Most Times on Base for a LFer either in the HOF or on the ballot - Baseball-Reference PI

With the HOF ballot released, I went in and added an option to the play index season finders (batting or pitching).  In the second column, you now have options for Yes (in the HOF), Yes or on Ballot, No (not in HOF), No but on Ballot, or the default Any Player.

The list above is IMO, Tim Raines best bet to get into the HOF.  He's better than Lou Brock who pretty much everyone sees as a HOFer.  Better BA, better OBP, better SLG, better OPS+, more net steals (SB-2*CS) , more Home Runs, and 130 more times on base.

Here are the totals for each 2007 team in terms of number of games with at least 3 HR hit:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 CHW 2007    25 Ind. Games
 MIL 2007    24 Ind. Games
 NYY 2007    23 Ind. Games
 CIN 2007    22 Ind. Games
 FLA 2007    21 Ind. Games
 PHI 2007    20 Ind. Games
 TEX 2007    19 Ind. Games
 SDP 2007    19 Ind. Games
 COL 2007    19 Ind. Games
 TOR 2007    18 Ind. Games
 NYM 2007    17 Ind. Games
 BOS 2007    17 Ind. Games
 TBD 2007    16 Ind. Games
 ATL 2007    16 Ind. Games
 DET 2007    15 Ind. Games
 CHC 2007    15 Ind. Games
 ARI 2007    15 Ind. Games
 STL 2007    14 Ind. Games
 OAK 2007    14 Ind. Games
 HOU 2007    14 Ind. Games
 PIT 2007    13 Ind. Games
 CLE 2007    11 Ind. Games
 SFG 2007    10 Ind. Games
 MIN 2007    10 Ind. Games
 WSN 2007     9 Ind. Games
 SEA 2007     8 Ind. Games
 BAL 2007     8 Ind. Games
 LAA 2007     7 Ind. Games
 KCR 2007     7 Ind. Games
 LAD 2007     5 Ind. Games

I'm surprised by the discrepancy between first place (25 such games for the White Sox) and last place (5 such games for the Trolley Dodgers.) LA was way down on the overall team-by-team homer list, with just 129 in the entire season. Averaging fewer than 1 HR per game, it's not so surprising I guess that they managed 3 in a game just 5 times.

Now here are the games in which team pitching allowed 3+ HR in 2007:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 HOU 2007    25 Ind. Games
 TBD 2007    22 Ind. Games
 PHI 2007    21 Ind. Games
 CIN 2007    21 Ind. Games
 MIN 2007    19 Ind. Games
 ATL 2007    18 Ind. Games
 TOR 2007    17 Ind. Games
 STL 2007    17 Ind. Games
 PIT 2007    17 Ind. Games
 LAA 2007    17 Ind. Games
 KCR 2007    17 Ind. Games
 FLA 2007    17 Ind. Games
 CLE 2007    17 Ind. Games
 NYM 2007    16 Ind. Games
 WSN 2007    15 Ind. Games
 MIL 2007    15 Ind. Games
 DET 2007    15 Ind. Games
 LAD 2007    14 Ind. Games
 CHC 2007    14 Ind. Games
 NYY 2007    13 Ind. Games
 ARI 2007    13 Ind. Games
 TEX 2007    12 Ind. Games
 SEA 2007    12 Ind. Games
 CHW 2007    12 Ind. Games
 BAL 2007    12 Ind. Games
 SFG 2007    11 Ind. Games
 COL 2007    10 Ind. Games
 OAK 2007     8 Ind. Games
 BOS 2007     8 Ind. Games
 SDP 2007     6 Ind. Games

Now, the data looks pretty similar, in the sense that the highs and lows are nearly identical, and of course the overall number of 3+ HR games is the same for batting and pitching (451, in 2007.) But of course the numberof games must be the same since every batting 3+ HR game was pitched by one team or another. If we dig just a bit deeper, though, we can learn more. With 451 such games, that means that each team averaged hitting 15.033 such games, as well as pitching 15.033 such games. Look at Detroit: they hit 15 3-HR games, and pitched 15 3-HR games. They were perfectly average in these regards. But by calculating the standard deviation of each feat, we can see that giving up 3+ Hr was more evenly spread.

