My dad's a huge Yankees fan and is constantly calling opposing players Yankee-killers.  He's obviously suffering from extreme selection bias, so I wanted to put together an objective list of players who hurt the Yankees.  Here are a few ways to do that:

Multi-HR Games Against Yankees:

                   Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
 Manny Ramirez         7 Ind. Games
 Carl Yastrzemski      6 Ind. Games
 Ken Griffey           6 Ind. Games
 Boog Powell           4 Ind. Games
 Tony Oliva            4 Ind. Games
 Charlie Maxwell       4 Ind. Games
 Reggie Jackson        4 Ind. Games
 Doug DeCinces         4 Ind. Games
 Cecil Cooper          4 Ind. Games
 Norm Cash             4 Ind. Games
 Mo Vaughn             3 Ind. Games
 Jason Varitek         3 Ind. Games
 Ken Phelps            3 Ind. Games
 Larry Parrish         3 Ind. Games
 Rafael Palmeiro       3 Ind. Games
 David Ortiz           3 Ind. Games
 Dick McAuliffe        3 Ind. Games
 Ron Kittle            3 Ind. Games
 Harmon Killebrew      3 Ind. Games
 Troy Glaus            3 Ind. Games
 Cecil Fielder         3 Ind. Games
 Chili Davis           3 Ind. Games
 Rocky Colavito        3 Ind. Games
 Jose Canseco          3 Ind. Games
 George Brett          3 Ind. Games
 Albert Belle          3 Ind. Games
 George Bell           3 Ind. Games                

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Using a number of basic PI Batting Season Finder searches, we can find out about which relievers have done the best and worst allowing inherited base runners to score.

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Mike Mussina has almost single-handedly dropped the Yankees out of post-season contention. I have seen a fair amount of talk in the New York media about this being the end of the road for him, which I frankly find preposterous. It's true that his dreadful streak comes at the worst possible time for the Yankees, and also true that they are likely to replace him for at least a start or two to try to get back in the wild-card lead. But I don't think his career is over quite yet.

Anyway, from Mussina's game logs, you can see his last three starts:

 CarGm TmG Date       Opp DR GmReslt Pitcher Result  IP   H  R ER BB SO HR   ERA  BF Pit Str GmSc IR IS Situat. In/Out Inn Rnr O Scr  SB CS Pk AB 2B 3B IW HB SH SF RE DP
+-----+---+---------+----+--+-------+--------------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+------+--+---+---+----+--+--+--------------+--------------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
   496 121 Aug 16     DET  4 L  5-8  GS-5  ,L  8-8   5    9  7  6  2  2  1   4.76 26  95  61   23        1t start tie   5t 3 out d 4   1  1  0 24  1  0  0  0  0  0  1  0
   497 126 Aug 21    @LAA  4 L  9-18 GS-2  ,L  8-9   1.2  7  7  7  2  1  0   5.22 14  48  27   12        1b start tie   2b -2- 2 d 6   1  0  0 12  5  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
   498 131 Aug 27    @DET  5 L  0-16 GS-3  ,L  8-10  3    9  6  6  1  0  0   5.53 19  72  49   16        1b start tie   3b 3 out d 6   1  0  0 17  3  0  0  0  0  1  0  0

These performances were all pretty bad, all garnering Game Scores of 23 or fewer. (I think "fewer" is really the correct word there, believe it or not.)

Using the Pitching Streak Finder, here are all pitchers in the last 10 years to have at least 3 consecutive games with Game Scores of 23 or fewer:

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Tim Marchman wrote a column saying that (in some many words) Thome doesn't pass the smell test for HoFer because he didn't stand out from his peers enough, even though he'll likely end up with 500.  To test this, let's compare him to a similar player from a previous generation - Killebrew.

Both were third basemen turned into defensivly challenged first basemen.  Neither is at the tips of anyone's tongues when you think of HoFers.  Neither had superlative averages but both had plenty of walks and homers.

Since Thome's career isn't over, let's compare him with what Killer did threw age 36, Thome's current season.  Here's how Killebrew ranked with his peers through age 36.  Not too shabby.  Behind only Aaron and Mays, and ahead of some guy named Frank Robinson

Here's Thome so far in his career.  He's seventh, barely ahead of eighth. Sure there's expansion, but that doesn't explain why he's over twice as far back.

Marchman's got a point.

We were all happy to see Rick Ankiel make it back to the majors as an outfielder. He's made some noise with the bat, so let's check in on his season so far.

