Baseball Reference Blog

Quick--who is the Philadelphia Phillies' all-time franchise leader in Saves?

I don't blame you if you guessed Steve Bedrosian, Mitch Williams, or the late Tug McGraw, who have 103, 102, and 94 saves respectively, but the answer is their once-and-future closer, Jose Mesa, with 111.

Wow.

Those of you who collected baseball cards in the 1980s will recall an oddity on the back of Tom Herr's card, specifically his stats in 1985. He drove in 110 RBIs while hitting only 8 HR.

Here's a list of the most recent seasons fitting the criteria of at least 100 RBI with fewer than 10 HR:

Cnt Player            Year RBI HR Age Tm
+---+-----------------+----+---+--+---+---+
    1 Paul Molitor      1996 113  9  39 MIN
    2 Tom Herr          1985 110  8  29 STL
    3 George Kell       1950 101  8  27 DET
    4 Dixie Walker      1946 116  9  35 BRO
    5 Dixie Walker      1945 124  8  34 BRO
    6 Bob Elliott       1945 108  8  28 PIT
    7 Billy Herman      1943 100  2  33 BRO
    8 Bob Elliott       1943 101  7  26 PIT
    9 Cecil Travis      1941 101  7  27 WSH
   10 Lou Boudreau      1940 101  9  22 CLE

You'll notice that other than Herr and Molitor, nobody has done it since 1950. In fact it's been done a total of 101 times, mostly back in the era when home runs were fairly rare unless your last name was Ruth. It was done the most times by Pie Traynor (6 times), Sam Crawford (5) and Tyrus Cobb (5). The 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates had 3 players to do it: Traynor (106 RBI/5 HR), Paul Waner (131/9), and Glenn Wright (105/9)

Boy, does he ever. Let's find out how badly he sucks.

First, go the the Pitching Season Finder, and set the following criteria:

- Role: Started 80% of games pithed in. (This is in the second column from the right. It sets up at 60% games started, but you can change it).

- At the far left, set the search years from 1871 to 1901.

- In lower right corner, set the criteria as an ERA+ =< to 35 (Weaver currently has a 34), and GS to 7 (Weaver's total GS on the year).

Turns out, this is only the third time in baseball history anyone has sucked as badly as Weaver has.

Man, he's terrible.

Yesterday Alfonso Soriano went deep three times against the Braves. How often has a Cub done that to the Braves since 1957?

Well, if you really must know, you can use the Batting Gamelog Finder. Set player's team to "Cubs," Opponent to "Braves," and Search by HR = 3. Turns out it's only happened twice in all that time. Only Ernie Banks and Soriano did it.

If you're curious, a Brave has hit 3 homers in a game off the Cubs twice as well. The sluggers who did it: Orlando Cepeda and, um, Jeff Blauser? Yea, that's right, Jeff Blauser.

Well after my recent post about Arod's 9th-inning performance, he want ahead and swatted another 9th-inning grand slam yesterday, his second of the season. (His first was even more dramatic, a walk-off come-from-behind job against the Orioles.)

Let's take a look at the list of all active players with at least 10 grand slams, and use the PI batting event finder for each specific player on the list to find how many were in the 9th inning or extra innings. Here's the list:

Player            Total slams    9th inning or later    Game ending
-----------------+-------------+---------------------+--------------
Manny Ramirez        20                   0                  0
Ken Griffey Jr       15                   1                  0
Alex Rodriguez       15                   4                  3
Mike Piazza          14                   0                  0
Richie Sexson        14                   4                  1
Jeff Kent            13                   1                  0
Barry Bonds          11                   0                  0
Carlos Delgado       11                   0                  0
Jason Giambi         11                   2                  1
Gary Sheffield       11                   1                  0
Bernie Williams      11                   2                  0
Steve Finley         10                   3                  2
Carlos Lee           10                   2                  1
Matt Stairs          10                   0                  0

Would you believe that Barry Bonds has never hit a grand slam after the 6th inning? Sad but true (click on his name above to see for yourself.)