For batting games with 3+ HR, the standard deviation in 2007 was 5.4. If you're not familiar with standard deviation, it gives a good numerical indicator of how far out the data is spread from the average. The higher the standard the deviation, the more spread out it is. For pitching games with 3+ HR, the standard deviation was just 4.3. This tells you that teams were closer to the average.

A less mathematical way to look at this is if you simply count the number of teams that were within 2 HR of the average (meaning between 13 and 17.) For batting, 11 out of 30 teams were in this central range near the average. For pitching, though, 15 out of 30 teams were in the central range.

What does this mean in terms of actual baseball? It means that there is a bigger variation among teams for hitting a bunch of homers in games than there is for pitching. Or stated more plainly, it means that pitching staffs are more even across MLB, at least in terms of giving up 3+ HR in a game. I would guess (although the data above does absolutely nothing to show this) that the data translates all the way to individual players. Some teams have 40+ or 50+ HR hitters that contribute greatly to their team hitting 3+ HR in a game, whereas other teams don't have 40+ or 50+ HR hitters. But when it comes to pitching, the HR totals and frequencies tend to be more averaged out.

I went back and calculated the 3+ HR game data for 2006, too. There were 540 3+ HR games, an average of exactly 18 per team. The batting 3+ HR games had a standard deviation of 6.0, whereas the pitching 3+ HR games had a standard deviation of just 5.4. On the larger basis of 540 HR (instead of 451), these numbers are just about identical.

A reader asked about the incidence of doubles of triples, broken down by whether the batters hit lefty or right.

Looking at 2007, that info is available on the ML Batting Splits page.

In 99448 AB, right-handed batters hit 5458 doubles and 426 triples.

In 68335 AB, left-handed batters hit 3739 doubles and 512 triples.

Right away, you can see that LHB hit triples at a much higher rate, given that they hit more triples in fewer at-bats. Normalizing by number of at-bats, here's the comparison:

For doubles, RHB hit 1 per 18.22 at-bats, where as LHB hit 1 per 18.28 at-bats. For all intents are purposes, that's absolutely identical. If there were a team of all lefties versus a team of all righties, the team of lefties would hit about 1 more double over the course of an entire season.

For triples, it's a different story. RHB hit 1 per 233.4 AB, whereas LHB hit 1 per 133.5 AB. That's a huge difference. Again comparing mythical teams of all lefties vs all righties, the lefty team would hit about 20 more triples per year.

Interestingly, RHB and LHB had virtually identical batting averages, with RHB hitting .2677 for the year and LHB hitting .2685 for the year. Looking just at singles, RHB hit 17,783 in 99,448 ABs and LHB hit 12,102 in 68,335 ABs. That 1 single per 5.59 ABs for righties, and 1 single per 5.65 ABs for lefties. That'd be a difference of just 11 singles over a year for a team of righties over a team of lefties.

For homers, righties has 2956, or 1 per 33.6 ABs. Lefties managed 2001, or 1 per 34.2 ABs. Over the course of a season, a team of righties would hit 3 more homers in a season as compared to a team of lefties.

So, lefties hit more singles and triples, whereas righties hit more doubles and homers. However, it's only the difference in triples that's very significant.

A reader asked to find the most hits a team had in a game without scoring a single run.

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  PA  AB  R  **H** 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB Batrs
+----+-------------+---+----+-------+---+---+--+------+--+--+--+---+--+---+--+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+-----+
    1 2005-08-31    MIN @KCR L  0-1   37  33  0   13    2  0  0   0  2   0  5   1  1  0   0   3  0  1  10    12
    2 2005-08-13    COL  WSN L  0-8   42  36  0   13    1  0  0   0  5   0  7   0  1  0   1   2  0  1  15    15
    3 1993-07-18    PIT @ATL L  0-2   37  37  0   13    1  0  0   0  0   0  4   0  0  0   1   3  0  1  10    12
    4 1991-08-08    TOR  DET L  0-4   57  54  0   13    1  0  0   0  2   0 10   1  0  0   0   0  1  0  15    13
    5 1991-06-07    SDP @PIT L  0-1   37  34  0   13    0  0  0   0  1   0  7   0  2  0   0   1  0  2  10    15
    6 1989-08-23    MON  LAD L  0-1   79  70  0   13    1  0  0   0  6   3 18   0  3  0   0   3  0  1  13    20
    7 1989-08-15    TEX @SEA L  0-2   41  39  0   13    1  0  0   0  2   0  7   0  0  0   0   1  0  0  14    13
    8 1976-08-27    CAL  NYY L  0-5   60  54  0   13    3  0  0   0  4   1  9   1  1  0   0   1  4  1  15    12
    9 1973-09-09    MON  NYM L  0-3   40  39  0   13    1  0  0   0  1   0  3   0  0  0   1   2  0  0  13    16
   10 1968-07-25    PIT  CIN L  0-2   40  37  0   13    0  0  0   0  3   0  3   0  0  0   1   1  0  1  13    12
   11 1964-07-15    WSA @MIN L  0-6   39  38  0   13    0  0  0   0  1   0  6   0  0  0   0   2  0  0  12    13
   12 1961-05-14(1) BAL @CLE L  0-1   56  55  0   13    0  0  0   0  1   0  3   0  0  0   0   2  0  1  11    15

