There are many ways to fill each position over the course of an entire season. Most often, a few players are used by each team. However, there are also teams that are extreme. Some may rotate a truckload of players in and out all season long. Others are able to accomplish the rare feat of using only one player at a particular position for an entire season. Over the next few days I would like to take a look as some of these oddities.

In the early years of baseball it was not uncommon for a player to fill a position for his team for every play of a season. Even into the '30s and '40s it was done on a fairly regular basis. However as the '50s progressed and especially after the schedule expanded in 1961, teams with only 1 player in a position became quite rare, (particularly if Cal Ripken Jr. was not on your team). Here are the teams since 1961 to have only 1 player man a position for an entire season. (National League DHs are not included for obvious reasons.)

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A couple of notes on the list above:

• Ripken's prominence on this list is no surprise. Well before he was close to Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak, Ripken  was setting unofficial records by playing in 8,243 consecutive innings.
• At the time, Pierre was stalwart in CF, playing 162 games every year from 2003-2007.
• After the 2003 season Sexson was traded to Arizona where he was hurt for most of the season.
• Fryman's season was the shortened 1995. He only played 144 games that year and never played 162 in season in his career.
• Staub became the first player to play 162 games in a season without playing the field. (The Tigers only played 159 games the year that Horton DHed every inning for them.)
• Horton, who pulled off this trick with with two separate teams, was an unlikely candidate. With the exception of the two listed years, Horton never played more than 146 games in a season.
• Bando was a player who played consistently. He played at least 160 games four times in his career and at least 150 another 6.
• In the year between his complete seasons, Ron Santo played 161 games. He only missed 1 game that year, but  was also taken out of the game in another 3.

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Next, we'll go position-by position and take a closer look at the history of playing only a few players.

I was just looking at Tommy Henrich's stats. Raphy already put together a nice post showing how productive Henrich was later in his career. His 1948 season shows a rare combination of power, speed, and production.

Below I have listed all batting seasons since 1901 in which the batter had at least 14 triples, 100 RBI, and no more than 42 strikeouts. As you can see, this used to be very commonplace but has virtually disappeared since 1948, when both Henrich and Stan Musial accomplished the criteria. The only guy to do it since was George Brett in 1979. Chances are slim that we'll ever see such a season again as very few players hit 14 triples in a season and not too many guys drive in 100 runs without striking out at least 43 times (the only guys do to this last feat since 1979 are Brett, Cecil Cooper, Bill Buckner, Don Mattingly, Mike Greenwell, Gary Sheffield, Tony Gwynn, Nomar Garciaparra, and Barry Bonds. See here for the full list.)

After the jump is the full list of the 14 3B, 100 RBI, < 42 K players.

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A simple list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder - most seasons, non-pitcher, with 502+ PA and an OPS+ of 75 or worse. (Yes, I know, how many pitchers have 502 PA in a season anyway? But, I threw that filter in there nonetheless.) Here's the "leader" board for this:

Ozzie Guillen can thank the shortened season in 1995 for not tying Larry Bowa for the "lead" on this list.

What if we took shortstops out of the list? Here's the result:

Note Bob Boone here. He and Larry Bowa were teammates in 1974 and 1980 when they posted these types of seasons. Add Garry Maddox to the two of them in 1980 (with his OPS+ of 80) and it is clear that World Champs that season put a premium on defense, over offense, at C, SS, and CF that season.  (Yes, I know that Manny Trillo was on the 1980 Phils too.  But, he was actually a decent hittter that season.  Go figure!)

It appears that Chone Figgins is close to signing a free-agent contract and I've been looking a little bit into his numbers. He has a career OPS+ of 99 suggesting that he's just about an average player offensively, but an argument can be made that he's not all that productive.

For example, his seasonal total base numbers aren't that good, having not cracked 250 in each of the last 4 years. Dividing his career total bases by his career plate appearances yields the number 0.342, meaning he gets one base for roughly every 3 plate appearances. (For point of comparison, Albert Pujols' value is 0.531, meaning more than 1 base every 2 PAs and Willy Tavarez is at 0.299.)

