The Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Stat of the Day

Tony LaRussa is up to his old tricks again, batting pitchers 8th quite often this year.

Check it out here–these are all the times this season a pitcher has faced another pitching batting in the 8th spot. I did it as a Team Pitching Event Finder instead of as a Team Batting Event Finder because it easier to come up with the list of teams who have done it this year:

Those are the opposition teams batting the pitcher 8th. There are some cases where a pitcher ends up batting 8th because he came in as part of a double-switch with the player who was originally batting 8th, and then stays in the game and bats for himself. That’s a rare event, but it does happen over the course of the season, usually in extra innings when a manager may be reluctant to pinch-hit for a reliever if he thinks he might need him for a few more innings. So the one time Arizona has done it was in this game. What happened there was really strange and probably not worth going into, but suffice it to say that it was extra-innings madness.

What I described above is exactly what happened when Kevin Hart of the Cubs ended up batting out of the 8 hole in this game. And Jon Leiber has batted 8th three times, all when coming in on a double-switch and staying in the game later to bat.

But all the rest of those PAs, the ones with St Louis and Milwaukee, are because Tony LaRussa and Ned Yost have been routinely batting certain pitchers 8th in their lineup. It makes a lot of sense to me. Hey, for an extreme example, would anybody have a problem if Micah Owings batted 6th or 7th? I sincerely doubt it. Even after an 0-fer last night, Owings is still hitting over .400 this year after hitting .333 last year with 4 homers, 7 doubles, a triple, and 15 RBI in 60 AB.

Here are pitchers batting 8th in past years.

2007:

2006 has just one such PA by Ryan Vogelsong of the Pirates.

2005:

Mostly courtesy of Dontrelle Willis.

And check out here for the 31 times it happened in 1965.

File this under: Silly but fun things that you can do with Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index (Pitching Event Finder), Excel, and a few minutes time.  (In addition to: Shameless cross promotion not so cleverly hidden in a PI example…)

In the Yankees game last night, Mike Mussina and La Troy Hawkins both allowed hits on an 0-2 count.

This had me wondering: How many 0-2 hits have Yankees pitchers allowed since I started writing WasWatching.com (on April 20, 2005)?

Here’s the answer: 222 hits allowed on 0-2 counts.

Randy Johnson allowed 35 such hits and Mike Mussina, including last night, has allowed 30 (in this time).

Click here to see the entire list of 222 hits allowed.

Since it’s the weekend, I thought I’d recycle a bunch of PI searches that I’ve posted over at the 88 Topps Cards blog.

For example:

• Scott Garrelts makes the top 10 list for lowest WHIP in a season in the 1980s with 190+ IP.
• Who had the most RBI in any season in the 1980s for a catcher? You might be surprised.
• Ron Karkovice once had two go-ahead plate appearances in the same game where both were reaches-on-error. (Note I linked to the wrong box score in that post, but somebody else picked it up in the comments.)
• HoJo is still rockin’ the career 30/30 list.
• Jose Oquendo has among the fewest total bases among players with 3500+ PAs.
• Dan Petry was one of the winningest pitchers from 1982 to 1985.
• Who has the most career saves among pitchers with at least 100 complete games? If you call yourself a baseball fan, you’d better be able to get this one.
• Ken Oberkfell had some big walk-off walks.
• Like Oquendo, Dave Magadan was not so hot with the total bases either.

That’s it for now. We’ve got a contest over there that ends on Monday, if you’d like to enter.

Yesterday Andy focused on bases-loaded walks. I’d like to focus on the most demoralizing type of bases -loaded walk, the two out walk to the opposing pitcher. Just when you think you’re out of the jam, not only have you replaced an easy out with a run, you have also brought up the top of the order. Recently this is has become an uncommon event, but it seemed happen about 3-10 times a year before 2006. Let’s take a look at the last 5 years.

(more…)

Using the Team Pitching Event Finder, we came up with this list of all 2007 instances of a team issuing a bases-loaded walk.

