Andy K
Andy writes about baseball in his spare time.
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Most Home Runs in a season by a Shortstop
Longest Batting Streak in games played as a Catcher
All 89 HR allowed by Anaheim vs. LHB in 2006
With all those posts, you must have a lot of spare time
Comment by ehanczyc — September 21, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
Is it possible to list all the cases in MLB history where a team won 20 out of 21 games ?
Comment by jmvbaseball — October 17, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
Andy
I have been having a hard time following this & thought maybe you could help me. I have recently been reading about Orel Hershier & his 59 game streak of pitching scoreless baseball. I have read a number of books and web articles stating that the record stands at 59 consecutive scoreless innings. A number of sources all agree on this. No matter how I add it up I get 60 consecutive innings not 59. The last time he gave up a run was on 8-30. It was in the bottom of the 5th with two men out (which starts him off with 4 1/3 innings). Then he pitched five consecutive nine inning shutouts & finally ten innings of scoreless ball on 9-28. Thats 4 1/3 + 45 + 10 = 59 1/3. Then on April 5, 1989, he got two men out before giving up a run in the first inning to the Reds. Thats another 2/3 of an inning. shouldn’t his streak stand at 60 innings & not 59? Is this something that has been overlooked for nearly 20 years or is my math incorrect?
Can you help me with this?
Jack
Comment by jackfish — November 24, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
It took some effort, but I figured it out. Hershiser’s streak is, for some reason, counted by full innings only. In other words, he is credit with 4 innings (not 4.1) in the Aug 30 1988 game, then 55 more innings in 1988. Then, his 1989 debut game gets credited as 0 innings since he gave up a run in the first.
Given that, I don’t know why Drysdale’s streak included partial innings. I don’t know if baseball made a new ruling about it or what.
To me, none of the streaks should include partial innings, given that outs in those innings may have contributed to run-scoring by advancing runners or even scoring runners.
Comment by Andy — November 25, 2007 @ 8:55 am
Andy
Thanks for looking into this for me. Knowing Drysdale’s streak ended at 58 2/3 innings made me think partial innings did count. A rule change was the only scenario I didn’t think of. However, in my opinion I think they should count. If partial innings are figured into game totals & season totals, I think they should count in streak totals as well. I feel an out, even if productive, is still an out. But I guess that’s a whole other debate.
Thanks again for your help
Jack
Comment by jackfish — November 25, 2007 @ 10:36 am
Your Hall of Fame mock-vote thread is great!
However, for next year, I think fishiam’s example (#57) is a good idea. Maybe you could have one thread for voting (alphabetical, without comment) and another thread for people to lobby for their favorites and make comment on the progress of the voting.
Comment by David in Toledo — December 10, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
Well–I don’t really have a problem with campaigning in this case. Nobody is being forced to read the other comments, plus it’s not any different from people stating their cases for or again referendums on a political ballot.
Comment by Andy — December 10, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
Andy, I posted a link to the HofF poll on the SABR discussion list.
Bill Deane (dizdeane) put up an interesting post there with two queries that might interest you. I hope he will become a regular reader of SOTD. I’m surprised that he holds to a 2000-inning requirement, but we all have our peculiarities. Incidentally, Kid Nichols and Clark Griffith pitched well over 2000 innings, but most of them were before 1900.
Bill Deane’s writing below.
As we know, Ryan Braun set a rookie record with a .634 slugging
percentage in 2007. Unfortunately, his fielding percentage (.895) wasn’t
much higher. I believe this is the lowest fielding percentage for a title
qualifier at any position (other than pitcher) since Joel Youngblood posted
an .887 mark at third base for the 1984 Giants. Can someone confirm or
refute this?
Speaking of slugging percentage by rookies, Arizona’s Micah Owings
posted a .683 mark, with 41 total bases in 60 at bats (yes, Tom, “Dump the
DH!”). I believe this is the highest mark ever posted by a pitcher.
According to SABR’s 1979 book, GREAT HITTING PITCHERS, the best
single-season slugging mark by a pitcher was .632, by Don Newcombe in 1955.
I don’t know what minimum criteria was used, but the book uses 70 at bats
for single-season batting average feats, so I assume it was the same for
slugging. Few pitchers get 70 at bats any more, and the minimum criteria
should be based on the numerator, anyway. Has any other pitcher with at
least 30 total bases in a season exceeded a .683 slugging percentage?
Bill Deane
Comment by David in Toledo — December 11, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
David, I just posted an answer to Bill’s question about SLG for pitchers right here http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/471
Comment by Andy — December 13, 2007 @ 8:05 am
Thanks, Andy. You do great work!
Comment by David in Toledo — December 14, 2007 @ 12:29 pm
I’ve done enough lobbying for Bert Blyleven, so I’m not posting this on the Hall of Fame thread, but the following might be interesting to do if Bert needs another push for next year. (It’s a Rob Neyer-type idea.)