So, there you go, since 1957 the answer is 13 hits with no runs scored. It's been done 12 times, which have been spread out fairly evenly over the last 50 years. Right away, you notice that it wasn't double plays or caught stealings, for the most part, that preventing scoring. It was good ol' fashioned Left on Base. In the next-to-last column, you see that every one of these teams had double-digit LOB.

Now the most times on base in a game with no runs scored:

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  PA  AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI BB **TOB** IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB Batrs
+----+-------------+---+----+-------+---+---+--+--+--+--+--+---+--+-------+---+--+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+-----+
    1 2001-05-29    SFG  ARI L  0-1   69  57  0  9  4  0  0   0 10    20     5  9   1  1  0   0   1  0  1  15    19 

    2 1991-05-17    CHC @PHI L  0-1   65  56  0 10  1  0  0   0  9    19     2 11   0  0  0   0   1  0  1  17    19
    3 1989-08-23    MON  LAD L  0-1   79  70  0 13  1  0  0   0  6    19     3 18   0  3  0   0   3  0  1  13    20
    4 2005-08-13    COL  WSN L  0-8   42  36  0 13  1  0  0   0  5    19     0  7   0  1  0   1   2  0  1  15    15
    5 2001-09-02    ARI @SDP L  0-1   58  45  0  7  3  0  0   0 10    19     4 10   1  2  0   1   0  0  0  19    22 

    6 1976-08-27    CAL  NYY L  0-5   60  54  0 13  3  0  0   0  4    18     1  9   1  1  0   0   1  4  1  15    12
    7 1976-07-06    NYM @HOU L  0-1   45  34  0  8  2  0  0   0 10    18     0  7   0  1  0   0   2  0  1  15    13
    8 1972-05-07    LAD @MON L  0-1   52  43  0 10  0  0  0   0  7    18     0  3   1  1  0   0   2  0  3  13    14
    9 1966-09-15    CLE  KCA L  0-1   49  41  0 10  2  0  0   0  8    18     0  7   0  0  0   0   2  0  0  16    17
   10 1964-09-30    CIN  PIT L  0-1   66  56  0  9  0  0  0   0  9    18     4 17   0  1  0   0   0  4  0  18    17

The record is 20, and that's a weird game. Firstly, it was an 18 inning game, so 20 baserunners is not so unusual. The Giants were given 18 intentional walks, 2 to Jeff Kent and 3 to Big Head. They had 20 baserunners, scored none, but had just 15 left on base. One of those 5 baserunners can be accounted for by a GIDP by Big Head. And Marvin Bernard got credited with a pick off, but hey stayed on base due to an error. The real answer is other double plays that were not GIDPs. In the 6th inning, Big Head lined into a double play. In the 8th, Armando Rios and Rich Aurilia were in a strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play. In the 14th, Ramon Martinez lined into a double play.

The Pirates have had 15 straight losing seasons.  Let's look up stuff about them in that stretch.

Best game scores.  Only three times over 90 in  over 2400 games.  In all baseball, there have been 219 such starts in those years.

Meanwhile, they have a pair under 0 and a third on zero.  All baseball has had 94 under and 17 more at zero.

In a piece of heartbreaking news, free agent pitcher Joe Kenndy has passed away. Leaving behind his wife and a young son the day after Thanksgiving, this is a terribly sad turn of events.

