|
|
August 31, 2007
Have you seen Pat Burrell’s batting splits for pre-All-star and post-All-star this season?
Very interesting:
I Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip sOPS+ tOPS+ Split
+-+————+—+—+—+—+—+—+–+–+–+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+—+–+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+————+
1st Half 81 69 291 228 32 49 11 0 11 37 58 1 58 3 0 2 2 7 0 0 .215 .378 .408 .786 .236 112 73 1st Half
2nd Half 44 44 181 145 25 51 11 0 11 37 31 0 35 1 0 4 0 1 0 0 .352 .459 .655 1.114 .388 188 142 2nd Half
He has had an OPS more than 300 points higher, and has the same number of HRs and RBIs in each half (in many fewer PAs in the second half.) If the Phillies make the playoffs, it will be in part thanks to Burrell, as well as Ryan Howard’s resurgence and Chase Utley’s return from injury (not that Tadahito Iguchi did poorly in Utley’s absence–quite the opposite.)
And by the way, Burrell’s second half stats don’t include his 2 HR and 3 RBI from yesterday. Burrell must have loved his key homer off Billy Wagner yesterday given their nasty history.
By the way, Burrell is not one of those players who always hits better in the second half. Prior to this season, his first-half and second-half numbers over his career were very similar. He’s had a couple of years where he hit significantly better in the first half.
August 30, 2007
Having some fun with Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index Post-Season Batting Event Finder…looking at Sacrifice Bunts in Postseason.
Did you know that there have been 1,179 Sac-Bunts in the Post-Season? Three players are tied for the most, with eight each: Derek Jeter, Scott Brosius, and Rafael Belliard. Betcha Jeter owns this record someday.
Here’s a fun slice - there have only been ten times in World Series history where a pinch-hitter laid down a Sac-Bunt. Here’s the list:
Car# G# Date Series G Batter Tm Opp Pitcher Score soP eoI BO Df Result Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.+-----+---+-------------+------+-+-----------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+---+---+--+--+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
1 1 1969-10-15 WS 4 J.C. Martin NYM BAL Pete Richert tied 1-1 0 9 11 RoE b10 12- 0 - 0 *ENDED GAME*:Reached on E1 (throw to 1B)/Sacrifice Bunt; Gaspar Scores/unER/No RBI; Weis to 2B; Martin to 1B
2 1 1970-10-11 WS 2 Angel Bravo CIN BAL Moe Drabowsky down 5-6 -1 9 11 Out b 7 1-- 0 - 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B-2B/Sacrifice; Cline to 2B
3 1 1971-10-17 WS 7 Tom Shopay BAL PIT Steve Blass down 0-2 -2 9 11 Out b 8 12- 0 - 0 Bunt Groundout: P-2B/Sacrifice; Hendricks to 3B; Belanger to 2B
4 1 1972-10-19 WS 4 Julian Javier CIN @OAK Ken Holtzman down 0-1 -1 9 11 Out t 8 1-- 0 - 0 Bunt Groundout: 3B-1B/Sacrifice; Concepcion to 2B
5 1 1975-10-15 WS 4 Ed Armbrister CIN BOS Luis Tiant down 4-5 -1 9 11 Out b 9 1-- 0 0-1 2 0 Bunt Groundout: P-2B/Sacrifice; Geronimo to 2B
6 1 1980-10-17 WS 3 Greg Gross PHI @KCR Dan Quisenberry tied 3-3 0 1 11 Out t10 1-- 0 1-0 2 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B unassisted/Sacrifice; Boone to 2B
7 1 1981-10-21 WS 2 Bobby Murcer NYY LAD Terry Forster ahead 1-0 1 9 11 Out b 7 12- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: P-1B/Sacrifice; Cerone to 3B; Randolph to 2B
8 1 1987-10-20 WS 3 Terry Pendleton STL MIN Juan Berenguer down 0-1 -1 9 11 Out b 7 12- 0 2-0 3 0 Bunt Groundout: 3B-1B/Sacrifice; Oquendo to 3B; Pena to 2B
9 1 1991-10-22 WS 3 Jeff Treadway ATL MIN Carl Willis tied 4-4 0 9 11 Out b 9 1-- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B-2B/Sacrifice (Weak 1B); Belliard to 2B
10 1 2006-10-26 WS 4 So Taguchi STL DET Fernando Rodney down 2-3 -1 2 11 RoE b 7 -2- 0 0-0 1 0 Reached on E1/Sacrifice Bunt; Eckstein Scores/No RBI/unER; Taguchi to 2B
There’s a trivia question for you: Who is the only batter in baseball history to have a pinch-hit Sac-Bunt in a World Series game when his team was leading the game at the time of the pinch At-Bat? The answer: Bobby Murcer in 1981.
