During the season, I wrote about Jorge Posada's incredible season for a 35-year-old. Now that the season has ended, we can get a little perspective on just how good his season was. Read the rest of this entry »

Minimum 500 PA. Worst ever was a one-time Cy Young Award winner - can you guess who before clicking on it?  Because of the PA requirement, it's tough for modern guys to even quality unless they spend over a decade in the NL. Jason Schmidt is the worst of guys who pitched in 2007, though.

From a user suggestion by gswitter, here is a look at players who homered in their only plate-appearance of a post-season series. Read the rest of this entry »

I have no idea where this idea came from, but I had an inkling to see who had the most RBIs without hitting many homeruns.  I initially set the filter at fewer than 20 HRs after 1980.  Here's the list:

  Cnt Player            RBI HR Year Age
+----+-----------------+---+--+----+---+
    1 Tony Gwynn        119 17 1997  37
    2 Pedro Guerrero    117 17 1989  33
    3 Al Oliver         117 19 1980  33
    4 Jeff Cirillo      115 11 2000  30
    5 Derek Bell        113 17 1996  27
    6 Paul Molitor      113  9 1996  39
    7 Marty Cordova     111 16 1996  26
    8 Paul O'Neill      110 19 1999  36
    9 Kirby Puckett     110 19 1992  32
   10 Bill Buckner      110 16 1985  35
   11 Tom Herr          110  8 1985  29
   12 Rusty Greer       108 16 1998  29
   13 Ted Simmons       108 13 1983  33
   14 Bobby Abreu       107 15 2006  32
   15 Hideki Matsui     106 16 2003  29
   16 Joe Randa         106 15 2000  30
   17 Keith Moreland    106 14 1985  31
   18 Jeff Francoeur    105 19 2007  23
   19 Willie McGee      105 11 1987  28
   20 Bill Buckner      105 15 1982  32 

Lots of professional hitters who didn't take a lot of walks.  How could you not have rooted for Rusty Greer, Tony Gwynn, Jeff Cirillo, and Marty Cardova?  Those are great names.  I'm shocked to see Willie McGee on the list.

How about if we also limit doubles to fewer than 30?

  Cnt Player            RBI HR 2B  G  Year Age
+----+-----------------+---+--+--+---+----+---+
    1 Joe Randa         106 15 29 158 2000  30
    2 George Hendrick   104 19 20 136 1982  32
    3 Paul O'Neill      100 18 26 142 2000  37
    4 Terry Kennedy      98 17 27 149 1983  27
    5 Steve Kemp         98 19 23 160 1982  27
    6 Jeff Conine        97 14 23 139 2001  35
    7 Eddie Murray       96 19 23 153 1991  35
    8 Terry Pendleton    96 12 29 159 1987  26
    9 Marquis Grissom    95 19 27 157 1993  26
   10 Will Clark         95 19 25 154 1990  26
   11 Jose Cruz          95 12 28 160 1984  36
   12 Jody Davis         94 19 25 150 1984  27
   13 Dave Parker        94 16 28 156 1984  33
   14 Will Clark         92 16 27 123 1995  31
   15 Lloyd Moseby       92 18 28 158 1984  24
   16 Jose Cruz          92 14 28 160 1983  35
   17 Jose Cruz          91 11 29 160 1980  32
   18 Carlos Baerga      90 15 28 135 1995  26 

Obviously, it's hard to knock in 100 runs when you're only hitting singles.  Jose Cruz appears three times in the top 20.

Finally, how about the most runs scored with the second set of restrictions: fewer than 20 homeruns and 30 doubles:

  Cnt Player             R  HR 2B  G  Year Age
+----+-----------------+---+--+--+---+----+---+
    1 Paul Molitor      136 19 26 160 1982  25
    2 Willie Wilson     133  3 28 161 1980  24
    3 Derek Jeter       127 19 25 149 1998  24
    4 Derek Jeter       124 18 26 157 2002  28
    5 Derek Jeter       122 19 25 159 2005  31
    6 Vince Coleman     121  3 14 151 1987  25
    7 Tony Phillips     119 12 29 153 1996  37
    8 Rickey Henderson  119 10 24 149 1982  23
    9 Al Bumbry         118  9 29 160 1980  33
   10 Chuck Knoblauch   117 17 25 150 1998  29
   11 Chuck Knoblauch   117  9 26 156 1997  28
   12 Kenny Lofton      116  1 28 148 1993  26
   13 Willie McGee      114 10 26 152 1985  26
   14 Chone Figgins     113  8 25 158 2005  27
   15 Craig Biggio      113 15 24 162 1996  30
   16 Eric Young        113  8 23 141 1996  29
   17 Tony Phillips     113  7 27 151 1993  34
   18 Rickey Henderson  113 12 26 150 1989  30
   19 Rickey Henderson  113 16 27 142 1984  25
   20 Brian Hunter      112  4 29 162 1997  26
   21 Brett Butler      112  2 13 161 1991  34 

Derek Jeter just knows how to win, huh?  Brett Butler scored 112 runs in 1991 while only hitting two homeruns and 13 doubles.  Yikes.

Picking up on an idea made in the Suggestions, here are the most appearances in history without allowing a baserunner: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it's all over folks. The World Series, the 2007 baseball season, and of course, the B-R SOTD 2007 World Series Challenge.

First let's look at Game 4:

• Cook had a game score of 50--really pretty good all things considered. Nobody got it exactly but lukemeister was closest at 49. Average guess was a pretty close 43.4.
• Colorado scored 3 runs. The average guess was 5, but lukemeister nailed it at 3.
• Colorado LOB was 7, with an average guess of 8.2. Kingturtle got it exactly, as did Dre17.
• Colorado Home Run Guess - several people got Atkins.
• Lester had a game score of 63--quite impressive all things considered. You all thought he'd do worse and gave him an average of 46.4. ImAShark was closest with a 59.
• Boston scored 4 times, with an average guess of 5.6. Truman got it exactly.
• Boston LOB was only 3, with an average guess of 9.2. The guesses went up after Boston left so many runners on earlier in the series. Lukemeister was by far the closest with a guess of 5.
• Boston managed two homers this game, but nobody guessed either correctly.

The average score for this game was just 90, by far the lowest of all 4 games. You guys got better and better as we went along, it seems.

The leaderboard for Game 4 is quite interesting:

1. Dre17 - 37 points
2. kingturtle - 46
3. ImAShark - 48
4. lukemeister - 53
5. doug730 - 7 1

Firstly, I'm happy to see kingturtle finally make the top 5. He made a lot of correct guesses through the whole competition but didn't put it all together until this game. Secondly, lukemeister got 4th without guessing either pitching decision correctly. Had he guessed Lester/Cook correctly, he would have had a 13, by far the lowest score of the entire Challenge. (Everybody else on this leaderboard got the pitchers right, and did much poorer in everything else than lukemeister.)

With Dre17 winning for the third time, I think there is very little drama in the final standings:

1. Dre17 - 247 points
2. doug730 - 311
3. larryhisle - 385
4. kingturtle - 413
5. zimcity - 419
6. spartanbill - 429
7. lukemeister - 450
8. truman - 455
9. wellspr - 460

You folks are the only 9 to complete all four games, and I listed everybody because you're all winners. Everybody else who had a bad game or two dropped out, and would have finished with much worse scores. So, no joke, I really think all 9 of you did really well. Some just did a little better

So, congrats to Dre17. Now, with that email address of yours, will you finally tell us if you are, indeed, former major leaguer Paul Assenmacher?

Thanks to everybody for participating!

Don't stop reading the SOTD blog just because the season is over. We'll continue to bring you nuggets from the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index all throughout the winter. In fact, now is a good time to email a few of your friends about this blog so they can also keep warm during the hot stove months ahead.

In one of Steve's posts, a short discussion started on whether power-hitters are getting fewer doubles these days than they used to.

I just put together a few bits of data to look at that. Read the rest of this entry »

Now we've got ourselves a real game here, even if the World Series itself looks pretty lopsided.

Jumping in:

• Josh Fogg's awful game score of 14 wasn't predicted by anybody. The average guess was a much healthier 50. Closest was Dre17 with 32, which helped him a lot in the standings.
• Colorado actually scored 5 runs, and the average guess was 4.8: not too shabby. Three players, wellspr, doug730, and ToddCoffeysUsernameIsTooLong got it right.
• Colorado LOB was actually 11, with the average guess at 8. kingturtle got it exactly right. If memory serves, I think Oliver has exactly nailed at least one prediction in every game so far.
• Colorado Home Run Guess: hey we finally have a winner. Several people guessed Holliday.
• Matsuzaka's game score was 56, and the average guess was 51 Nobody got it exactly right, but ImAShark guessed 57 and several others were very close.
• Boston scored 10 runs, far eclipsing the average guess of 4.9. Closest, with 8, was Dre17, which also contributed significantly to his score.
• Boston LOB = 7, average guess = 8.7. Three players, Dre17, truman, and doug730 got it exactly right. (Are you starting to see a trend with Dre17 yet?)
• Boston Home Run Guess: once again no homers for Boston. It's amazing that they've scored, what, 25 runs and hit only 1 homer?

So, for this game, the average score was 110.

The top 5 finishers for Game 3 were:

1. Dre17 - 28 points
2. doug730 - 31
3. spartanbill - 56
4. zimcity - 61
5. budcrew08 - 92
That's 2 wins for Dre17 in 3 games--very impressive. So, Doug, you should have done a slightly better job in copying Dre17...heh. Both the top 2 finishers got the smallest scores we've seen so far, edging out wellspr's 38 from Game 2.

Without further delay, here are the overall leaders for Games 1, 2, and 3 of the 2007 World Series Challenge:

1. Dre17 - 210
2. doug730 - 240
3. zimcity - 257
4. larryhisle - 278
5. spartanbill - 311

As it turns out, the 6th place person has 360 points, so anybody not in the top 5 has a fairly poor shot at winning the whole enchilada.

Winning this thing is going to come down to picking the winning pitchers correctly, and in tomorrow's matchup of Aaron Cook and Jon Lester, that's a very tough thing to do.

By the way, looking at what my own ballots would have been had I entered, I would (really) have been in last place at this point!

Thanks everybody for participating. Perhaps there is just one game to go! The Game 4 post is already up, so just make your way back there to post your guesses for tonight's game.

Earlier tonight, Dice-K got his first MLB hit - an RBI single against the Rockies.  We shoulda seen it coming.  History has shown that Asian imports and highly touted pitchers get the most RBIs against the Rockies, and the Red Sox rookie is both.

Please note Josh Beckett is on that list as well.

Kingturtle posted a suggestion about quantifying whether players truly hit better when playing the field instead of DHing. See his comment here.

I looked into this a little. Click through for the details.

Read the rest of this entry »