This past season, Carlos Marmol turned in the 4th best ERA+ season (min. 50 innings) for anyone as young as he. Marmol, who started his professional career as an outfielder, was the only middle reliever to receive an MVP vote in 2007. Interestingly enough, Marmol's age 24 season was extremely similar to another age 24 season that had been turned in almost a decade before.

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I was looking at some PI lists and I came upon a fact that surprised me, although maybe it shouldn't have. Using the team game finder (which goes back to 1957), I was looking at the most pitchers used by a team to throw a nine inning shutout (7 by the Rangers in 2004) and the most pitchers used to throw a nine inning no-hitter (6 by the Astros in 2003 ). When I went to look for the same information regarding perfect games, I came back with all aces. This means, that since 1957 no team has thrown a combined perfect game. Logically, this makes sense, in that if a pitcher is throwing a perfect game he's never in trouble and, unless something really strange happens, his pitch count will be low.

That lead me to the next logical question. Which pitcher has gone the furthest into a perfect game, only to by lifted? Read the rest of this entry »

Playing around with Play Index today, I applied a bunch of filters in order to be able to look at Trevor Hoffman and Jeff Nelson, side by side, during the period where Nelson was at his peak.  Granted, Hoffman did not pitch in 1992.  But, if you just look at innings pitched and batters faced during this snapshot in time, these two were pretty equal in terms of opportunity to perform.  And, check it out, in terms of relative pitching results, they were not too far from each other as well.  Note the marks in OPS+ and ERA+.  Yes, Hoffman was better – but, not by a ton.  The stats:

  Cnt Player            **OPS+**   G   GS   IP   From  To   Ages  CG SHO  GF  W   L   W-L%  SV   H    R   ER   BB   SO    ERA  ERA+  HR   BF  IBB HBP  BK  WP Teams         BA   OBP   SLG   OPS   SH  SF  2B  3B GDP  SB   CS  Pk
+----+-----------------+--------+----+---+------+----+----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+-----+---+----+----+----+----+----+------+----+---+-----+---+---+---+---+-----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+---+
    1 Trevor Hoffman        64    641   0  710   1993 2003 25-35   0   0 527  45  44  .506 352  533  243  219  217  808   2.78  146  66  2861  43   6   0  40 TOT-SDP      .205  .266  .334  .600  20  22  97  20  38   37  10   2
    2 Jeff Nelson           75    714   0  721.2 1992 2003 25-36   0   0 210  46  39  .541  31  581  295  266  382  771   3.32  136  48  3118  58  60   2  33 SEA-NYY-TOT  .223  .333  .329  .662  44  27 109  12  57   85  19   2 

 Seasons/Careers found: 2.

Since 1957, there have been 11 games where one player had at least 3 homers and at least 1 stolen base in the same game. Only one player has done it twice. NAME THAT PLAYER!

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Since 1957 there have been 97 games in which a pitcher has started, despite the fact that he had pitched the day before. The most recent of these was by Elizardo Ramirez in 2006. The most dominant of those starts include 4 shutouts and a seven inning, 11 strikeout , 3 hit performance by Calvin Schiraldi.

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Do you know who holds the record since 1901?

It's Tommy Glavine.

Here is the full list of most game starts since 1901, led by Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, and Phil Niekro.  You can see their total number of games a few columns over, and the difference tells you how many relief appearances they had. #10 Tom Glavine is the only guy in the top 200 to have zero relief appearances. Five other guys had just one relief appearance. Here they are, along with number of career starts in parentheses: Mike Mussina (502), Frank Viola (420), Steve Trachsel (409), Brad Radke (377), and Livan Hernandez (350.)

I would imagine that there is a different record-holder prior to 1901, when most starts were complete games and teams usually used just 1 pitcher per game.

Here's a simple game finder search, setting the position to pitcher and specifying "sub" rather than "starter".

There have been 171 shttp://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/7kDj such games since 1957.

The three most recent were by Carlos Marmol, Jorge Sosa, and Adam Wainwright, all in 2006. It's been done the most times (4) by Ken Tatum, Lou Sleater, and Mickey McDermott.

I got the idea for this from a comment about Greg Minton, who did it in this game, over at 88 Topps Cards.

Last year might've been Barry Bonds' last year.   He had  99 RC.  How does that rank up?

Pretty well.  I had to limit it to 1871-2006 because everyone who played in 2007 had their last season then.  Bonds would be near the top, but he's no Shoeless Joe.

How 'bout that David Orr?

Here are the longest careers (in terms of at-bats) since 1901 with no career homers or RBI (pitchers excluded.)

  Cnt Player              **AB**   HR  RBI From  To   Ages   G    PA    R    H   2B  3B  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB   CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions Teams
+----+-----------------+---------+---+----+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----+---+---+----+---+----+---+---+---+---+----+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+-----------+
    1 Gene Good             119     0    0 1906 1906 23-23   34   135    4   18   0   0   13   0    0   2   1   0   0    2   0  .151  .246  .151  .397 /*78      BSN
    2 Bill Schwartz          86     0    0 1904 1904 20-20   24    88    5   13   2   0    0   0    0   0   2   0   0    4   0  .151  .151  .174  .325 /*35      CLE
    3 Frank Manush           77     0    0 1908 1908 24-24   23    82    6   12   2   1    2   0    0   1   2   0   0    2   0  .156  .188  .208  .396 /*54      PHA
    4 Doug Saunders          67     0    0 1993 1993 23-23   28    73    8   14   2   0    3   0    4   0   3   0   2    0   0  .209  .243  .239  .482 /*456     NYM
    5 Duke Reilley           62     0    0 1909 1909 24-24   20    71   10   13   0   0    4   0    0   0   5   0   0    5   0  .210  .258  .210  .468 /*78      CLE
    6 Eric Reed              61     0    0 2006 2007 25-26   60    68    9    6   0   0    3   1   16   2   2   0   1    4   1  .098  .167  .098  .265 /*87      FLA
    7 Bill Gannon            61     0    0 1901 1901 28-28   15    63    2    9   0   0    1   0    0   0   1   0   0    5   0  .148  .161  .148  .309 /*9       CHC
    8 Milo Allison           60     0    0 1913 1917 22-26   49    78   15   13   0   0   15   0    9   0   3   0   0    4   0  .217  .373  .217  .590 /897      CHC-CLE
    9 Alexis Infante         55     0    0 1987 1990 25-28   60    62   11    6   1   0    2   0   12   1   4   0   3    1   0  .109  .155  .127  .282 /564      TOR-ATL
   10 Wayne Graham           55     0    0 1963 1964 27-28   30    58    2    7   1   0    3   0    6   0   0   0   0    0   0  .127  .172  .145  .317 /57       PHI-NYM
   11 Billy Reed             52     0    0 1952 1952 29-29   15    55    4   13   0   0    0   0    5   1   2   0   2    0   0  .250  .264  .250  .514 /*4       BSN
   12 Pete Elko              52     0    0 1943 1944 25-26   16    56    3    9   1   0    4   0    5   0   0   0   2    0   0  .173  .232  .192  .424 /*5       CHC
   13 Charlie Beamon         51     0    0 1978 1981 24-27   45    54    8   10   2   0    3   0    8   0   0   0   1    1   0  .196  .241  .235  .476 /3D7      SEA-TOR
   14 Kid Durbin             51     0    0 1907 1909 20-22   32    57    6   14   1   0    4   0    0   1   1   0   0    0   0  .275  .339  .294  .633 /8197     CHC-TOT
   15 Art Lopez              49     0    0 1965 1965 28-28   38    51    5    7   0   0    1   0    6   0   1   0   0    0   0  .143  .160  .143  .303 /97       NYY
   16 Tom Runnells           46     0    0 1985 1986 30-31   40    53    4    8   2   0    3   0    6   0   4   0   2    0   0  .174  .224  .217  .441 /645      CIN
   17 Chick Keating          45     0    0 1913 1926 21-34   30    51    4    4   1   1    6   0   13   0   0   0   0    1   0  .089  .196  .156  .352 /*645     CHC-PHI
   18 Bull Smith             43     0    0 1904 1911 23-30   15    44    2    6   0   1    1   0    0   0   0   0   0    0   0  .140  .159  .186  .345 /*79      PIT-CHC-WSH
   19 Tim Pyznarski          42     0    0 1986 1986 26-26   15    47    3   10   1   0    4   0   11   1   0   0   2    2   0  .238  .319  .262  .581 /*3       SDP
   20 Robbie Wine            41     0    0 1986 1987 23-24   23    44    3    6   2   0    2   0   14   0   1   0   0    0   0  .146  .186  .195  .381 /*2       HOU
   21 Skeeter Shelton        40     0    0 1915 1915 27-27   10    43    1    1   0   0    2   0   10   0   1   0   0    0   0  .025  .071  .025  .096 /*8       NYY
   22 Steve Rodriguez        39     0    0 1995 1995 24-24   18    46    5    7   1   0    6   0   10   0   1   0   1    2   2  .179  .289  .205  .494 /*46D     TOT
   23 Eddie Feinberg         38     0    0 1938 1939 20-21   16    42    2    7   1   0    2   0    1   0   2   0   0    0   0  .184  .225  .211  .436 /6497     PHI
   24 Hank Perry             36     0    0 1912 1912 25-25   13    40    3    6   1   0    3   0    0   0   1   0   0    0   0  .167  .231  .194  .425 /*8       DET         

More on #20 Robbie Wine here.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the players who have gone an entire season without walking or being hit by a pitch. Here are the leaders in terms of plate appearances: Read the rest of this entry »