Catcher Kurt Suzuki has now started 19 games in the lead off spot for the A's. Combined with the 6 games that Ivan Rodriguez has led off for the Tigers there have already been 25 games that a catcher has led off.  This is more than all but 6 other seasons since 1956.

Suzuki's 19 are the third most in a season since 1956 by anyone not named Jason Kendall.  Of course Kendall owned this category, having made significantly more starts as a leading-off catcher (445) than everyone else since 1956 combined (275).

The interesting name on the list is Craig Biggio, who only led off in 35 out of his 403 (8.7%) starts at catcher (early in his career). Of course, he would go on to become one of the alltime great leadoff hitters and lead off 65% (1526/2336) of his starts at every other position.

Daryle Ward (son of Gary) had a big hit for the Cubs today. Perusing his career stats, I noticed that he once hit 20 homers for the Astros, doing it in just 264 ABs. Got me to thinking about who's been able to reach 20 homers in a season with the fewest ABs:

  Cnt Player             **AB** HR Year Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  R   H  2B 3B RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+-------+--+----+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
    1 Willie McCovey      229   20 1962  24 SFG NL  91 261  41  67  6  1  54  29   1  35   0   0   3   6   3  3  .293  .368  .590  .958 739
    2 Art Shamsky         234   21 1966  24 CIN NL  96 271  41  54  5  0  47  32   1  45   0   3   2   5   0  2  .231  .321  .521  .842 79
    3 Mark McGwire        236   32 2000  36 STL NL  89 321  60  72  8  0  73  76  12  78   7   0   2   5   1  0  .305  .483  .746 1.229 *3/467
    4 Johnny Blanchard    243   21 1961  28 NYY AL  93 275  38  74 10  1  54  27   9  28   4   0   1   6   1  0  .305  .382  .613  .995 *2/79
    5 Dave Ross           247   21 2006  29 CIN NL  90 296  37  63 15  1  52  37   7  75   3   4   5   4   0  0  .255  .353  .579  .932 *2
    6 Glenallen Hill      253   20 1999  34 CHC NL  99 278  43  76  9  1  55  22   1  61   0   0   3   7   5  1  .300  .353  .581  .934 79/D
    7 Kevin Maas          254   21 1990  25 NYY AL  79 300  42  64  9  0  41  43  10  76   3   0   0   2   1  2  .252  .367  .535  .902 *3D
    8 Daryle Ward         264   20 2000  25 HOU NL 119 281  36  68 10  2  47  15   2  61   0   0   2   6   0  0  .258  .295  .538  .833 73/D9
    9 Johnny Mize         274   25 1950  37 NYY AL  90 305  43  76 12  0  72  29   0  24   2   0   0   4   0  1  .277  .351  .595  .946 *3
   10 Chris Duncan        280   22 2006  25 STL NL  90 314  60  82 11  3  43  30   0  69   2   0   2   4   0  0  .293  .363  .589  .952 *793/D    

There's Ward at 8, but McGwire really sticks out, getting 32 homers in just 236 ABs.

Yesterday, Mariano Rivera set a (post 1956 and probably all time) record of sorts.  Rivera has started the 2008 season with 14 consecutive appearances of at least one inning each without allowing more than one base runner in any of them.  Rivera and Joakim Soria  of KC each started the season with 13 such games tying John Franco's record from 1992. However, Joakim had a bout of wildness on May 8th and Rivera alone set the new record. Here's the list.

Rivera's overall streak for such games is also at 14 (He gave up 3 runs in his last regular season appearance in 2008 2007.) Meanwhile 2 pitchers (Soria and Troy Percival) both had streaks of 15 games (dating back to last season) snapped on May 8th. The overall record is 19, set by Armondo Benitez in 2004 and tied by Rafael Soriano last year. Here is that list.

In addition to not allowing more than one base runner in any of his appearances, Rivera has also not allowed any runs. The record for consecutive appearances of any length without a run and less than one base runner to start a season is 16 by Tony Fossas in 1995.  The record for such a streak at any point during the season is 25 by Dan Plesac in 2003. Eric Gagne has the longest such streak while averaging at least one inning per appearance.

Obviously, these lists are geared to today's style of bullpen usage. If you need any further confirmation of this (and I don't know why you would),  here is the list of pitchers with the most appearances in a season in which they threw at least one inning and allowed no more than 1 base runner and 0 runs. 5 of the top 8 are from last season.

Well, well, well. Tampa Bay got itself a 1-hit shutout yesterday.