Here’s another fun list - Sacrifice Bunts in Post-Season, made during innings 7 or later, when the score was tied, by a Designated Hitter:
Car# G# Date Series G Batter Tm Opp Pitcher Score soP eoI BO Df Result Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.
+-----+---+-------------+------+-+-----------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+---+---+--+--+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------+
1 1 1980-10-19 WS 5 Keith Moreland PHI @KCR Dan Quisenberry tied 3-3 0 5 10 Out t 9 -2- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B unassisted/Sacrifice; Unser to 3B
2 1 1981-10-07 ALDS 2 Cliff Johnson OAK @KCR Mike Jones tied 1-1 0 3 10 Out t 8 1-- 0 - 0 Bunt Groundout: 3B-1B/Sacrifice; Murphy to 2B
3 1 1984-10-03 ALCS 2 Johnny Grubb DET @KCR Dan Quisenberry tied 3-3 0 7 10 Out t 9 1-- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: P unassisted/Sacrifice; Jones to 2B
4 1 1985-10-11 ALCS 3 Hal McRae KCR TOR Jim Clancy tied 5-5 0 4 10 Out b 8 1-- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: P-2B/Sacrifice; Brett to 2B
5 1 1990-10-06 ALCS 1 Harold Baines OAK @BOS Tom Bolton tied 1-1 0 4 10 Out t 8 1-- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: 3B-2B/Sacrifice (Short 3B Line); Canseco to 2B
6 1 1991-10-20 WS 2 Lonnie Smith ATL @MIN Kevin Tapani tied 2-2 0 1 10 Out t 8 1-- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B-2B/Sacrifice (Weak 1B); Belliard to 2B
7 1 1992-10-20 WS 3 Dave Winfield TOR ATL Mark Wohlers tied 2-2 0 4 10 Out b 9 12- 0 0-0 1 0 Bunt Groundout: 1B-2B/Sacrifice (Weak 2B-1B); Alomar to 3B; Carter to 2B
Wow. We saw that happen 3 years in a row, from 1990 to 1992 - and not again since that time. Then again, it does take a lot for a big bat guy to square around in a big spot in a big game. Give credit to these seven guys for doing what had to be done and checking their ego at the door.
8 Home Runs in Postseason, Deciding Game and as last play of game - Baseball-Reference PI
The Play Index is now fully integrated with postseason data. Within the event finder you can find all of the various events in the postseason for every team or by individual team. You can also select by type of series and game in the series (including the last game of the series).
The game finders and streak finders also now include postseason data and allow you search by series type and game as well.
I have seen a lot of stats mentioned in different places about various records of Red Sox pitchers vs the Yankees, and the reverse. (Many over at Peter Abraham’s LoHud Yankees Blog.)
Let’s take a look. First, Red Sox starters this year against the Yankees:
Pitcher G GS GF W L S CG SHO IP ERA H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP
+--------------+---+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+-----+------+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+
Schilling 3 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 18 7.00 29 15 14 6 2 0 10 0
Matsuzaka 3 3 0 2 1 0 0 0 19.1 6.98 19 15 15 3 8 0 16 3
Beckett 3 3 0 1 1 0 0 0 19.2 5.49 30 13 12 1 6 0 18 0
Wakefield 3 3 0 0 3 0 0 0 14 10.93 19 17 17 4 17 0 7 1
Tavarez 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 10.2 4.22 6 5 5 1 6 0 4 0
There you have it, folks. Julian Tavarez, your Yankee-killer. (Joking aside, I think Tavarez has done a great job for Boston this year. He’s got fantastic stats as a #5 starter and has helped keep their bullpen fresh.)
Now, as turnabout is fair play, the Yankee starters’ performance against Boston this year:
Pitcher G GS GF W L S CG SHO IP ERA H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP
+--------------+---+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+-----+------+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+
Pettitte* 6 5 0 2 1 0 0 0 30.1 4.75 36 16 16 4 12 0 19 1
Wang 3 3 0 2 1 0 0 0 18 4.50 23 9 9 2 8 0 7 2
Mussina 2 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 11.2 9.26 19 12 12 4 5 1 3 0
Clemens 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 6 1.50 2 1 1 1 5 0 2 1
Karstens 2 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 4.1 14.54 11 7 7 1 2 0 1 0
C. Wright 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 12.00 5 4 4 4 3 0 3 0
*Numbers include 1 scoreless inning in relief on 4/22/07
I guess the Yankees’ numbers are somewhat better, especially that the three truly unimpressive performances above are by guys not currently in the rotation.