When we talk about grand slam records, it's always important to remember that they are much more of a team effort than we think. After all, the player hitting the grand slam isn't responsible for loading the bases; he "just" came through when they were. Of course, not everybody is Pat Tabler, who in 109 career plate appearances with the bases loaded batted .489/.505/.693 with 32 singles, 6 doubles, 3 triples, 2 homers, 11 BB, and 108 RBI.

Today Curt Schilling became the 3rd oldest player since 1957 to throw a complete game shutout while allowing either one hit or no hits. Nolan Ryan did it three times when he was over the age of 43, and Randy Johnson's perfect game in 2004 came when he was a couple of months older than Curt is today.

On Tuesday June 5, the Toronto Blue Jays pulled off a stunning 12-11 victory over the Devil Rays. (Well, to the extent that any victory over Tampa can be called stunning). They did this despite team ace Roy Halladay getting rocked for 12 hits, 8 runs (7 earned) while recording only 10 outs. His game score was a meager 6.

What are the worst game scores since 1957 for a victorious team. Well, that's what PI's Pitching Game Log Finder can do for you.

First, go the the Game Log Finder page. Next, in the left column on the page, click on "W" for the Team result category (it just says team, but it's team result). Then, over at the

right column, where it says, "Select Additional Criteria Games Must Match," sort for Game Score less than or equal to 6 (Halladay's score). Then, in the yellow box in the right column, set the sorter for game score, and click off on the ascending order option.

Turns out that's only the third time in the last half-century a team won when it's starting pitcher sucked that badly.

Here's the results you'd get.

Through the first third of this season, A-rod has been money in the 9th inning, to the tune of 8 hits in 16 ABs, including 5 HR and a double, with 12 RBIs. (That's a 2.100 OPS if you're scoring at home or even, as Olberman used to say, you're alone.)

But a look at his career numbers in the 9th inning tells us we can expect a big dropoff.

To see the full numbers, hit A-rod's PI page here, scroll down to "By Inning" and then click the red text that says "9th inning."

You can see that his career performance in the 9th inning is a lackluster .253/.334/.471, and that he hit under .200 in the final frame in 1995, 1998, 2002, and 2006.

If the Yankees are to have any chance of getting back in the playoff hunt this year, they need A-rod to stay well above his career norms in the 9th inning.

With the much anticipated debut of Homer Bailey coming up on Friday. To generate this list I used the pitching game finder and set the team to Reds, the games at start of career = 1 and then chose to sort of Game Scores. Note this will only find the debut for the player's career not their Reds' debut if they played somewhere else first.

   Cnt CarGm Player            Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt App,Dec    IP   H  R ER BB SO HR Pit Str **GmSc**
 +----+-----+-----------------+-------------+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--------+
     1     1 Wayne Simpson     1970-04-09    CIN @LAD W  3-0  SHO9  ,W   9    2  0  0  0  2  0             85
     2     1 Jeff Russell      1983-08-13    CIN  SDP W  3-1  CG 9  ,W   9    5  1  0  1  7  0             81
     3     1 Mo Sanford        1991-08-09    CIN @SDP W  5-1  GS-7  ,W   7    2  1  0  1  8  0  99  66     78
     4     1 Rob Bell          2000-04-08    CIN  CHC W  4-3  GS-7       7    3  3  1  2  9  0 100  67     70
     5     1 Tom Carroll       1974-07-07(1) CIN  STL W  2-1  GS-7  ,W   7    2  1  1  6  6  1             69
     6     1 Keith Brown       1988-08-25    CIN  STL W  4-1  GS-7  ,W   7    4  1  1  2  3  1  87  52     66
     7     1 Jim Maloney       1960-07-27    CIN @LAD L  0-2  GS-7  ,L   7    6  1  1  2  5  0 100  61     64
     8     1 John Roper        1993-05-16    CIN  COL W 14-2  GS-6  ,W   6    5  1  1  0  4  0  94  61     62
     9     1 Pat Darcy         1974-09-12(2) CIN  ATL W  6-2  GS-8  ,W   7.2  6  2  2  3  6  1             62
    10     1 Jim O'Toole       1958-09-26    CIN @MLN L  1-2  GS-7  ,L   7    4  2  1  5  4  0             62

Full List.