For two years, Matt Cain has pitched in the shadow of teammate Tim Lincecum. It's a shame because he's done some extraordinary things in 2007-2009.

Check out all the pitchers since 1901 to have a season Age 24 or younger with at least 200 IP and an ERA+ of 150 or better:

Firstly, this list is bookended by Jair Jurrjens and Noodles Hahn. Interesting set of names there. Did you know that Hahn's real first name was Jair? Just kidding. It was Frank.

Anyway, Cain slides onto this list just ahead of his teammate Timmy, who turned the trick two seasons ago. The rest of this list is quite mixed including some of the very best pitchers of all time (such as Clemens, Seaver, Carlton, Drysdale, Feller, Johnson, Mathewson, and some guy named Ruth) as well as a number of pitchers who didn't have much success in later years (Willis so far, Prior, Zito to a large extent, Thompson, Anderson, Ellsworth, Antonelli, and numerous others.)

Incidentally, here are the guys from the list above with multiple such seasons:

There are a few guys, such as Jurrjens, with a chance to add another season by the age of 24.

Anyway, two years ago I wrote about Matt Cain's bizarre season in terms of how well he pitched with so few wins to show for it. Check out what I mean:

Since 1901, Cain is the only pitcher with 2 seasons of 200 IP, an ERA+ of at least 118, and a W-L% of .364 or less.

Even relaxing the criteria to an ERA+ of 110 and a W-L% of .400 or less, Cain is still one of just 9 pitchers with multiple such seasons:

Note that he's the only guy to be saddled with such bad luck in the last 50+ years.

As for 2009, Cain is one of 155 pitchers since 1901 to have a season with 200 IP, an ERA+ of at least 151, and a W-L% of .636 or better. There have been 239 such seasons and here are the 200 most recent. Incidentally, there have been another 90 seasons where the pitcher met the innings and ERA+ requirement but not on W-L%. So Cain had a little bit of luck this year, but mostly he just pitched extremely well.

Tommy Henrich's passing today gives us the opportunity to reflect for a moment on his productive career. Henrich missed many of his prime seasons to WWII and injuries forced him into retirement at a relatively early age. Yet, in between he put up some very impressive numbers, including 2 remarkable back to back seasons.

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Henrich's combined OPS+ of 150 is good enough to tie him for 15th place all-time among players in their age 35-36 seasons (min. 1000 PA).

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That's some pretty impressive company.
In fact, here is what the list looks like when you remove the players that are already in the Hall-of-Fame. (I apologize for not including O'Doul and Cravath in the earlier chart.)

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The writers' opinions about  steroids and the DH rules will determine how many of the players above Henrich will make the Hall. However, there is a very good chance that Henrich's 35-36 seasons will be among the best ever by a player not enshrined in Cooperstown.

This is a stat that gets asked about all the time: which players have hit more homers in a season than singles? It has been answered before, but I thought I'd show it all in a single list since it's now so easy to do with the PI arithmetic function. These lists actually include players with as many homers as singles as well.

I calculated this group as anybody with HR > 0.999 * singles, meaning basically anybody with as many or more homers than singles. I set the minimum to 5 HR. This list goes back to 1901.

It is unsurprising that the feat has become much more common in the Steroids Era (starting in 1992/1993 and ending...not sure....2006? 2007? 2009? not yet?) With homers more prevalent, it's easier for this "statistical anomaly" happening where a guy hits more over the fence, especially when we set the bar fairly low at just 5 HR. If we ignore the HR >= 5 requirement, then the anomaly has happened 563 times since 1901, mostly seasons with 1 HR and 1 or 0 singles.

We see 3 pitchers on there (#4 Zambrano, #21 Drysdale, and #22 Harshman), all of whom were known for their hitting.

For a career, here are the leaders:

There are a bunch of guys down at the 1 HR level but I lopped them off this table. Staton holds the career record and there's probably a decent chance that he never gives that one up. My man George Canale, who I once saw hit 2 HR in a minor league game, also makes the list.