Here are the total lines for pitching by each staff (not just starters) against the other team:
Pitching Team G W L S CG SHO IP ERA H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP
+-+------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+------+------+----+----+----+---+----+---+----+---+
Yankees (vs BOS) 14 7 7 4 0 0 122 5.61 145 79 76 21 68 5 75 7
Boston (vs NYY) 14 7 7 4 0 0 121 5.43 135 75 73 18 59 0 86 7
Pretty similar, although the edge goes to Boston.Their bullpen has been a lot better than the Yankees’ in their head-to-head matchups.
Now, those 7 HBP by each team are a bit ominous…
Last night, Santana lost his fourth game against Cleveland this year.
If you go to his splits page, you can see his data against Cleveland this season:
G: 5
IP: 33
ER: 15
ERA: 4.09
H: 30
BB: 6
K: 40
W: 0
L: 4
Those numbers don’t look so bad (especially the K/BB) until you look at the rest of his numbers in 2007 against all other teams:
G: 23
IP: 155
ER: 49
ERA: 2.85
H: 126
BB: 35
K: 160
W: 14
L: 6
It’s sort of crazy that he has a WHIP of 1.09 vs. Cleveland but still comes out with a 4.09 ERA. There must have been a few timely hits in there.
Harold Baines, Yankee-Killer. I heard that one all the time growing up. Did Baines actually dominate the Yankees, though? I used his PI splits page to get the following data. tOPS+ is Baines’ split OPS compared to his overall OPS.
Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip tOPS+ Split
OAK 214 208 905 781 105 236 49 5 24 132 107 16 114 0.302 0.385 0.470 0.855 0.325 109 OAK
MIN 213 189 809 716 112 209 41 4 32 127 78 13 101 0.292 0.356 0.494 0.850 0.297 106 MIN
TOR 221 202 848 773 89 230 29 4 38 131 71 9 106 0.298 0.356 0.493 0.849 0.304 106 TOR
TEX 209 195 825 734 110 213 27 4 33 117 85 13 119 0.290 0.363 0.473 0.836 0.307 104 TEX
SEA 213 193 832 737 100 213 39 5 29 132 82 20 113 0.289 0.355 0.474 0.829 0.303 102 SEA
MIL 183 175 744 678 84 204 33 3 26 108 54 4 93 0.301 0.349 0.473 0.822 0.313 100 MIL
NYY 213 182 802 713 92 203 30 5 29 124 82 19 117 0.285 0.357 0.463 0.820 0.304 100 NYY
KCR 203 193 824 748 91 220 42 2 27 101 71 19 114 0.294 0.353 0.464 0.817 0.315 99 KCR
CLE 202 192 825 740 100 213 36 4 28 117 75 14 99 0.288 0.350 0.461 0.811 0.297 98 CLE
DET 213 199 854 753 95 210 27 4 30 148 91 20 112 0.279 0.352 0.445 0.797 0.290 95 DET
BAL 168 161 681 619 86 178 35 2 22 98 54 13 81 0.288 0.342 0.457 0.799 0.299 94 BAL
ANA 215 189 829 757 87 217 43 5 24 115 64 10 108 0.287 0.341 0.452 0.793 0.306 93 ANA
BOS 210 191 823 731 93 207 33 1 24 105 86 15 104 0.283 0.357 0.430 0.787 0.301 93 BOS
CHW 85 71 309 269 42 65 14 1 12 44 40 2 42 0.242 0.340 0.435 0.775 0.247 89 CHW
TBD 27 17 80 71 6 18 4 0 2 15 9 0 9 0.254 0.338 0.394 0.732 0.267 80 TBD
Tot 2830 2579 11092 9908 1299 2866 488 49 384 1628 1062 187 1441 0.289 0.356 0.465 0.821 0.303 100 Tot
As you can see, Harold Baines’ OPS against the Yankees was right on par with his performance against all other teams. But those A’s, boy did he take it out on those A’s.
As for teams Baines struggled against, Tampa Bay and Chicago lead the way. That makes sense because he would have played against both those teams later in his career, as he was slowing down.
Reader denniscookfanclub posed the question of how many times a team has scored at least 10 runs while at least half were unearned. I’ve done a search for almost this: a pitching game finder where at least 10 runs were allowed, but no more than 5 were earned. (This is actually slightly more restrictive than denniscookfanclub’s idea.)