Kennedy has a largely nondescript career, primarily starting for below-average teams. One interesting tidbit I found is the list of batters he struck out the most times in his career, which ended much too soon:

                    PA  AB  H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB  **SO**   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS   SH  SF IBB HBP GDP G_miss YR_miss
+-----------------+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+------+-------+
 Jason Giambi       29  26   4  0  0  1   1   2    11    .154  .241  .269  .510   0   0   0   1   1
 Carlos Delgado     42  36   5  2  0  1   2   5     7    .139  .262  .278  .540   0   0   0   1   2
 Jorge Posada       33  29  12  6  0  0   2   4     7    .414  .485  .621 1.106   0   0   1   0   0
 Alfonso Soriano    31  27   5  0  1  0   2   3     7    .185  .258  .259  .517   0   1   0   0   0
 Eric Hinske        21  21   5  3  0  1   5   0     6    .238  .238  .524  .762   0   0   0   0   0                

He pitched quite effectively against some of the majors' best hitters.

With the death of Josh Hancock earlier this season, that's two active players who passed away this year, and that's simply awful.

So, I wrote a post the other day about most runs scored without a hit. That led me to thinking about near no-hitters, which made me think about Harvey Haddix. I remember hearing Bob Buhl, then a pitcher for the Braves, say many years later that they were stealing signs from the Pittsburgh catcher during that game, and yet still managed just the one hit off Haddix, coming in the 13th inning. And finally that reminded me that I had once heard that Buhl held the record for the most ABs in a season without getting a hit. Is that true? Let's check the PI Batting Season Finder. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you celebrating the holiday tomorrow.

I probably will not have time to post tomorrow, so I'll leave you with wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving, with lots of Turkey and Stuffing.

Gobble Gobbel!

Here's the comparison of the real NL MVP voting vs the voting by the SOTD readers.

First, the top 10 vote-getters from the real vote:

Player, Club         1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Points

Jimmy Rollins, PHI    16  7   4   4   1                         353
Matt Holliday, COL    11 18   1   1       1                     336
Prince Fielder, MIL    5  6  17   3               1             284
David Wright, NYM         1   4  12   7   1   1   2             182
Ryan Howard, PHI              2   6   3   3   3   2       3     112
Chipper Jones, ATL            1   3   3   7   5   1   1         107
Jake Peavy, SD                    2   5   5   4   1   4   1      97
Chase Utley, PHI              1       5   2   6   4   1   3      89
Albert Pujols, STL                    1   2   2   3   6   5      50
Hanley Ramirez, FLA                   3   2       4   4   1      49

And here are the top 10 vote-getters from the SOTD readers:

                  1st  2nd  3rd  4th  5th  6th  7th  8th  9th  10th  Total

1.  Matt Holliday   7    7    6    2         1    1                    232
2.  Jimmy Rollins   9    5    1    1    2    2              1    1     211
3.  David Wright    5    5    3    5    2    3         1               204
4.  Prince Fielder  1    4    3    2    5    2    2    3         1     146
5.  Chase Utley     1    2    2    4    3    1    1    1         2     108
6.  Chipper Jones   1         3    3         2    2    5    4    1     101
7.  Hanley Ramirez       1         3    5    3    5              1      96
8.  Jake Peavy           1    4         2    2    2         1    1      74
9.  Albert Pujols   1         2    2         1    3    1    3    3      73
10. Ryan Howard               1    1    1    1    3    4    1    4      56

Now, we had only 25 ballots, as compared to 32 ballots overall. If you scale the SOTD votes, Rollins has 11.5 first-place votes and 270 overall points. Holliday has 9 first-place votes and 297 overall points. The first-place votes are pretty close to the real voting, but you folks gave more secondary votes to Holliday, putting him over the top.

But note that SOTD readers came up with the same top 10 candidates as the real voters, although the order was a bit different. Ryan Howard did a lot better in the real voting, while David Wright did a lot better in the SOTD voting.

In general, I noticed the same trend here are with the AL Cy Young voting. The real voters seemed to consider mainly just Holliday and Rollins for the win, whereas the SOTD readers considered many more players. I think Wright got hurt a lot in the real voting due to the Mets collapse, and perhaps if I had started the NL MVP voting right at the end of the season (instead of with a week or two left), Wright would probably have gotten fewer votes.

Anyway, great job by all.

Well, here's an interesting one, using the Team Batting Game Finder. Most runs scored with no hits:

Read the rest of this entry »