I did a season finder search for career totals of active players who had a TB/PA ratio of less than 0.35 and ranked them by most career plate appearances:

Figgins slots in at #13 and he's grouped with other players I'd put in a similar category: guys good enough to play every day or almost every day but not all that productive. Note that Marco Scutaro, just signed by the Red Sox, makes this list too.

Also while his 280 SB put him at 15th among active players, his 96 CS tie him for 8th with Johnny Damon, who himself has 374 SB.

Here are the players with 260 to 300 career stolen bases (1969-present):

These guys are ranked roughly by stolen base percentage, worst to best. First of all, Carlos Beltran's success rate of 88% is incredible.  Note that Figgins is fairly high on the list, and all of the guys ahead of him have either been active a lot longer or are retired. Stolen base success rate usually drops off later in careers as guys "lose a step" and for Figgins to already rank so high is a shame. He should probably pick his spots a bit better for steal attempts.

Figgins' two best seasons were 2007 and 2009. In 2007 he batted .330, the only season in which he batted .300 or better. In 2009, he drew 101 walks, which was 36 more than he drew in any other season. Both were flukes. Take out those 2 seasons and his career OPS+ is around 93.

Among active players with at least 2000 PAs and at least 50% of their games at 3B, Figgins is way towards the bottom of the pile in OPS+.

There are good things to say about Figgins too.

Here's one of them:

These are the only active players with at least 20 games at 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, and RF.

Sadly, the 2009 MLB season is over, but that doesn't mean the world of baseball has gone quiet. The hot stove is warming up, of course, and over the past month we've also had a chance to take in the major-league award announcements, as well as the annual Hall of Fame ballot. Thanks to our Awards Section here at B-R, you can keep track of these developments and look back at past recipients of the game's highest honors.

First, there's the long-awaited addition of Hall of Fame balloting summaries. From the Awards Section, scroll down to the area marked "Hall of Fame Ballot and Voting Summaries" and you'll find links that lead to Hall of Fame voting results for every season since the HoF began bestowing its honors in 1936. On any of those pages, you'll see every player who was on the official ballot in that year, along with the number of years they had been on the ballot, the number of votes they garnered, what percentage of the total ballots cast contained their name, several of Bill James' HoF monitor stats, and of course, their traditional career batting and pitching statistics. Notice also that players who were voted in by special non-BBWAA committees, including the Veterans Committee and the Negro Leagues Committee, are included in separate tables to denote their different enshrinement circumstances. Also take note of the fact that you can navigate from any year's HoF voting results to the results of any other year by using the dropdown menu near the top of the page.

And for those not just interested in historical Hall of Fame elections, but also current and upcoming ones, we have projected ballots for each of the next 5 years (through 2014). And of course, you can sort the lists by each of the column headers -- for instance, clicking on "YoB" twice will allow you to sort in ascending order by the number of years on the ballot, giving you the players in their first year of eligibility at the top of the list. Barry Bonds in 2013, anybody?

The Awards Section contains more than just Hall of Fame data, though. We also have lists of (and voting summaries for) every major regular-season and postseason award, including the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, and more. At the bottom of the main awards page, you'll find an area called "Baseball Award Voting Summaries", with a series of years -- and similar to our Hall of Fame area, just click any year, and you'll be taken to the voting summaries for every major award in that season.

As always, the Hall of Fame and Awards data is updated through the most current season, so be sure to spend some quality time with the freshly-minted results from a few weeks ago, and check out the first-timers on next year's HoF ballot while you're at it. And don't worry, just like the awards information you're used to being able to find on indivdual player pages, you'll also be able to see a player's history of Hall of Fame voting results on his page now -- take Bert Blyleven's, for instance.

Now, I do have to say that because this HoF data is brand new, there are likely still bugs in the vote totals. So please report any issues that you come across, and together we can continue to make Baseball-Reference your one stop for baseball information from the past and the present. Enjoy the new data!

