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

In a new article, Goose Gossage talks about intentionally hitting batters.  The article states:

“Gossage, that famous mustache now gray, claims to have hit only three batters intentionally in his major league career: Ron Gant, Al Bumbry and Andres Galarraga.

‘They had it coming,’ he said.”

Perhaps so, but there’s one problem.  Going by the PI features, Goose Gossage never hit Al Bumbry.  He nailed Gant & Galaragga the same summer, but never Bumbry in the majors.

Was he thinking of some other Oriole?  Well, he only hit six of them, and the last two occasions came after Bumbry was gone.

One was Mark Belanger.  Who hell intentionally hits Mark Belanger.  That’s going hunting with hope of offing Bambi’s mom.  Besides, it looks like he had bad control that game, he hit two men (Don Baylor was the other),  and let in some runs.  He also hit Rick Dempsey, but that was with a one run lead.  My best guess is either Doug DeCinces or someone on another team.

DeCinces’s plunk came late in a game where he was 2-for-3 with a run, right after Gossage allowed a run, and with New York winning by 7 runs with 2 out in the eighth. Oh, and a week earlier he hit a two-run homer off of Gossage.

Not exactly “deserving it” but then again Ron Gant’s big crime was to steal a base and score an insurance run on a single.

It could be someone else, but the best guess is Doug DeCinces.

Catcher Kurt Suzuki has now started 19 games in the lead off spot for the A’s. Combined with the 6 games that Ivan Rodriguez has led off for the Tigers there have already been 25 games that a catcher has led off.  This is more than all but 6 other seasons since 1956.

Suzuki’s 19 are the third most in a season since 1956 by anyone not named Jason Kendall.  Of course Kendall owned this category, having made significantly more starts as a leading-off catcher (445) than everyone else since 1956 combined (275).

The interesting name on the list is Craig Biggio, who only led off in 35 out of his 403 (8.7%) starts at catcher (early in his career). Of course, he would go on to become one of the alltime great leadoff hitters and lead off 65% (1526/2336) of his starts at every other position.

Yesterday, Mariano Rivera set a (post 1956 and probably all time) record of sorts.  Rivera has started the 2008 season with 14 consecutive appearances of at least one inning each without allowing more than one base runner in any of them.  Rivera and Joakim Soria  of KC each started the season with 13 such games tying John Franco’s record from 1992. However, Joakim had a bout of wildness on May 8th and Rivera alone set the new record. Here’s the list.

Rivera’s overall streak for such games is also at 14 (He gave up 3 runs in his last regular season appearance in 2008 2007.) Meanwhile 2 pitchers (Soria and Troy Percival) both had streaks of 15 games (dating back to last season) snapped on May 8th. The overall record is 19, set by Armondo Benitez in 2004 and tied by Rafael Soriano last year. Here is that list.

In addition to not allowing more than one base runner in any of his appearances, Rivera has also not allowed any runs. The record for consecutive appearances of any length without a run and less than one base runner to start a season is 16 by Tony Fossas in 1995.  The record for such a streak at any point during the season is 25 by Dan Plesac in 2003. Eric Gagne has the longest such streak while averaging at least one inning per appearance.

Obviously, these lists are geared to today’s style of bullpen usage. If you need any further confirmation of this (and I don’t know why you would),  here is the list of pitchers with the most appearances in a season in which they threw at least one inning and allowed no more than 1 base runner and 0 runs. 5 of the top 8 are from last season.

Gavin Floyd just missing throwing hte 17th no-hitter in WHite Sox history.  The PI doesn’t let you look up all baseball history, but you can get a list of all ChiSox no-nos in the retrosheet era.

This is the 20th anniversay of Kerry Wood’s big 20 K game.  Shane Reynolds, opposing him, had a nice day as well, posting a game score of 68.

That leads to a  question: what’s the worst game score ever in a loss?

 It’s these games.  Well, it ain’t perfect.  The top two are no-decisions.  Thus the best ever game score in a loss goes to Harvey Haddix.  (thinks for a beat).  Well, yeah, that makes  a lot of sense.  Here’s the cleaned-up accurate list of pitchers who got decisions.

OK, how about in a 9-inning loss?  These are the worst game scores.

And while I’m looking it up, here are the worst game scores for a guy who got a win.  Maybe Woody Williams was just pitching to the score.

Micah Owings (a pitcher) hit a pinch-homer for Arizona today. I can’t figure out a way to use the PI to search for this type of event, but it’s got to be pretty damn rare. Owings is incredible.

Last night Brandon Webb won his sixth consecutive start to begin the season. This makes him the 37th pitcher since 1956 to accomplish this. This list, which consists of a lot of great starters mixed in with a few surprises, includes 17 pitchers who won their first 7 or 8 starts. Amazingly however, no one approaches the start that Andy Hawkins had to the 1985 season. Hawkins won his first 10 starts, and he is still the only player since 1956 to even win 9. What’s more amazing is that Hawkins, who only won 84 games in his career, never won more than 4 consecutive games during any other stretch during his career.

I was curious to see how these pitchers fared during the rest of the season. Here are the 36 seasons sorted by wins: (more…)

Today the Cubs won again.  It was their fourth straight game they won by at least 6 runs.  I had to check to see when that last happened.

B-ref is great for checking things like that.  Each team’s main page links to their schedule, and the right hand margin is a hash marker telling you how long their current win/loss streak is. 

Upon checking, the last time they did this was . . . well, I got sick of checking after 1906.  They hadn’t done it in all that time, unless I missed something.  This week the Cubs did something they haven’t done in over a century.  Wow.

 Still, the first week of June 1930 might’ve been a more impressive stretch, though.   

Turns out, Giambi is not having a very good year in the Bronx. 

One-eigthth the way through, he’s barely hitting .100, with only 5 hits.  Even more impressive, only one of those hits is a single. 

He’s got 59 PA.  Has anyone ever had that many PA in a season with only one single?  Let’s leave pitchers out of this one.

Turns out, Jason Giambi is on the verge of history.  The record is 61 PA with only 1 single in a season, held by former shortstop Lyn Lary. 

Best part of that list?  Giambi used to be teammates with John Jaha, #4.

 ’course there’s a problem with the above logic.  Giambi could go 60, 70, 100, 500  PA without another single, but the moment he does, he’s off the list.

My advice: take 3 more PA, Jason, and then go wash Jeff Kent’s truck.  My settle for futility when history is right around the corner?  

In honor of last night’s marathon , here are the players who had 9 PA in 4 different games in their careers (since 1956).

 Dave Winfield         4 Ind. Games
 Reggie Smith          4 Ind. Games
 Ozzie Smith           4 Ind. Games
 Gene Richards         4 Ind. Games
 Don Mincher           4 Ind. Games
 Willie Mays           4 Ind. Games
 Chuck Knoblauch       4 Ind. Games
 Bert Campaneris       4 Ind. Games                

Winfield, Ozzie and especially Gene Richards benefited by playing on the 1980 Padres (who had 3 games of 17+ innings), but there are other interesting games here as well.

Two quick notes:

None of the players won or lost all 4 games .

Reggie Smith had the  fewest hits in those games, Bert Campaneris the most.