Gary Gillette of the Baseball Early Bird is covering the Winter Meetings, and has filed his first report. You can get the Early Bird every morning via e-mail. It includes trivia and news and notes from yesterday in baseball. Give it a look.

At 10 a.m. today in Indianapolis, the Hall of Fame announced the results of the two Veterans Committees balloting for the class of 2010. One panel was considering the qualifications of managers and umpires, the other the qualifications of executives and pioneers.

The 16-member committee voting on managers and umpires elected umpire Doug Harvey and manager Whitey Herzog to the Hall of Fame. Only one member failed to cast a vote for the 31-year veteran umpire Harvey. Herzog received 14 of the 16 possible votes. Manager Danny Murtaugh and umpire Hank O'Day each were named on eight ballots. No other candidate received more than three votes.

On the other slate composed of executives and pioneers, a completely indefensible result saw no one get selected for immortality--including Marvin Miller. Former Detroit Tigers owner John Fetzer received eight of the 12 possible votes, falling one short of the 75% needed for election. Miller and former Yankees' owner Jacob Ruppert each received seven votes, falling two short. Former Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman, who was the holdover candidate with the most support in the last election, received six votes. No other candidate received as many as three votes.

Each committee had 10 names on its ballot. The most interesting and controversial nominee was Miller, pioneering leader of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The election of former commissioner and Miller nemesis Bowie Kuhn two years ago--while Miller failed to get even half of the votes he needed--caused many observers to rightly decry the whole process as biased in favor of owners and executives and biased against labor. Miller himself asked publicly not to be placed on any future ballots.

Nonetheless, Miller's name appeared on the ballot again, giving the Hall of Fame a chance to demonstrate that it is independent of Major League Baseball by making the painfully obvious choice of immortalizing Marvin Miller. The Hall failed again, confirming the opinions of many who feel that the institution has become irrelevant.

The idea that Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, whose muddled and mostly incompetent leadership severely damaged the game, is enshrined in Cooperstown while Miller is not is, frankly, a complete joke. Miller is the pioneer who for more than a decade out-negotiated and out-thought Kuhn, dragging the National Pastime and its recalcitrant commissioner and owners into the 20th century against their lordly will.

Despite the tired complaints of the old-line, hard-line owners that still hate Miller and his legacy, the game is far better off for the changes he and the Players Association he so ably led wrought in the 1970s and 1980s. As with the non-election of Buck O'Neil in 2006, the result of all the Hall's preening and posturing has been another travesty of justice and a grievous insult to the game's history.

• I never hit more than 27 homers in a season but if my stats are normalized to playing 162 games each year, then I had a 5-year run where I went over 30 homers 4 times.
• My career OBP is over .370 and my career OPS+ is over 130.
• Even though I was great at getting on base, I never got a chance to play a full season and I played almost exclusively for bad teams.

In the comments, post your guess or a question asking for more information.

There are many ways to fill each position over the course of an entire season. Most often, a few players are used by each team. However, there are also teams that are extreme. Some may rotate a truckload of players in and out all season long. Others are able to accomplish the rare feat of using only one player at a particular position for an entire season. Over the next few days I would like to take a look as some of these oddities.

In the early years of baseball it was not uncommon for a player to fill a position for his team for every play of a season. Even into the '30s and '40s it was done on a fairly regular basis. However as the '50s progressed and especially after the schedule expanded in 1961, teams with only 1 player in a position became quite rare, (particularly if Cal Ripken Jr. was not on your team). Here are the teams since 1961 to have only 1 player man a position for an entire season. (National League DHs are not included for obvious reasons.)

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A couple of notes on the list above:

• Ripken's prominence on this list is no surprise. Well before he was close to Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak, Ripken  was setting unofficial records by playing in 8,243 consecutive innings.
• At the time, Pierre was stalwart in CF, playing 162 games every year from 2003-2007.
• After the 2003 season Sexson was traded to Arizona where he was hurt for most of the season.
• Fryman's season was the shortened 1995. He only played 144 games that year and never played 162 in season in his career.
• Staub became the first player to play 162 games in a season without playing the field. (The Tigers only played 159 games the year that Horton DHed every inning for them.)
• Horton, who pulled off this trick with with two separate teams, was an unlikely candidate. With the exception of the two listed years, Horton never played more than 146 games in a season.
• Bando was a player who played consistently. He played at least 160 games four times in his career and at least 150 another 6.
• In the year between his complete seasons, Ron Santo played 161 games. He only missed 1 game that year, but  was also taken out of the game in another 3.

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Next, we'll go position-by position and take a closer look at the history of playing only a few players.