I wonder how many people could distinguish between Blyleven’s career stats ALL BY THEMSELVES and the combined stats of Ron Guidry and Andy Pettitte.
Their ERA+ are virtually identical. So are number of batters faced, innings pitched, strikeouts, etc. The two Yanks have many more games started and 372 (or something) wins, but that’s because they have far fewer complete games and shutouts.
Most of the people who lament that Ron Guidry isn’t in the Hall acknowledge that, except for a couple of magnificent years, he wasn’t really Sandy Koufax. But what if you could take Guidry’s career accomplishment and then pile all of Andy Pettitte on top of it? Surely THAT would be Hall of Fame-worthy, right?
Comment by David in Toledo — December 26, 2007 @ 12:17 pm
But what about postseason?
I feel like Blyleven is going to get in this year, especially with a weaker class. (Well it’s not so much that the class is weak as that there is no definite 95%+ guy.)
I have heard of a few sports journalists who HAVE HOF votes who read the SOTD blog–perhaps we have swayed a few of them to vote for Bert.
Comment by Andy — December 26, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
Postseason:
Blyleven, 8 g, 2 WS, 2.47 era, 47 innings.
Guidry and Pettitte combined, 45 g, 10 WS, 3.02 + 3.96 era’s, 280 innings.
And that’s one of the points. This one guy does the work of two and because the two have better teams behind them, they get way more wins and get to the postseason five times as often.
The way I’d frame my argument is this: a main argument against either Guidry or Pettitte is not that they weren’t (or haven’t been) good, but that neither did ENOUGH to qualify himself for the Hall of Fame. But suppose that you could put the two of them TOGETHER. Would that be enough? Well, somebody did put the two of them together, in the form of BB.
Comment by David in Toledo — December 26, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
Andy,
Just found the page and will be subscribing shortly - awesome site.
I have run two reports already and would like to thow out a future hall of famer question…..
When Ichiro Suziki retires - will he be a HOF’er? I am wondering if they will take his numbers in Japan into consideration. It is obvious the man is a stats machine and puts up great numbers but will the TOTAL numbers be enough to sway the “older” voters??? I ran his report of batting against LHP and was amazed at some of the +.400 against some all start lefties. I live in Vancouver BC but make the 3 hour trek 6 times a year to watch the M’s.
Just curious and I love this site
Comment by giantsfanvcr — January 7, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Is there a way to find a players career stats against a specific team? I can pull up individual game lines, but it does not show career totals. Thanks and this site is awesome.
Comment by dannyg483 — January 22, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Danny, I answered that somewhere else. It’s easy to find any given player’s stats against a particular team, but not easy to find a listing of all players’ stats against that team. There are certain things you can do, though.
Comment by Andy — January 22, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Danny, see post #38 on the Suggestions page here:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/suggestions
Comment by Andy — January 22, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
Great Stat of the day on walk-offs. June 6th Nationals - Pirates ended on a wild pitch– not sure if that would qualify or how you would search that in the db.
Good stuff all the time from you– keep it up
Comment by KC — February 28, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Andy, have you or someone else at SOTD done a piece on something like this? (It seems timely.)
.400 OBP and done! http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/7MGQ
Comment by David in Toledo — March 26, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Andy, Be sure you see the analysis of Joe D’s 56-game hitting streak in the New York Times. I’m not sure yet how to frame them, but I think what is presented in the paper leaves some unanswered questions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30strogatz.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Comment by David in Toledo — March 30, 2008 @ 11:16 am
Hey Andy, with respect to your 4-K game posting, check this out:
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/wxGt
Comment by David in Toledo — April 3, 2008 @ 10:49 am
And one last observation, derived from musings about the 4-K’s: Ron Herbel has to be the worst hitter ever to come to bat 200 times and/or appear in 300 major-league games.
Comment by David in Toledo — April 3, 2008 @ 11:10 am
Andy:
Last weekend’s rookie sensation John Bowker currently has an AVG higher than his OBP (due to a sac fly). I was trying to explore this statistical oddity more. Through a trial-and-error method, I found (I think) that the most at-bats in a season in which AVG exceeds OBP is 125 by Ernie Bowman in 1963 (.184 AVG, .181 OBP).
Can you think of any methodology to plug into the PI that would provide a comprehensive list?
Comment by savoyspecial — April 16, 2008 @ 10:58 am
Andy, Kevin Youkilis’s recent fielding accomplishment caused me to visit jewishmajorleaguers.com. That led me to several individual stat pages of players of Jewish heritage. I found something unusual on one of them and ran a search. So here’s my question: Leave out the pitchers and catchers who can’t run or aren’t allowed to run. How many of the remaining players who made an All-Star team at some time in their careers and who played at least 450 games finished their careers with ZERO stolen bases? (The answer is one — but who is he?)
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/ZXjN
Comment by David in Toledo — April 29, 2008 @ 8:41 am
I would be shocked if anybody could guess the answer…neat find David.
Comment by Andy — April 29, 2008 @ 1:07 pm