Among the things you can tell from this are:

• The pitchers to do it the most were Barry Zito (7), Levale Speigner (5), and Chad Gaudin (5).
• The team to draw the most bases-loaded walks was Boston (24), followed by Anaheim (19), and Philadelphia (17).
• Right-handed batters received 58.4% of the walks with the bases loaded, as compared to 53.5% of ALL walks (regardless of number of baserunners) issued to righties in 2007. I can’t think of any easy explanation for this discrepancy, except perhaps that lefties are more likely to pitch in tight spots and therefore the opposing manager might be more inclined to send up a right-handed pitcher.
• Right handed pitchers issued 63.2% of the walks with the bases loaded, as opposed to 70.9% of ALL walks issued by righties in 2007. This one is easier to explain, as left-handed specialists are brought in during tight squeezes all the times, so it stands to reason that they issue a higher fraction of bases-loaded walks (and probably a smaller fraction of bases-empty walks.)
• The 6th-place batter in the lineup received the most bases-loaded walks (57), followed by the 7th (53) and 5th (52) place batters.
• The relative score when the walk occurred was most often tied (74 times) and after that generally happened more when the pitching team was already behind (no surprise there.)
• Seven games ended on bases loaded walks, and those are listed right here.
• 55% of all bases-loaded walks were issued at the visitor’s park, i.e. at the batter’s home park.
• The pitch count for the bases-loaded walk was most rarely 4 pitches (19.7%) and most often 5 pitches (30.5%.) And twice in 2007, it was 38 pitches.
• More than half the time, the walk came with 2 out.

A few things you can’t tell from this report, but that you can tell from the Team Batting Even Finder for bases-loaded walks:

• The most were drawn by Pat Burrell (6) and Chone Figgins (5).
• The most were issued by Texas (19), Baltimore (19), Tampa Bay (17), and Washington (17.)

The other day, I noticed that Curtis Wilkerson once hit a game-winning grand slam off Lee Smith. Wilkerson was with the Pirates at the time, and Barry Bonds hit his famous game-ending shot off Smith about a month earlier.

Smith gave up 9 game-ending homers in his career. Most of them were to big names too, including Bonds, Ted Simmons, Dave Parker, Darryl Strawberry, Marko Solo, and Albert Belle. Manny Trillo, John Russell, and Wilkerson stick out.

Incidentally, those 9 career walk-off losers for Smith are not actually that many. Mariano Rivera has given up 4, Trevor Hoffman has given up 9, Bill Wagner has given up 7, and they are all still pitching (so their totals might go up.)

Goose Gossage gave up 11 game-ending bombs, and to quite a motley bunch of guys: George Scott, Adrian Garrett, John Mayberry, Jose Cruz, Richie Zisk, Amos Otis, Cecil Cooper, Tom Foley, Chris Chambliss, Hubie Brooks, and Robin Ventura. Quite a bunch!

By the way, if you like free stuff, I’m giving away a 1988 Topps Gallery of Champions set right here.

Here are a few bits of trivia inspired by baseball cards from the 1988 Topps set, plus a shameless plug for a new blog of mine (see below.)

• Most of us know that Don Mattingly hit a record 6 grand slams in the 1987 season. But did you know that he didn’t hit any other grand slams in his entire career? Check out his home run log for proof.
• Mark McGwire set a record with 49 homers in his rookie season, and that’s the 4th highest total for a player within his first 3 seasons.
• Eddie Murray has the most 20-HR seasons among switch-hitters.
• The Niekro brothers have 8 out of 60 seasons since 1901 in which a pitcher at least 40 years old threw 200+ innings.
• Nolan Ryan has the most 200-strikeout seasons, and he might hold onto that record for a long time.
• Sure, Benito Santiago had a 34-game hitting streak as a rookie, but he never topped 13 games after that.