A patent lawyer colleague of mine pointed out that MLB is fighting Don Mattingly over a trademark application. Apparently Mattingly's company, Mattingly Hitting Products Inc., has attempted to trademark a logo featuring a left-handed batter wearing the #23 swinging a bat. Here below are the logo that Mattingly is attempting to trademark as well as the classic MLB logo that is the basis of the complaint:

For those unfamiliar with the rules of trademarks, the US Patent & Trademark Office will usually grant a trademark (which can be a name or a logo) unless it feels that the new mark may cause consumer confusion. For example, they would not allow a new soda company to trademark something like "Coka Cola" for fear that it would cause consumer confusion with "Coca Cola." Anyway, MLB has claimed that Mattingly's desire to put the logo on hats, bats, mitts, and other equipment will cause consumer confusion with equipment bearing the MLB logo. The case has been going on for more than 2 years already and is still not decided.

You can see the logo currently in use on the Mattingly Hitting Products website. Note the little "TM" that appears next to the logo--that means that Mattingly intends to trademark the logo but that a trademark has not yet been granted (otherwise the logo would have the ® symbol.)

It's neat to look at all the other trademark disputes that MLB has put up. You can see that many of the disputes have to do with use of the phrase "major league" such as for "major league kickball" and "major league medic." They have even battled the Melbourne Airport Authority in Melbourne, FL over the use of a logo featuring the abbreviation MLB for Melbourne! There is also a dispute with Jewish Major Leaguers over the use of that name to describe a set of baseball cards featuring Jewish ballplayers. Also, perhaps Bank of American really is not the official bank of MLB.

You can read more about the Mattingly case specifically at the TTABlog®.

Most Baseball-Reference.com users are aware of the site's inclusion of Similarity Scores for each player.

By way of example, here are the players tto whom Mark Teixeira is currently most similar:

1. Kevin Mitchell (913)
2. Miguel Cabrera (905)
3. Tony Clark (883)
4. Dick Stuart (868)
5. Geoff Jenkins (861)
6. Gus Zernial (856)
7. Aubrey Huff (855)
8. Richie Sexson (853)
9. Richie Zisk (853)
10. Ripper Collins (853)

This is the similar batter list for career totals. (Each player's page also lists similar players through the current age of the player as well as similar players at past ages for the player.)

So at this point in time, Mark Teixeira's career totals are most similar to Kevin Mitchell's career totals, which is not bad considering that Tex will just be turning 30 around the beginning of the 2010 season. For an explanation of how similarity scores are calculated, see here. I really like the system although I admit I'd prefer if it didn't consider the defensive position of each player so that we could compare based on offensive performance alone.

Anyway, I'd like to try to identify the players who are least similar to any other players.

Here's what I meant. If you look at Teixeira's list above, his top similarity score is 913. However, there are other players whose stats are so unusual that they have a top similarity score that is much lower. Barry Bonds, for example, has Willie Mays as his most similar player but with a score of just 762. By comparison, the guy most similar to Mays himself is Frank Robinson with a score of 830.

I want to find the player with the lowest #1 similarity score. I already know of one star player with such a score much lower than Bonds' but I'll let you, the readers, figure it out.

Let's also create a few categories: lowest similarity score for 1) retired players with at least 1000 games played, 2) retired players with under 1000 games played, 3) active players with at least 1000 games played, and 4) active players with under 1000 games played. I'm talking about only positional players here, not pitchers (or pitchers' similarity scores as batters.)

Go ahead and post whatever you find in the comments. I'll check back on this post at the end of the year (Dec 31) and see who posted the earliest comments with the best answers. Comment as many times as you like.

What are the prizes? As of now, there are none beyond bragging rights. However I am going to add some next week so stay tuned.

To our American readers celebrating today's holiday:

Enjoy your turkey or other kind of bird (such as duck or chicken.)

And don't forget the cranberry sauce, stuffing, and apple pie.

Let's try something a little different this afternoon. I'll call it PI tag.

I'm going to post a trivia question that can be answered using PI.

The first commenter will post a PI link containing the answer to this question and also a trivia question of his own.

Each subsequent commenter will reply to the previous comment in a similar fashion.

I don't know if it will work, let's give it a shot.

Question 1: Which are the only 2 games since 1954 in which both starting pitchers were teenagers?

Raphy just pointed me to this article published at Retrosheet that describes in detail occasions on which the same pitcher took the mound more than once in the same game.

I wrote a blog post here two years ago on the same topic. Needless to say, the Retrosheet article is much more detailed and informative

Wired magazine recently published a short opinion piece about the suggestion that American professional sports consider changing their playoff system to be more similar to the one used in European soccer.  Over the pond, each soccer league is split into levels. Teams that finish with the worst record (or records) in a given level are demoted to the next lower level, while teams winning lower levels can climb up to a next higher one. I don't know a lot of the specifics of how these leagues work, but that is the basic idea as I understand it.

The Wired article suggests that the guys who have come up with the suggestion feel that this sort of system used in MLB would encourage creation of new teams, take away some leverage from ownership (such as threats of moving the team) and force all teams to be as competitive as possible to avoid the lower levels.

My friend Eric P brought the article to my attention and we discussed how such a baseball playoff system might look in baseball. I'm not suggesting this is a good idea--here's just a summary of what we discussed.

First, we limited our discussion to the current 30 teams and how such a system might perhaps increase competitive balance while also making the full season more meaningful for a larger fraction of the teams.

