Figgins slots in at #13 and he's grouped with other players I'd put in a similar category: guys good enough to play every day or almost every day but not all that productive. Note that Marco Scutaro, just signed by the Red Sox, makes this list too.

Also while his 280 SB put him at 15th among active players, his 96 CS tie him for 8th with Johnny Damon, who himself has 374 SB.

Here are the players with 260 to 300 career stolen bases (1969-present):

These guys are ranked roughly by stolen base percentage, worst to best. First of all, Carlos Beltran's success rate of 88% is incredible.  Note that Figgins is fairly high on the list, and all of the guys ahead of him have either been active a lot longer or are retired. Stolen base success rate usually drops off later in careers as guys "lose a step" and for Figgins to already rank so high is a shame. He should probably pick his spots a bit better for steal attempts.

Figgins' two best seasons were 2007 and 2009. In 2007 he batted .330, the only season in which he batted .300 or better. In 2009, he drew 101 walks, which was 36 more than he drew in any other season. Both were flukes. Take out those 2 seasons and his career OPS+ is around 93.

Among active players with at least 2000 PAs and at least 50% of their games at 3B, Figgins is way towards the bottom of the pile in OPS+.

There are good things to say about Figgins too.

Here's one of them:

These are the only active players with at least 20 games at 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, and RF.

This past season, no player caught in more than 138 games. Managers are particularly careful about giving their catchers time off to rest and it is rare that a catcher will go behind the plate for more than 150 games in a season.  In fact, the last player to catch at least 150 games was Brad Ausmus in 2000 (Jason Kendall and Russell Martin both just missed in 2008 with 149 games apiece.)  In baseball history only 27 seasons of at least 150 games caught  been turned in, including 3 each by Randy Hundley (and 1 by son, Todd) and Jim Sundberg. (Obviously, this feat is much easier with a 162 game schedule.)

Please note that games listed are total season games and not necessarily games caught. However, a player must have played at least 150 games at catcher to be included.

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Which player caught the most? In 1968 Randy Hundley caught 160 games. Hundley started 156 of those games and played every inning in 146.

Second place is a 3-way tie at 155. Jim Sundberg did for  the Rangers in 1975. 31 years earlier Frankie Hayes and Ray Mueller also both accomplished this feat even though their teams only played 155 games.

This past season, Randy Ruiz of the Toronto Blue Jays drove himself in with a  home run 10 times, but only drove in 7 other players. Ruiz's 17 RBI are tied for the 14th most in a season among players who have driven themselves in more than they have driven in others (HR>.5*RBI) .(Ruiz's RBI are third most among players with a ratio of RBI:HR of 1.7 or less.)

Here are the leaders:

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On the opposite end of the spectrum are players who have driven themselves in more than they have been driven in by others (HR>.5*R). This is a lot more common, particularly among big hulking power hitters.(Mark McGwire did it 8 times in his career and Dave Kingman 7.) Here are the players with the most runs scored to accomplish this feat.

In 2009 Carlos Pena had 253 total bases on only 107 hits. Pena's average of 2.36 bases per hit is the fourth most  in a season for a player who qualified for a batting title. The only other players with a higher average were Barry Bonds in 2001 (2.63) and Mark McGwire in 1998 (2.52) and 1999 (2.5). As you would expect, this stat was Mark McGwire's specialty. Here are the seasons in which a player who qualified for the batting title, averaged at least 2.3 bases per hit. Not only is Pena the first player to qualify with less than 40 home runs, he is the first to qualify with less than 50.

Here's a simple search....most plate appearances in a season where every single PA resulted in a strikeout.

Yeah, Koufax was not a good hitter. Later in his career he did drive in some runs but in the first half he had just about nothing at the plate. Incidentally, I was inspired to do this search by this post at Night Owl Cards looking at the worst offensive seasons at each position for the Dodgers franchise.

Ignoring pitchers, here are the leaders:

There's got to be an interesting story behind Gene Ratliff. What you see above is the sum total of his major league career--one season, 4 plate appearances, 4 strikeouts. In all 4 cases he entered the game as a pinch-hitter, struck out, and did not appear again (i.e. he did not go in to play defense.)

This begs the question as to who has the record for most PAs in a career with all strikeouts:

Ratliff has that record. A couple of guys did all their damage in one game, such as Campbell, who got all 3 career PAs in the same game and struck out each time.

Incidentally, doing the same searches for walks (i.e. all plate appearances in a season or career are walks) yields the following. The seasonal record is just 1 and has been done by 31 guys. It's surprising to me that nobody has ever had as many as two plate appearances in a season and walked both times. It logically follows that the career record is also 1, with 10 of those 31 seasons representing a guy's entire career:

Virtually all of these players are completely unknown with the exception of Eddie Gaedel, quite famous for his appearance in a major-league game orchestrated by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck.

Incidentally, all the stats in this post are 1901-present.

For two years, Matt Cain has pitched in the shadow of teammate Tim Lincecum. It's a shame because he's done some extraordinary things in 2007-2009.

Check out all the pitchers since 1901 to have a season Age 24 or younger with at least 200 IP and an ERA+ of 150 or better:

Firstly, this list is bookended by Jair Jurrjens and Noodles Hahn. Interesting set of names there. Did you know that Hahn's real first name was Jair? Just kidding. It was Frank.

Anyway, Cain slides onto this list just ahead of his teammate Timmy, who turned the trick two seasons ago. The rest of this list is quite mixed including some of the very best pitchers of all time (such as Clemens, Seaver, Carlton, Drysdale, Feller, Johnson, Mathewson, and some guy named Ruth) as well as a number of pitchers who didn't have much success in later years (Willis so far, Prior, Zito to a large extent, Thompson, Anderson, Ellsworth, Antonelli, and numerous others.)

Incidentally, here are the guys from the list above with multiple such seasons:

There are a few guys, such as Jurrjens, with a chance to add another season by the age of 24.

Anyway, two years ago I wrote about Matt Cain's bizarre season in terms of how well he pitched with so few wins to show for it. Check out what I mean:

Since 1901, Cain is the only pitcher with 2 seasons of 200 IP, an ERA+ of at least 118, and a W-L% of .364 or less.

Even relaxing the criteria to an ERA+ of 110 and a W-L% of .400 or less, Cain is still one of just 9 pitchers with multiple such seasons:

Note that he's the only guy to be saddled with such bad luck in the last 50+ years.

As for 2009, Cain is one of 155 pitchers since 1901 to have a season with 200 IP, an ERA+ of at least 151, and a W-L% of .636 or better. There have been 239 such seasons and here are the 200 most recent. Incidentally, there have been another 90 seasons where the pitcher met the innings and ERA+ requirement but not on W-L%. So Cain had a little bit of luck this year, but mostly he just pitched extremely well.

Tommy Henrich's passing today gives us the opportunity to reflect for a moment on his productive career. Henrich missed many of his prime seasons to WWII and injuries forced him into retirement at a relatively early age. Yet, in between he put up some very impressive numbers, including 2 remarkable back to back seasons.

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Henrich's combined OPS+ of 150 is good enough to tie him for 15th place all-time among players in their age 35-36 seasons (min. 1000 PA).

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That's some pretty impressive company.
In fact, here is what the list looks like when you remove the players that are already in the Hall-of-Fame. (I apologize for not including O'Doul and Cravath in the earlier chart.)

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The writers' opinions about  steroids and the DH rules will determine how many of the players above Henrich will make the Hall. However, there is a very good chance that Henrich's 35-36 seasons will be among the best ever by a player not enshrined in Cooperstown.

This is a stat that gets asked about all the time: which players have hit more homers in a season than singles? It has been answered before, but I thought I'd show it all in a single list since it's now so easy to do with the PI arithmetic function. These lists actually include players with as many homers as singles as well.