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I was just playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Streak finder to see how some 21-year olds, or younger, started their big league pitching careers, when I noticed how close Josh Beckett and Phil Hughes were on the list that I had generated.  Here's a summary of their stats over their first seven games in the big leagues:

At first blush, with the exception of some errors made behind them, and perhaps some runners left on that came in to score (after they left a game), the numbers are pretty darn close, huh?

Even the number of pitches thrown and those for strikes are within a tick of each other. 

Josh Beckett had a great game in his 8th career start.  Maybe Phil Hughes can do the same?

The Red Sox just finished a heck of a 4-game sweep against the White Sox, winning all four games while scoring at least 10 runs in each game and allowing no more 3 in each game.

I used the PI Team Batting Streak Finder to try to find the last such occurrence of that. I did it by setting the outcome to win, runs scored greater than or equal to 10, and then looking for streaks of at least 4 games that all game against one opponent.

In short, I couldn't find any. Here are some near misses:

In 1998, the Yankees swept three (not four) games from Oakland. But they also allowed 4 runs in one of those games and 5 runs in another.

In 1962, the Giants won 5 straight games while scoring at least 10 runs. But there was a loss sandwiched in there, and 3 of the wins were against the Mets while 2 were against the Dodgers. And the Mets scored 4 runs in one game.

The AP report for yesterday's BoSox-ChiSox game notes that:

"The Red Sox outscored Chicago 46-7 in the series. Boston scored at least 10 runs in each game, only the fourth time that has happened in a four-game series since 1900, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It's the first time it has happened in the American League in 85 years. The St. Louis Browns did it in 1920 and 1922, and the Colorado Rockies in 1996. Boston's run total in the series was the most for the franchise since it scored the same amount against the Browns in 1949"

So here is the Rockies stream from 1996.  All the games were against LA, and they managed to lose one of them 13-10, while winning one 16-15. (Want a little time warp action? Look at the box score of that game, in which both Todd Worrell and Bruce Ruffin blew saves. Not to mention Curt Leskanic, Darren Holmes, and Scott Radinsky also blowing saves.)

Check out the Browns 1920 schedule and you see that it was the Red Sox they beat up on from June 12th to June 15th, scoring an average of 10.8 runs and allowing an average of 5.5 runs while winning 4 straight games.

The 1922 occurrence by the Browns was against Cleveland, from September 4th to September 6th (it, like the recent BoSox series, included a double-header.) They scored an average of, again, 10.8 runs while allowing an average of 4.0.

All in all, it was a very impressive showing by the Red Sox. Scoring 10 runs these days isn't as tough as it used to be, but allowing so few runs over 4 games while scoring so many is quite impressive.

Dave Concepcion had his number retired by the Cincinnati Reds the other day, and I wanted to write a bit about him.

From an offensive statistic standpoint, it's hard to find his name at the top of many lists. He was a solid player for many years, highly regarded enough to make 9 All-Star games and win 5 Gold Gloves.

Using a search as I did in my last post, here are all of the players, by team, to have at least 900 R, 900 RBI, and 300 SB:

 Franchise                         Number Players Matching
+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+
 Cincinnati Reds                        2 Dave Concepcion / Barry Larkin
 Chicago Cubs                           1 Ryne Sandberg
 Houston Astros                         1 Craig Biggio
 Kansas City Royals                     1 Amos Otis
 San Diego Padres                       1 Tony Gwynn
 San Francisco Giants                   1 Willie Mays

That's a short list, and there's our man right at the top. Incidentally, if you remove the team restriction, there are 25 players to have done it in their careers (but most playing for different teams, such as Reggie Sanders.)

Chris' recent post about various teams with guys having at least 50 career homers gave me an idea about how to use the PI, and it worked.

It turns out that you can generate lists of the total number of players for each team to meet a certain criteria over their career simply by doing the following: Batting Season Finder, check the bubble at the top for "Find totals for matching seasons or careers", then in the bottom right set your criterion (such as HR >= 50), and then in the top right pick to sort by teams w/players in years. Because you've already chosen to also sum by career, it gives you a result like this:

This is a team-by-team list of all players with at least 50 career homers, 1901 to 1979 (following Chris' search):

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Fewest walks while qualifying for the batting title - Baseball-Reference PI

Slim Rodriguez is at 5 BB so far this year.  Can he beat Dunston's modern record of 8 in 1997?

To do this, I used the Batting Season Finder, selected "Qualified for Batting Title" in minimum playing time and then Sorted by BB and checked ascending.