I already mentioned Tim Kurkjian’s “Is This a Great Game, or What?” previously. I just finished the book, and I highly recommend it. While I read the book, I made notes about some great stats that he mentioned. I'm going to make a bunch of "TK notes" here in honor of Tim Kurkjian's fine book.

Note #1 is about intentional walks. Kurkjian mentioned something that I had never noticed: there is a huge disparity in intentional walks issued by team. A disparity for which teams receive the most IBBs would be less surprising (hello, Barry Bonds,) but TK points out that some managers love the IBB and some managers hate it.

Check out the 2007 pitching splits. Boston issued the fewest IBBs with just 20, followed by Anaheim with 22 and St Louis with 25. To be sure, those teams issued fewer IBBs in part because they were better teams and in fewer stickier situations that required IBBs. But, the league leader in IBBs was Atlanta, also a good team, with 89. Bobby Cox is obviously a true believer. Next highest total was 62, from both Philadelphia and Houston.

There are lots of gems like this in Kurkjian's book.

Inspired, by a comment in post #1 of this btf thread, I thought I'd look up who the best AL outfielders of the 1950s were.  Mantle, and Williams are obvious #s 1 & 2.  But can you guess any of the Top 5?  How 'bout Top 10?

Here's a fun nugget for you via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Event Finder - there were 69 "four-pitch" bases loaded walks allowed in 2007.  And, Aaron Fultz was the leader of the pack in that he allowed 3 of the 69 last season.  And, twice, Fultz did it with 2 outs.

That's not exactly a way to get yourself in good with your manager, or, the fans, for that matter, is it?

I've been reading Tim Kurkjian's "Is This a Great Game, or What?", a book I have enjoyed so far, and he mentions on page 17 that Joey Devine was the first player to give up grand slams in each of his first two career relief appearances.

Using the PI, we can confirm this.

First, here are all the reliever to give up homers in each of their first two relief appearances. 42 guys have done it. Devine gave up a granny in extra innings in the first game. Interesting, in the second game, he did give up a grand slam, although only 3 of the runs were charged to him because he came into the game with a runner on first. (This still matches what Kurkjian wrote.)

Since Devine did it in 2005, only Mauro Zarate has given up homers in each of his first two games. But he "only" gave up a solo homer to Ryan Howard and a three-run job to Todd Helton.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but I went to the Cardinals-Orioles spring training game yesterday and posted some photos of the stadium and game here. It should help you get in the mood!

It's not as fun sounding as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," but, you have to wonder about "Carmona and Colon at Fenway."  Playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index today, I was looking for really bad starts (by a pitcher) in the post-season.  And, applying some criteria, this is what I found:

  Cnt Player            Date          Series G Tm   Opp GmReslt App,Dec    IP   H  R ER BB SO HR Pit Str GmSc IR IS BF AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk BK WP   ERA
+----+-----------------+-------------+------+-+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+--+--+------+
    1 Fausto Carmona    2007-10-20    ALCS   6 CLE @BOS L  2-12 GS-3  ,L   2    6  7  7  4  2  1  63  33   14       15 11  1  0   0   0  0  0   1  0  0  0  0  0  31.50
    2 Brad Penny        2003-10-08    NLCS   2 FLA @CHC L  3-12 GS-3  ,L   2    7  7  7  2  0  2  54  33   12       15 12  0  0   0   0  1  0   0  1  0  0  0  0  31.50
    3 Russ Ortiz        2002-10-20    WS     2 SFG @ANA L 10-11 GS-2       1.2  9  7  7  0  0  1  46  29    9       14 14  2  0   0   0  0  0   0  2  0  0  0  0  37.80
    4 Bartolo Colon     1999-10-10    ALDS   4 CLE @BOS L  7-23 GS-2  ,L   1    6  7  7  1  1  2  44  27   13       10  9  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0  63.00
    5 Todd Stottlemyre  1996-10-14    NLCS   5 STL  ATL L  0-14 GS-1  ,L   1    9  7  7  0  1  0  38  24    8       12 12  2  1   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0  63.00
    6 Tom Glavine       1992-10-13    NLCS   6 ATL  PIT L  4-13 GS-1  ,L   1    6  8  7  0  0  2  35  24   11       11  9  2  0   0   1  1  0   1  0  0  0  0  0  63.00   Games found: 6.

Note that the two worst "starts" in American League history happened in Fenway Park.  And, both times it happened to Cleveland Indian pitchers.

That's a bummer for Tribe fans, no doubt.

I got a new column up at The Hardball Times today that would've been a nightmare to reserach if I didn't have a PI account. 

I looked up 147 different splits for every team from 1957-onward.  Without a PI account, the only way to do it would be to go team-by-team, looking up the splits page for every farking one of those 1,270 teams. 

PI makes it infinately easier.  Go to 1957's standing page (either AL or NL, makes no difference).  Go to where it says splits and choose Major Leagues.  Once there, pick the splits you like, and click the red text.  BANG - how each team did by that split appears.  Now you can move it into excel so much easier. 

(Sadly, for myself, I started the research last year before the league splits had the red text feature that gave you all team splits, and I had to get NL offensive splits by going team-by-team.  TRUST ME when I say the Play Index makes this sort of thing tremendously easier).