I looked at some other ratios as well. I compared career HR totals vs career single totals, allowed for a smaller multiplying factor. For example, there are only two guys whose career HR totals are at least 70% of their career singles totals (minimum 10 HR.) They are Mark McGwire (583 HR, 785 singles) and Mike Hessman (13 HR, 16 singles.) Hessman isn't necessarily done in the majors although he had a fairly poor year in AAA in 2009 and is already 31 years old. You have to drop down under 60% to find any other big boppers. In the range of 50% to 59.9% are Bonds, Dave Kingman, Adam Dunn, Ryan Howard, Carlos Pena, Russell Branyan, Marcus Thames, Bobby Estalella, and Kevin Roberson.

I don't need to tell you that ever since the Yankees won the World Series earlier this month, there's been a lot of renewed discussion about whether or not New York's payroll advantage finally "bought" them a championship, and if a salary cap is needed to restore competitive balance to baseball. That topic has really been talked about to death over the past few weeks, but I feel like a salary cap -- ostensibly designed to prevent the Yankees from spending $50 million more than the next highest-payrolled team -- is only half of the discussion. If all you do is put a cap on team payrolls, you're still going to have cheapskate owners who take their revenue-sharing money and fail to invest it in their teams, owners who have learned to game the system and are content to put a poor product on the field if it means they can keep more cash for themselves.

So, obviously, you need to talk about a salary floor every bit as much as a salary cap. Discussing salary floors, though, leads to the question of whether you should force owners to spend a certain amount of money on their players, whether they have it or not. Opinions on the profitability of MLB teams vary wildly depending on who you talk to -- Bud Selig routinely claims teams are operating at a loss, while Forbes magazine routinely disagrees -- so it's an open question at this point in terms of how high of a floor you can impose on some of the more (allegedly) cash-strapped teams. But here's a fun exercise we can engage in, as long as we're pretending that a salary cap/floor is even a remote possibility...

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it's just nice to play with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index and see where it takes you. For example, let us look at which team, since 1954, had at least one triple in a game the most games in a row. Thanks to PI's Team Batting Streak Finder here's that answer:

Ah, so, the 1979 Phillies are the leaders here.  Let's look at their Team Batting Page at B-R.com and see who had more than one triple for them that season:

Bowa and McBride leading the pack here, huh? Yeah, I can just see those two slashing balls into the gap on the turf at the old Vet; and, then, taking off, scooting around the bases. Seeing this, I next wondered how many teams in the "D.H. Era," had at least two players on their team with 10+ triples in a season. Thanks to PI's Batting Season Finder, here's that answer:

Here are a fewest of list related to strikes made possible by the new and improved PI.

Most Batters Faced - All Strikeouts 1954-2009:

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Most Pitches thrown-  all strikes 2000-2009:

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Most IP -  no balls thrown 2000-2009:

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Most IP with SO > 3*IP 1954-2009:

A patent lawyer colleague of mine pointed out that MLB is fighting Don Mattingly over a trademark application. Apparently Mattingly's company, Mattingly Hitting Products Inc., has attempted to trademark a logo featuring a left-handed batter wearing the #23 swinging a bat. Here below are the logo that Mattingly is attempting to trademark as well as the classic MLB logo that is the basis of the complaint:

For those unfamiliar with the rules of trademarks, the US Patent & Trademark Office will usually grant a trademark (which can be a name or a logo) unless it feels that the new mark may cause consumer confusion. For example, they would not allow a new soda company to trademark something like "Coka Cola" for fear that it would cause consumer confusion with "Coca Cola." Anyway, MLB has claimed that Mattingly's desire to put the logo on hats, bats, mitts, and other equipment will cause consumer confusion with equipment bearing the MLB logo. The case has been going on for more than 2 years already and is still not decided.