I was shocked to see how many such games there have been. The full list is shared here. There have been a whopping 352 such games since 1957! Here is a sample:
(more…)
It’s not hard to see which pitchers are the leaders are in wins, losses, and W-L% for any given period. I have gone ahead and calculated something a bit different: team wins and losses for all starts by each pitcher. So that basically takes all no-decisions for each starter and adds them to their win total if the team ending up winning the game, and adds them to their loss total if the team lost.
This stat is pretty easy to see for any individual player. For example, if you check out Bert Blyleven’s gamelogs for 1979, you can see that while Blyleven himself earned a 12 and 5 record in 37 starts, the Pirates actually went 23-14 in Blyleven’s starts.
I went ahead and got the totals for all starts by each pitcher since 1997, split based on whether the team won or lost. This is really easy to do. Go to the PI Pitching Game Finder, set team W (or team L) on the left, click the bubble for role of Starter, and then sort by Players with games in career. Doing this twice (once for wins and once for losses) generates two long lists. I put those lists into Excel, did alphabetical sorting, and eliminated players who didn’t have at least one team win and one team loss. From there, I could calculate leaders by total and percentage. Click through for the details.
(more…)
August 29, 2007
In yesterday’s Yankees game, Joe Torre allowed Andy Pettitte to throw 119 pitches in 7 innings of work. This made me wonder how many times in the “Joe Torre Era” has a Yankees pitcher thrown 119+ pitches in a start where he threw 7 innings or less? Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Pitching Game Finder, the answer is simple:
Year Games Link to Individual Games
—-+—–+————————-
2000 28 Ind. Games
1999 20 Ind. Games
2001 13 Ind. Games
2002 11 Ind. Games
1996 11 Ind. Games
2003 10 Ind. Games
1997 10 Ind. Games
2005 8 Ind. Games
1998 8 Ind. Games
2004 4 Ind. Games
2007 1 Ind. Games
As you can see from the above chart, from 1999 to 2001, Torre used to allow his starters to labor more like Pettitte did last night. However, from 2004 to the present day, this is no longer the case. In fact, before last night, the last time that Torre allowed a starting pitcher to throw 119+ pitches in 7 innings or less was almost two years ago to the day: August 31, 2005.
It’s interesting to see this change in pattern start in 2004. That’s just about the time that folks, en masse, started to realize that Joe Torre was killing arms in the Yankees bullpen. However, seeing these stats, maybe the frying of arms was not Torre driven? Perhaps, come 2004, once the Cones, El Duques, Clemens, and Pettittes of Yankeeland were gone - and replaced with starters more likely to leave a game at 100 pitches, no matter what the inning - Torre was forced to go to his pen earlier, and, more often? Maybe, if Torre had more pitchers that wanted to go 6 or 7 innings - even if it meant throwing 119 or more pitches - then Joe would have not had the cause to call the bullpen so often?
Who knows, really, for sure?
In any event, given that young and/or future Yankees starters like Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy will probably be limited to pitch counts, Torre’s pen usage - no matter what the actual root cause, albeit driven by need or just Joe’s desire - is not likely to change too soon (assuming that he remains Yankees skipper beyond 2007).
A user asked me about Pat Burrell and his bases loaded walks, so I figured, why not check the most ever in a season. Eventually, I want to allow users to search the splits, but that is a little ways off.
| name_common | year_game | PA | BB | IBB |
+------------------+-----------+------+------+------+
| Jackie Jensen | 1959 | 18 | 8 | 0 |
| D'Angelo Jimenez | 2004 | 24 | 7 | 0 |
| Charlie Maxwell | 1960 | 16 | 6 | 0 |
| Rocky Colavito | 1961 | 17 | 6 | 0 |
| Mike Hargrove | 1983 | 15 | 6 | 0 |
| Jack Clark | 1987 | 15 | 6 | 0 |
| Darren Daulton | 1993 | 29 | 6 | 0 |
| Danny Tartabull | 1996 | 29 | 6 | 0 |
| Mark McGwire | 1998 | 14 | 6 | 0 |
| Ellis Burks | 2000 | 29 | 6 | 0 |
| John Olerud | 2003 | 25 | 6 | 0 |
| Hideki Matsui | 2004 | 32 | 6 | 0 |
| Michael Tucker | 2004 | 24 | 6 | 0 |
| Adam Dunn | 2005 | 19 | 6 | 0 |
| Chipper Jones | 2005 | 8 | 6 | 0 |
| Derek Jeter | 2006 | 17 | 6 | 0 |
| Trot Nixon | 2006 | 27 | 6 | 0 |
| Pat Burrell | 2007 | 13 | 6 | 0 |
D’Angelo Jimenez? How about Chipper with six walks in eight PA’s.
Here are the career leaders.
(more…)
Next Page »
|