If you like this kind of stuff, check out my new blog 88 Topps Cards, where I’m posting each and every card from the 1988 Topps set. In addition to cool stats like those above, I’m also commenting on the cards themselves. I won’t ordinarily double-post the same stats here and there. Keep reading this blog, of course…I’ll still be posting here every day.

Ryan Howard: 26 Home Runs in Career, pitch count of 1 - Baseball-Reference PI

I added another summary value to the Event Finders, the number of the pitch in the plate appearance where the PA ended.  So you can now do things like find all of the first-pitch groundouts in the ninth inning with your team down 2 or more and no one on.  The pitch data is solid back to 2000 and fairly complete back to 1988.  Enjoy.

Yesterday, Chris mentioned that Jim Palmer never allowed a grand slam, an apparently famous baseball fact that had previously escaped me.

Checking out Palmer’s career home run log confirms it: of the 303 HR he allowed, 193 (63.7%) came with the bases empty, 83 (27.4%) came with one runner on, and 27 (8.9%) came with 2 runners on.

Off the bat, those numbers seem amazing to me, i.e. such a high fraction of homers coming with the bases empty and so few with runners on. But, remembering the era in which Palmer pitched, it might not be so overwhelmingly impressive.

Let’s look at the pitchers most similar to Palmer.

1. Bob Gibson - 257 career HR: 138 (53.6%) bases empty, 85 (33.1%) with 1 on, 31 (12.1%) with 2 on, and 3 (1.2%) with the bases loaded.

2. Bob Feller - unfortunately since his entire career came before 1957, the PI doesn’t have Feller’s data

3. Juan Marichal - 320 career HR: 190 (59.4%), 97 (30.3%), 31 (9.7%), 2 (0.6%)

4. Lefty Grove - same problem as Feller

5. Jack Morris - 389 career HR: 223 (57.3), 122 (31.3%) , 39 (10.0%), 5 (1.3%)

6. Carl Hubbell - same problem

7. John Clarkson - same problem

8. Amos Rusie - same problem

9. Vick Willis - same problem

10. Luis Tiant - 346 career HR: 208 (60.1), 97 (28.0%), 38 (11.0%), 3 (0.9%)

So of the four we have data on, two of them (Gibson and Marichal) started a little before Palmer and pitched during only some of the same years, one (Morris) started a little after Palmer, and one (Tiant) was contemporaneous to Palmer.

In any event, Palmer comes out better than all of these guys. Palmer had no baserunners on more than 63% of his homers, and only Morris breaks 60%. Palmer also had the fewest homers allowed with 2 runners on, and of course the fewest grand slams.

Amazingly, it’s Gibson who comes out the worst here. Considering the era he pitched in, that’s really surprising.

I’m not going to list out the math, but take my word on this one. If Gibson, across his 257 career homers, allowed the same fraction breakdown of runners on as Palmer, he would have allowed 40 fewer runs in his career, and (if all earned) that would have shaved nearly 0.10 off his career ERA. Wow!

Following on a bit from yesterday’s Mattingly post, here is some info on all plate appearances in 2007 that ended on a pitch thrown with a 3-0 count. So keep in mind as you read below, this doesn’t include any PAs that went to 3-1 or 3-2, but rather those that ended on the pitch coming with a 3-0 count. In most cases, this means a 4th ball, leading to a walk. But there are the occasional HBP, fly-outs, HR, etc. (Just to hammer the point home, there could be no strikeouts in this stat since there are no strikes when the count is 3-0. Similarly, a PA that goes from 3-0 to 3-1 on a strike doesn’t count here. It’s only those PAs that end on a pitch thrown with a 3-0 count.)

So it turns out that there were 4380 such PAs in 2007:

   G     PA     AB     H    2B   3B   HR   RBI    BB   IBB   SO   HBP  SH   SF   ROE  GDP   BA     OBP    SLG    OPS
+-----+------+------+-----+----+----+----+-----+-----+----+-----+----+----+----+----+----+------+------+------+------+
  1968   4380    245    97   30    2   23   159  4118 1249     0   11    0    6    2    5   .396   .965   .816  1.781

So that’s a little more than 2 such PAs per game. As you can see, 4118 of those became walks (94.0%), including 1249 that were intentional walks. Incidentally, this doesn’t differentiate between PAs that started off as intentional walks (4 intentional balls) and those where the last ball or two were given intentionally after the pitcher fell behind.

