Baseball Reference Blog

Games of Wednesday, 9/7/11:

-- Oakland's Guillermo Moscoso no-hit the Royals for 7.2 innings before a single by rookie catcher Salvador Perez. Moscoso retired the first 17 batters before walking Alcides Escobar (I kid you not), the only other baserunner in 8 innings. Will he get to try for the shutout? Moscoso is at 106 pitches; he's never pitched beyond 8 IP or 110 pitches in the majors.

• There still have been just 2 no-hitters thrown against KC in their 43-year history, by Jon Lester in 2008 and Nolan Ryan in 1973.

-- Name that hurler: 6+ IP, 7 hits, 4 runs, 4 walks, 3 wild pitches, 3 SB in 3 tries, 1 HR, 108 pitches, leadoff man reached safely in 6 of 7 innings. (The answer is here.)

A.J. Burnett had three wild pitches in today's Yankees game. 

Before today, no pitcher since 1919 had 8+ games in their career with 3+ WP.  Here is the list of those with 4+ such games in their career:

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With today, Burnett now has 8 games with 3+ WP and stands alone at the top of this list.

Reader fajita writes in with the following question--anybody know the answer?

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=18771085

so you probably have seen the video of this...

first pitch of the at bat, pennington (A's) foul tips a ball straight back, and the ball lodges into the catcher's (josh bard) facemask.

my question is what would have happened if it was a 2-strike count on pennington?  would that have counted as a foul-tip catch and been a strike out?

(Andy here again. If you want a good reason not to like Jorge Posada, look at this bonehead play. The argument afterwards makes it twice as bad. The rules on this one are very clear.)

David Ortiz has been one of my favorite targets in the past, so it's only fair to say it now: he's having the best season ever by a designated hitter at least 35 years old. Aside from being quite consistent this year, his OPS+ ranks tops among DH's who qualified for the batting title in their Age 35 season or later:

Is WAR the new RBI? | Its About The Money

I'm not going to speak to the larger discussion around this article because the author loses a lot of credibility/weight (at least for me) when he admits in the comments, "I slightly misrepresent how the stat works here, in favor of making the statement more hyperbolic." That and the article is being discussed elsewhere, but one of the comments points out a particular issue that annoys me.

Here is the Comment by Hank

I'll post this again....

Carl Crawford career LF at the Trop 22.5 UZR/150
Carl Crawford career LF everywhere else: 7.5 UZR/150

This is over 8 years (so each sample size is the rough equivalent of 4 full years).

1 year OF UZR samples are bad, but even the general "3 years is what you need" can also have issue as UZR can have systematic biases.... input bias, park effects and subjective components (armR, errR for outfielders) which don't even out over a 3 year period.

I like the concept of WAR and the issue I have with it is bad input data (the defensive stats in both WAR models and the baserunning values now put into the fWAR). Until these variables can be measured better (FieldFX?), any difference in WAR between players based on these components should be taken with a huge boulder of salt.

OR ANOTHER OF A SIMILAR VEIN

THANK YOU for this post.

UZR may be good for multiple years, but it is a flawed single season stat. Saying Carl Crawford one year in TB went from being an elite LF to being a terrible one the next year makes no sense.

What is the issue here exactly? Why would a difference in home and road UZR be evidence of a flaw in UZR? Or why would the fact that Crawford's UZR is much worse this year mean there is a problem with uzr? Some players hit a lot better at home than on the road? Why wouldn't fielders see the same effect.

For some reason when defensive numbers are inconsistent across splits or years folks gnash their teeth and blame the faulty defensive metrics, but Carl Crawford can go from an OPS+ of 135 to 82 in a year and people won't question the offensive numbers.

Why do we expect greater consistency on defense than on offense? That doesn't seem to me to be a valid expectation.

Zach Stewart tossed a near-perfect game Monday in his 10th career game, allowing 1 hit and no other baserunners in 9 innings.

Since 1919, here are the 11 pitchers with a start of at least 9 innings allowing no more than 1 baserunner, within their first 20 games:

A heads-up for anyone who didn't see this note at Stathead or BBTF... At 10 p.m. on 9/18, MLB Network is running a special Behind The Seams called "The Stat Story" -- a documentary (narrated by Bob Costas) about the history of sabermetrics, as well as its spread into front offices over the past few decades.

Barring a collapse by one of the Big Three, the Phillies will become the 17th team since 1893 to have 3 pitchers with at least 5 Wins Above Replacement (using B-R's WAR formula).

If you believe that pitching is the main key to championships, this list might give you pause; only 2 teams with this kind of "big three" have won the World Series, and none after 1912.

-- Cliff Lee, who was lifted after 8.2 scoreless innings in last start, got his 6th shutout of the year Monday (as first noted by Andy), stopping Atlanta on 5 hits and no walks in exactly 100 pitches. That matches the most shutouts since 1989; Randy Johnson also had 6 in 1998.

• Lee's surge since July 30 -- 7 straight wins, 0.96 ERA -- has pumped intrigue into the NL Cy Young race, with Lee and Halladay virtually tied in ERA, IP and Wins Above Replacement. Meanwhile, Clayton Kershaw leads the league in Strikeouts and IP, has a slight edge on Lee and Halladay in ERA, and is a solid 3rd in WAR; and rounding out the pack, Cole Hamels leads the league in WHIP, Ian Kennedy leads in Wins and W%, and Johnny Cueto remains the ERA leader. (Kennedy's advanced stats don't compare with this bunch, but he deserves to be in the mix for stepping up his game as the #1 starter on a division winner.) Things may shake out a bit over the final 4 weeks, but will a clear-cut winner emerge?

Sorry for a third straight post involving the Phillies, but I see that Cliff Lee has thrown 7 shutouts innings so far tonight and might get his 6th shutout of the season.

If he does, he'll be the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 1998 to record 6 shutouts in a season: