On another thread, we debated a bit about Nolan Ryan's career and legacy. I have long felt that some people give Ryan too much credit, but I'm not as sure that he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame anyway.

When it comes to Ryan's career, there are 3 things that most people think of in terms of his accomplishments:

• 5,714 career strikeouts, which is first all-time
• 7 no-hitters
• 300+ career wins (324 actually, which is 14th all-time)

How many players have 3+ seasons of 700+ PA with an OPS+ of 100 or better?

Seems like the perfect day to make this call to the Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen for Mother Watson:

Mother Watson appeared in a couple major league games with the 1887 Cincinnati Red Stockings, a team which went 81-54. Watson was 22 years old at the time. He pitched 14 innings, giving up 9 earned runs along with 9 unearned runs. He also played in the outfield but had no chances.

He is the only major leaguer named or nicknamed "Mother". A 1987 article in the New York Times said that he "was considered virtuous". However, that explanation of his nickname doesn't square with the fact that a "Mother Watson" was a character in Horatio Alger novels, and not a nice one. Perhaps, the fame of the novels made the name just too enticing for major leaguers of the time not to utilize when a man named Watson came along.

He is recorded as weighing only 145 pounds.

The Wheeling Daily Register, March 30, 1888, reported that Watson was going to be given a trial by the Zanesville team, with expenses paid.

One source thinks he belongs on the "All-Family Team" with Willie "Pops" Stargell, Grandma Murphy, and Uncle Robbie Robinson.

He died at age 33 after being shot.

Betcha there's a lot of mothers out there who either tolerated and/or fostered some baseball fanatic children. If yours was one of them, pay her back today with a thank you. She'd probably love it.

Pitchers since 1919 with more than one regular-season complete game allowing no hits:

Justin Verlander joined this group earlier today with his second career no-hitter.

Cliff Lee pitched  an unusual game last night. He struck out 16 batters in just 7 innings, but allowed 9 hits 3 runs, 1 walk, and took the loss.

Click through for a bunch of stuff about his performance.

Baseball StatHead: May 6, 2011

Stathead posts for today (with some catch-up from yesterday), including relegation thoughts, the worst fielders ever, and SABR award winners.

I was just looking at Juan Pierre's player page after Neil mentioned a recent discussion about the guy on another thread.

Some random thoughts:

• As of today he has exactly 397 walks and 397 strikeouts in his career
• It's amazing that he led the NL in hits in 2006 but also had an 82 OPS+! That's what you get when you bat leadoff and rarely walk.
• Hence leading the league in AB 3 different times.
• He played every single same from 2003 through 2007. Wow.
• How does such a fast guy ground into 77 double plays, especially when batting leadoff? (You can't lead off the game with a GIDP...)
• Led the league (or all of MLB) in caught stealing 6 times, plus leading MLB so far in 2011.
• Hit by pitch might be saving his career OBP. He's gotten on base at a .346 clip...certainly not great but not horrible. His low walk total really hurts him, but he's got 89 times hit by pitch in his career, which really helps a lot.
• At the moment, he has 911 career runs scored. 9-1-1 indeed.

Keeping Score: In the Majors, Young Players Are Still Teething at the Plate - NYTimes.com

Sean writes about how poorly this year's debuts are hitting, plus a note on how well 2 Cardinals are doing at the plate (neither of whom is Albert Pujols).

(Thanks to McCombe35 for writing in with this idea.)

A simple but fascinating list. Here are the guys with the most career walks where at least one third came intentionally.

This list consists mainly of hackers like Guerrero and Ichiro or guys who batted primarily in front of the pitcher and therefore received a lot of intentional walks.

Note that this goes only by walks officially listed as intentional. I suspect about 500 of Barry Bonds' career walks were marked officially as unintentional but were really intentional (in the sense that the catcher might not have set up a few feet off the plate, but the pitcher wasn't going to give Bonds anything to hit.) Also I'm not sure how far back the IBB stat goes.

If we drop the career requirement to one quarter, lots of new names pop up:

Since 1919,  how many teams had a game where at least three of the players in their line-up had 2 stolen bases or more in the same game?