You can see the full results of this search here.

Barry Bonds (surprise, surprise) had the most PAs ending on the pitch thrown with a 3-0 count.

In his 64 such PAs, here was his batting line:

   G    PA    AB    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF ROE GDP   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS
+----+-----+-----+----+---+---+---+----+----+---+----+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   53    64     1    0   0   0   0    0   63  43    0   0   0   0   0   0  .000  .984  .000  .984

Incidentally, you can’t get this line from the above search. Rather, you need to go to Bonds’ Batting Event Finder page.

So in 63 out of 64 PAs, Bonds ended up walking (including 43 times intentionally.) But he did swing and put the ball into play once on a 3-0 count. It was in this game, where he grounded out to second on a 3-0 pitch.

Now from above, we see that 23 times a guy homered on a 3-0 pitch. To get that list, we need to go to the Batting Event Finder and look it up through home runs.

So here is the full list of 3-0 homers in 2007:

   Yr#    G# Date          Batter            Tm   Opp Pitcher           Score       Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.
+-------+---+-------------+-----------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
       1   1 2007-04-09    Jim Thome         CHW @OAK Rich Harden       down   0-1  t 4 —   0 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF)
       2   1 2007-04-27    Casey Kotchman    LAA @CHW Jose Contreras    down   1-3  t 6 1–   2 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF-RF); Anderson Scores
       3   1 2007-04-28    Josh Willingham   FLA @PHI Francisco Rosari  ahead  7-4  t 6 12-   2 3-0   4   3 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF); Cabrera Scores; Jacobs Scores
       4   1 2007-04-29    Adam Dunn         CIN @PIT Shawn Chacon      ahead  6-4  t 5 1–   1 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF); Gonzalez Scores
       5   1 2007-05-23    Alex Gordon       KCR  CLE Cliff Lee         ahead  7-4  b 5 —   1 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF)
       6   1 2007-06-01    Jason Michaels    CLE  DET Mike Maroth       down   3-5  b 6 1–   2 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF); Garko Scores
       7   1 2007-06-04    Casey Kotchman    LAA  MIN Boof Bonser       ahead  3-1  b 6 —   1 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF)
       8   1 2007-06-05    B.J. Upton        TBD @TOR Roy Halladay      ahead  4-1  t 4 -2-   1 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF); Harris Scores
       9   1 2007-06-24    Jason Varitek     BOS @SDP Scott Linebrink   ahead  3-2  t 8 —   0 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF)
      10   1 2007-06-28    Chase Utley       PHI  CIN Matt Belisle      tied   0-0  b 1 -2-   1 3-0   2   2 Home Run (Line Drive to CF); Rollins Scores
      11   2               Chase Utley       PHI  CIN Matt Belisle      down   2-4  b 3 -2-   1 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF); Rollins Scores
      12   1 2007-07-04    Adam LaRoche      PIT  MIL Claudio Vargas    tied   3-3  b 6 1–   0 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF-RF); Sanchez Scores
      13   1 2007-07-14    David Ortiz       BOS  TOR Dustin McGowan    tied   0-0  b 1 —   2 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Line Drive to RF)
      14   1 2007-07-14    Josh Willingham   FLA  WSN Matt Chico        ahead  3-0  b 6 1–   0 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF); Jacobs Scores
      15   1 2007-07-21    Pedro Feliz       SFG @MIL David Bush        ahead  1-0  t 4 -2-   2 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to CF-RF); Klesko Scores
      16   1 2007-07-24    Jeff Kent         LAD @HOU Jason Jennings    down   0-1  t 2 —   0 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF)
      17   1 2007-07-24(2) Jim Thome         CHW  DET Chad Durbin       down   3-7  b 7 12-   2 3-0   4   3 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF); Pierzynski Scores; Owens Scores
      18   1 2007-08-07    Aaron Rowand      PHI  FLA Carlos Martinez   ahead  7-1  b 4 —   1 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF)
      19   1 2007-08-25    Victor Martinez   CLE @KCR Kyle Davies       ahead  6-0  t 2 —   2 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF)
      20   1 2007-08-25    Milton Bradley    SDP @PHI Tom Gordon        down   1-2  t 8 —   1 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF)
      21   1 2007-08-26    Carlos Pena       TBD  OAK Danny Haren       ahead  4-2  b 6 —   1 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Line Drive to RF)
      22   1 2007-09-11    Brian Giles       SDP @LAD Esteban Loaiza    ahead  2-0  t 2 -2-   2 3-0   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF); Bard Scores
      23   1 2007-09-26    Lance Berkman     HOU @CIN Tom Shearn        tied   0-0  t 1 1-3   0 3-0   4   3 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF-CF); Burke Scores; Everett Scores

