How 'bout this list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder - since 1901, most career RBI for those players with zero career hits:

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Yup, there's alotta pitchers on this list - but, it's not all pitchers. And, catcher Roy Luebbe stands alone at the top of the list for most career RBI (3) in the modern era (1901-forward) for any batter with zero big league hits to his credit. Speaking of position players on this list, dig Larry Littleton: 27 career PA, 0 hits and 1 RBI. Well, at least he got that ribbie...

All told, there are 35 non-pitchers on this list. Click here to see those alone.

Lastly, I would like to wish all the readers of blog a very happy and healthy new year. And, may all your resolutions for 2010 come true!

Seems to be a slow day here in December. Lets try a little PI Tag.

Question 1:

Which player hit a triple in each of his first 2 major league plate appearances and then never again? (Can't be answered with a single PI link, but it can be found in several different ways using PI)

Via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Game Finder - since 1954, batters who have posted 2 or more games where they had 7+ PA and reached base zero times and had zero sac bunts and/or sac flies:

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That's the beauty of baseball, huh? On any given day, or two, someone like Carl Yastrzemski can be as bad as someone like Byron Browne...

In recent history and even throughout the annals of baseball, there have been many pitchers who have been used as specialists, brought in only to face a few batters at a time and rarely trusted with extended appearances. Even so, you would be hard pressed to find a pitcher who pitched as little in his appearances than Randy Flores did last season. In his 27 games Flores faced 52 batters for an average of 1.926 batters per appearance.  Since 1916 (when the BF stats are first available) no pitcher has pitched in more than 8 games and faced fewer batters per game.  In fact, the only other pitcher since 1916 to pitch more than 8 games and face less than 2 batters per game was Jesse Orosco who faced 69 batters in 35 innings in 2001. Here are the pitchers since 1916 with the fewest BF/G in at least 25 games.

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Not only did Flores face only a few batters, he also was also rather ineffective when he did pitch. It is therefore no surprise that Flores also staked new ground in the IP/G category. His .44 IP/G was the lowest ratio for any Major Leaguer ever with at least 20 games pitched. Here are the pitchers since 1871 with at least 25 games pitched and a IP/G ratio of less than .5.

A simple list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season Finder - teams, since 1901, with four or more pitchers who had 130+ strikeouts in a given season. Here's the squads to do it...

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So, it's only been done 62 times since 1901. And, the Dodgers have done in 8 times. Note that, prior to 1946, it was only done twice - by the 1904-05 Philadelphia Athletics. And, last season, the Yankees, Giants and Cubs pulled the trick. Speaking of the Cubs, since 2001, they've done this 4 times. I wonder if all those home day-games, combined with batters being more whiff-happy these days, has anything to do with that? Either that, or, the Cubs braintrust these days likes pitchers who make batters swing and miss.

I'm not really sure when big league baseball teams made the switch, for the most part, to using a 5-man rotation. I've read where some think it was a product of the early 1970's. And, I know that the Dodgers used a 5-man rotation in 1972. But, for the purpose of this study, I'm going to draw a line at 1962 - even if it means fishing with a net that's a little bigger than needed.

And, what study is this? Simple, it's the question of: Since 5-man rotations somewhat became the norm, how many teams in baseball have posted seasons were 5 pitchers on their team had 31+ games started? Or, in other words, since 1962, how many teams have finished a season with 5 pitchers making 31 or more starts. Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season Finder, here are the teams to make this cut and those who missed by one pitcher:

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As you can see, since 1962, there have only been four teams in baseball to have a year where they had 5 pitchers make 31+ starts that season. And, only one A.L. team has done it in that time: The 2003 Seattle Mariners. I wonder if we'll ever see another American League team do it again?

Yesterday, the reigning MLB sacrifice hit king was traded to a league in which he will hardly get to bat. In 2009, Vazquez had 20 SH in only 91 PA, the third highest percentage ever for anyone with at least 20 SH. Here are the leaders.

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Shocker played at a time when sacrifice flies were counted as SH, but given his extra-base hit total, I doubt that this was the case.

The Rangers tied a post-1954 record this past season for most games getting at most 1 hit:

There are some bad, bad teams in there, but that does not include the five most recent teams on the list. That's kind of surprising, since these days there's so much offense that I'd think only the really bad teams would get one-hit so often. But I guess that 4 games is too small of a sample for such general trends to apply.

Here are the post-1954 teams to get no-hit twice in a season:

Note that the 1967 Tigers won one of those games. This was the famous game against the Orioles that we've discussed on this blog a few times. The Tigers scored 2 runs in the 9th inning on a few walks, a wild pitch, and a fielder's choice.

I got curious to see what players have the rest ratio of total bases in a season vs. outs made in that same season.

After playing around with the parameters, it seems that 0.8 is an exceptionally good ratio, meaning a player racks up a number of total bases that is 80% of his total outs made.

Here are the players from the last 3 seasons to achieve the 0.8 ratio in a qualified batting season:

It seems that most of these guys make the list due to very high OBP as well as lots of extra-base hits. Some players were also helped by low GIDP totals, which shaves a few outs off that total. I find it interesting that the strikeout totals are all over the map.

Putting the ratio at 1.0 (meaning seasons where a player's total bases matched or exceeded his total outs) yields these 65 qualified seasons: