Baseball Reference Blog

By winning his 5th straight start tonight (and 13th in his last 15), Justin Verlander not only put a little more air between Detroit and Cleveland, took sole possession of the MLB wins lead, and notched his 20th game of 10+ Ks. He also reached 100 wins in 191 career games -- faster than all but 12 pitchers since 1919. (Note: All tables exclude tonight's games.)

Today's list from me: Since 1901, teams with the most pitchers who won 30+ games through and including their "Age 24 season."

When Jerry Meals called Julio Lugo safe at home in the 19th inning on July 27th, not only did it provide the Braves with a controversial win, it gave pitcher Scott Proctor a walk-off RBI. Proctor's was the first walk-off RBI by a player in the game as a pitcher since Randy Keisler in 2005 and only the second since 1994.  Since 1974,  8  pitchers have done better than Proctor  and ended a game with a walk-off hit. The PI database also shows 32 game ending hits for pitchers between 1950-1973 (1043 games from that time span are not included in the search; see here.)  As you would expect, a single is the most common of these. However, due to managerial strategies, the home run easily surpasses the double for second place. Here are the plays:

I promised a post about Tony Phillips, and I'll get to his career in a moment. Bear with me as I speak first about this 1990 Score card.

In his 16th career game tonight, Cleveland 2B Jason Kipnis went 5 for 5, with a double and a HR (his 6th in 61 ABs) in Cleveland's 10-3 rout of Detroit.

Here are the other 25 players since 1919 to have a 5-hit game by their 16th career game.
Spot the surprise name (and I don't mean Mark Reynolds), and check out the career of the lone repeater:

I ran across this puzzling play description today:

So Lawton hit a walk-off triple and ended up on second base? Did he go back to second after touching third?

Rick Chandler has the story. 

Crazy, huh?

Through yesterday's games:

That's right--Cliff Lee.

Since 1901, how many players have more wild pitches than one-tenth of their career inning pitched total - with at least 15 career wild pitches?

Only 4 players in history have had a season in which they qualified for the batting title, had an OPS+ of at least 160, and played at least 20 games in right field and 20 games at third base. How many can you name?