Holy smokes! Chase Utley did it twice, in the same game, off the same pitcher! MVP Rollins scored on both. Casey Kotchman, Jim Thome, and Josh Willimgham also did it twice this year, but Belisle is the only pitcher to give up two. There were no slams, but a few three-run jobs.

Now, if you check out the data above, you can see that there were 150 outs recorded on a 3-0 pitch. Again using the Batting Event Finder, we can find all such outs on 3-0 pitches.

Here are the batters to do it the most:

Victor Martinez 6, Chase Utley 4, Frank Thomas 4, and Matt Holliday 4. All good hitters. Utley must swing a lot on 3-0.

Here (from his personal Batting Event Finder) are the 6 times Martinez did it:

  Car#  Yr#  G# Date          Tm   Opp Pitcher           Score       Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.
+-----+----+---+-------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
     1    1   1 2007-05-18    CLE  CIN Victor Santos     ahead  9-4  b 3 1–   2 3-0   4   0 Popfly: 3B
     2    2   1 2007-06-09    CLE @CIN Dave Weathers     tied   6-6  t 9 —   2 3-0   4   0 Flyball: LF
     3    3   1 2007-06-17    CLE  ATL Kyle Davies       tied   0-0  b 4 —   1 3-0   4   0 Groundout: 1B-P
     4    4   1 2007-07-05    CLE @DET Justin Verlander  ahead  2-1  t 3 1–   1 3-0   4   0 Flyball: CF
     5    5   1 2007-07-17    CLE  CHW Dewon Day         tied   5-5  b10 —   0 3-0   4   0 Groundout: 2B-1B
     6    6   1 2007-08-18    CLE @TBD Jason Hammel      ahead  3-0  t 3 —   1 3-0   4   0 Flyball: RF

Ouch, he did it twice in the 9th inning or later or a tie game. That’s not good.

He did also have these 4 hits on a 3-0 pitch:

  Car#  Yr#  G# Date          Tm   Opp Pitcher           Score       Result Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.
+-----+----+---+-------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
     1    1   1 2007-06-17    CLE  ATL Kyle Davies       ahead  1-0  1B     b 6 —   0 3-0   4   0 Single to RF (Ground Ball)
     2    2   1 2007-07-07    CLE @TOR Shaun Marcum      tied   0-0  2B     t 1 —   2 3-0   4   0 Double to RF (Line Drive)
     3    3   1 2007-07-22    CLE @TEX Robinson Tejeda   ahead  2-0  1B     t 5 –3   0 3-0   2   1 Single to CF (Ground Ball); Blake Scores
     4    4   1 2007-08-25    CLE @KCR Kyle Davies       ahead  6-0  HR     t 2 —   2 3-0   4   1 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF)

But these games were all either early or tied…much better times to take such a chance.

Anyway, there are so many cool things like this you can find on the PI. Get cracking!