Here are the leaders so far this season for 3-hit (or fewer) shutouts:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 TBR 2008     4 Ind. Games
 ATL 2008     3 Ind. Games
 CLE 2008     2 Ind. Games
 BOS 2008     2 Ind. Games
 WSN 2008     1 Ind. Games
 TOR 2008     1 Ind. Games
 TEX 2008     1 Ind. Games
 SDP 2008     1 Ind. Games
 KCR 2008     1 Ind. Games
 FLA 2008     1 Ind. Games
 CHW 2008     1 Ind. Games
 ARI 2008     1 Ind. Games                

And hey, guess what, Tampa Bay did it again today, their 5th such game of the season.

Last year, only two teams (Mets and Padres) had as many as 5 shutouts with 3 or fewer hits.

Folks, we are seeing the first good season for Tampa Bay. No more over-the-hill veterans helping them slug their way to a few victories. They've got a core of excellent young talent, including several pitchers, and they are going to be competitive.

Here's a fun little sort via Play Index:

From 1956 to 2008, Playing for NYY, In team's first 35 games, (requiring R=0), sorted by greatest number of games matching selected criteria in a game

                   Year Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+----+-----+-------------------------+
 Alvaro Espinoza   1990    30 Ind. Games
 Bobby Richardson  1960    29 Ind. Games
 Bill Skowron      1960    28 Ind. Games
 Clete Boyer       1966    28 Ind. Games
 Sandy Alomar      1975    28 Ind. Games
 Bobby Richardson  1961    27 Ind. Games
 Gene Michael      1968    27 Ind. Games
 Jim Mason         1974    27 Ind. Games
 Roger Maris       1966    27 Ind. Games
 Alvaro Espinoza   1989    27 Ind. Games
 Robinson Cano     2008    27 Ind. Games
 Gene Michael      1971    26 Ind. Games
 Jim Mason         1975    26 Ind. Games
 Bucky Dent        1977    26 Ind. Games                 

Not exactly a group that Robinson Cano, coming into this season, probably wanted to join.

Joey Votto just hit 3 homers in his 57th career game. Here are all the players before Votto to have a 3+ HR game among their first 57:

                   Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
 Jose Ortiz            1 Ind. Games
 Jonny Gomes           1 Ind. Games
 Bobby Estalella       1 Ind. Games
 Don Demeter           1 Ind. Games

Gavin Floyd just missing throwing hte 17th no-hitter in WHite Sox history.  The PI doesn't let you look up all baseball history, but you can get a list of all ChiSox no-nos in the retrosheet era.

Interesting posts over on the suggestions thread:

1. I was trying to find the most career games by a pitcher (Starts or Games) who never came to the plate to bat (without a PA). I thought Jack Morris would make the starter answer easy, but he batted once.

   Comment by fabio — May 6, 2008 @ 8:51 pm

2. Fabio, there’s no easy way to search for that since the batting and pitching searches are on different engines. But here’s a place to start. Obviously any pitcher who pitched before 1973 will have batted at least once, especially if he appears on a leaderboard for games.

   So here are the leaders for game starts since 1973:

   http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/ME46

   The first guy I noticed was Frank Tanana, but he had an at-bat for the Tigers in 1991, and then a bunch for the Mets at the tail end of his career.

   The next guy I noticed was Mike Mussina, who has been in the AL his entire career. But, thanks to interleague play, he’s had a bunch of ABs.

   Next I saw Mike Moore. He was in the AL his entire career, and played before interleague play. But, alas, he had 1 AB in 1987 for some odd reason.

   Dave Stieb had 2 ABs…one in 1980 and one in 1998. (I wonder if that’s the biggest break in history between ABs.)

   Looks like the answer is Mike Flanagan with 404 starts.

   Something similar could be done for relievers, although it’s harder since it’s possible that relievers prior to 1973 could go without PAs.

   Comment by Andy — May 6, 2008 @ 10:10 pm

This is the 20th anniversay of Kerry Wood's big 20 K game.  Shane Reynolds, opposing him, had a nice day as well, posting a game score of 68.

That leads to a  question: what's the worst game score ever in a loss?

 It's these games.  Well, it ain't perfect.  The top two are no-decisions.  Thus the best ever game score in a loss goes to Harvey Haddix.  (thinks for a beat).  Well, yeah, that makes  a lot of sense.  Here's the cleaned-up accurate list of pitchers who got decisions.

OK, how about in a 9-inning loss?  These are the worst game scores.

And while I'm looking it up, here are the worst game scores for a guy who got a win.  Maybe Woody Williams was just pitching to the score.

Ages and relative production are a pretty close comp for these two - over the first three years of their big league careers, huh?

Just some of the fun you have have playing around with B-R.com's PI.