Suppose we break the 30 teams into 6 levels, each containing 5 teams. Let's go by 2009 records to determine the levels.

LEVEL 1

Yankees, Angels, Red Sox, Dodgers, Phillies

LEVEL 2

Rockies, Cardinals, Giants, Rangers, Marlins

LEVEL 3

Twins, Braves, Tigers, Mariners, Rays

LEVEL 4

Cubs, Brewers, White Sox, Reds, Blue Jays

LEVEL 5

Athletics, Padres, Astros, Diamondbacks, Mets

LEVEL 6

Indians, Royals, Orioles, Pirates, Nationals

So here are some thoughts on how such a league would work in 2010 and forward:

• Teams play a fairly unbalanced schedule against mostly teams within their own level. For example, Level 1 teams play 18 games each against the 4 other teams in their level, 6 games each against the teams in Level 2, and 3 games each against the teams in Levels 3, 4, 5, and 6. That's 72 games against Level 1, 30 games against Level 2, and 60 games against Levels 3 through 6, for a total of 162 games.
• The top four teams from each level make the playoffs. The seeding and home-field advantage are determined by best records. There are six sets of playoffs. The ultimate winner from Level is is the overall champion. The winner from the playoffs in Levels 2 through 6 moves up to the next higher level. The team in each level that did not make the playoffs drops down to the next lower level, with the exception of the worst team in Level 6, which can't drop to a lower level.

Again, I'm not suggesting that this idea is necessarily wonderful, but it does offer some interesting benefits:

• By adding the extra playoff series the lower levels, there are more games and therefore more revenue. MLB will never change anything about the game unless they see more revenue.
• By virtue of the ability to move up or down, many more teams will remain invested in game outcomes for most of the year. Fans will remain interested too, especially those in Level 2 or 3 who hope to move up a level. It might be OK to have the moving team determined strictly by best or worst record (and not add the lower level playoffs) but again that would eliminate the extra game revenue.
• By having the in-level unbalanced schedule, there would be new rivalries that would remain somewhat constant from year-to-year. For example, in 2010 there would be lots of games between the Braves and Twins and the Cubs and White Sox. Those rivalries would continue until one team moved up or down from its current level.

However there are many negatives:

• At the beginning of each year, the overall champion can come from only the 5 Level 1 teams, regardless of how well those teams actually play. It gives those teams an unfair advantage. It also means that no team can ever have a significant reversal, such as Tampa Bay making it all the way to the World Series in 2008 after never having had a winning season.
• The scheduling would be a nightmare and in all likelihood, impossible. The 2010 schedule couldn't have been created until the end of the 2009 season, which isn't enough time. Also, check out what Level 1 would be like in 2010: three east coast teams and two west coast teams. That means that Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies fans would have to deal with 27 games on the west coast, and these games are against primary rivals. Imagine, too, if there were 4 west coast teams in Level 1 with a single east coast team. That team would be flying west for 36 in-level games (as well as other out-of-level games against west coast opponents.) It would be such a disadvantage for that team. (Of course, the Mariners face such a disadvantage now by having no nearby divisional rival. Even the Althletics are a multi-hour plane flight away. Compare this to the proximity of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Pittsburgh.)
• The teams in the lower levels know that they can't compete for the championship for a minimum of a certain number of years For example it takes a minimum of 5 years to move from Level 6 to Level 1, and only then if the team wins its level every single season. This goes against the spirit of professional sports as we know it in the U.S., where hope springs eternal and any team can have championship aspirations each season. The idea of keeping fans interested would probably backfire for a team like the Royals, which by such a system would have been stuck in the doldrums for many consecutive years.

The true spirit of the Wired article is different from what I suggest above. To follow its suggestion would mean something more like this:

• Create a 12-team "developmental league." Any owner can put together players he or she acquires as free agents and pay a yearly fee to place his team in the league. The league fee would need to be quite large to cover costs associated with travel, locating stadiums to play in, etc.
• Each year, the winner of the developmental league moves up to the major leagues, while the major-league team with the worst record moves down to the developmental league. If creating your own baseball team is exceptionally difficult, then the major league team that falls into the D-league should easily win the D-league championship, and the D-league team playing in MLB should finish with by far the worst record. Then they just switch places the following year. Eventually, though, as things develop, the D-league might get good enough to be able to promote some of its teams to the majors and keep them there.
• Falling out of the MLB and into the D-league would represent a major loss of revenue for that team and therefore should strongly motivate the owners of all teams to try to avoid losing a lot of games.

It seems remarkably unlikely that the playoff system in MLB will ever shift to anything akin to what I've written here, but I still find it fun to think about.

Every now and then there is game that seems to be headed in no particular direction. One team has the lead , then other, and round and round they go. It's almost as if the team batting last is sure to win. Games with multiple lead changes are usually sloppy, but exciting nonetheless. Lets take a look at a couple of these bizarre games.

PI does not yet have the ability to easily provide us with a list of games with the most lead changes. However, we can still find some crazy see-saw contests by searching for the games with the most blown saves:

Read the rest of this entry »