This past season, no player caught in more than 138 games. Managers are particularly careful about giving their catchers time off to rest and it is rare that a catcher will go behind the plate for more than 150 games in a season.  In fact, the last player to catch at least 150 games was Brad Ausmus in 2000 (Jason Kendall and Russell Martin both just missed in 2008 with 149 games apiece.)  In baseball history only 27 seasons of at least 150 games caught  been turned in, including 3 each by Randy Hundley (and 1 by son, Todd) and Jim Sundberg. (Obviously, this feat is much easier with a 162 game schedule.)

Please note that games listed are total season games and not necessarily games caught. However, a player must have played at least 150 games at catcher to be included.

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Which player caught the most? In 1968 Randy Hundley caught 160 games. Hundley started 156 of those games and played every inning in 146.

Second place is a 3-way tie at 155. Jim Sundberg did for  the Rangers in 1975. 31 years earlier Frankie Hayes and Ray Mueller also both accomplished this feat even though their teams only played 155 games.

As you probably saw in the news already, the Red Sox signed Marco Scutaro Thursday to be their new starting SS. I don't want to get into the merits of the deal (others have already covered that ground) or how Scooter is almost certain to regress after a career year, but instead I want to look at how anomalous a player Scutaro is. He's basically a guy who draws a ton of walks but has no power -- last year he was one of only 22 players to have a BB% (BB/PA) of at least 13.2%:

Read the rest of this entry »

This past season, Randy Ruiz of the Toronto Blue Jays drove himself in with a  home run 10 times, but only drove in 7 other players. Ruiz's 17 RBI are tied for the 14th most in a season among players who have driven themselves in more than they have driven in others (HR>.5*RBI) .(Ruiz's RBI are third most among players with a ratio of RBI:HR of 1.7 or less.)

Here are the leaders:

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On the opposite end of the spectrum are players who have driven themselves in more than they have been driven in by others (HR>.5*R). This is a lot more common, particularly among big hulking power hitters.(Mark McGwire did it 8 times in his career and Dave Kingman 7.) Here are the players with the most runs scored to accomplish this feat.

In 2009 Carlos Pena had 253 total bases on only 107 hits. Pena's average of 2.36 bases per hit is the fourth most  in a season for a player who qualified for a batting title. The only other players with a higher average were Barry Bonds in 2001 (2.63) and Mark McGwire in 1998 (2.52) and 1999 (2.5). As you would expect, this stat was Mark McGwire's specialty. Here are the seasons in which a player who qualified for the batting title, averaged at least 2.3 bases per hit. Not only is Pena the first player to qualify with less than 40 home runs, he is the first to qualify with less than 50.

Here's a simple search....most plate appearances in a season where every single PA resulted in a strikeout.

Yeah, Koufax was not a good hitter. Later in his career he did drive in some runs but in the first half he had just about nothing at the plate. Incidentally, I was inspired to do this search by this post at Night Owl Cards looking at the worst offensive seasons at each position for the Dodgers franchise.

Ignoring pitchers, here are the leaders:

There's got to be an interesting story behind Gene Ratliff. What you see above is the sum total of his major league career--one season, 4 plate appearances, 4 strikeouts. In all 4 cases he entered the game as a pinch-hitter, struck out, and did not appear again (i.e. he did not go in to play defense.)

This begs the question as to who has the record for most PAs in a career with all strikeouts:

Ratliff has that record. A couple of guys did all their damage in one game, such as Campbell, who got all 3 career PAs in the same game and struck out each time.

Incidentally, doing the same searches for walks (i.e. all plate appearances in a season or career are walks) yields the following. The seasonal record is just 1 and has been done by 31 guys. It's surprising to me that nobody has ever had as many as two plate appearances in a season and walked both times. It logically follows that the career record is also 1, with 10 of those 31 seasons representing a guy's entire career:

Virtually all of these players are completely unknown with the exception of Eddie Gaedel, quite famous for his appearance in a major-league game orchestrated by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck.

Incidentally, all the stats in this post are 1901-present.