You can see the logo currently in use on the Mattingly Hitting Products website. Note the little "TM" that appears next to the logo--that means that Mattingly intends to trademark the logo but that a trademark has not yet been granted (otherwise the logo would have the ® symbol.)

It's neat to look at all the other trademark disputes that MLB has put up. You can see that many of the disputes have to do with use of the phrase "major league" such as for "major league kickball" and "major league medic." They have even battled the Melbourne Airport Authority in Melbourne, FL over the use of a logo featuring the abbreviation MLB for Melbourne! There is also a dispute with Jewish Major Leaguers over the use of that name to describe a set of baseball cards featuring Jewish ballplayers. Also, perhaps Bank of American really is not the official bank of MLB.

You can read more about the Mattingly case specifically at the TTABlog®.

In the 2009 season there were 4 players who came to the plate at least 300 times and struck out more than they reached base.

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Hall (1.277) and Davis's (1.261)  ratios of strikeouts to times on base  were the second and third highest in baseball history (min. 300 PA). The only player with with a higher ratio was pitcher Frank Meinke, who struck out 89 times, while only reaching base 62 for the 1884 Detroit Wolverines (ah,  the memories) . (Meinke also had a W-L record of 8-23 that year.)

Meanwhile, Olivo became the 12th player to strikeout more often than he reached base and still post an OPS+ of 100 or higher. As Gerry and I mentioned in the PI Tag thread, only Dave Nicholson has done so while qualifying for a batting title.

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Most of the players listed were young. Oliva however, is not. In fact, with the exception of Mark McGwire, Oliva is the oldest player to ever accomplish this feat.

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In terms of career numbers, only 4 players in history have posted an OPS+ of at least 100 with more strikeouts than times on base in at least 200 career PA. Three of those players are active.

Today I was wondering about which starting pitchers were consistent in terms of taking a regular turn and providing innings pitched - but who were also not stellar or terrible that season. Who did this most often? So, I turned to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season Finder and set the controls for:

For single seasons, from 1901 to 2009, requiring GS>=30, IP>=200, ERA+>=90 and <=110, sorted by greatest number of seasons matching criteria

and, I got this leader board:

Some of the names here are the ones that you may expect. But, I didn't think Kevin Gross would be so high on the list.  Anyone here that surprises you?

Most Baseball-Reference.com users are aware of the site's inclusion of Similarity Scores for each player.

By way of example, here are the players tto whom Mark Teixeira is currently most similar:

1. Kevin Mitchell (913)
2. Miguel Cabrera (905)
3. Tony Clark (883)
4. Dick Stuart (868)
5. Geoff Jenkins (861)
6. Gus Zernial (856)
7. Aubrey Huff (855)
8. Richie Sexson (853)
9. Richie Zisk (853)
10. Ripper Collins (853)

This is the similar batter list for career totals. (Each player's page also lists similar players through the current age of the player as well as similar players at past ages for the player.)

So at this point in time, Mark Teixeira's career totals are most similar to Kevin Mitchell's career totals, which is not bad considering that Tex will just be turning 30 around the beginning of the 2010 season. For an explanation of how similarity scores are calculated, see here. I really like the system although I admit I'd prefer if it didn't consider the defensive position of each player so that we could compare based on offensive performance alone.

Anyway, I'd like to try to identify the players who are least similar to any other players.

Here's what I meant. If you look at Teixeira's list above, his top similarity score is 913. However, there are other players whose stats are so unusual that they have a top similarity score that is much lower. Barry Bonds, for example, has Willie Mays as his most similar player but with a score of just 762. By comparison, the guy most similar to Mays himself is Frank Robinson with a score of 830.

I want to find the player with the lowest #1 similarity score. I already know of one star player with such a score much lower than Bonds' but I'll let you, the readers, figure it out.

Let's also create a few categories: lowest similarity score for 1) retired players with at least 1000 games played, 2) retired players with under 1000 games played, 3) active players with at least 1000 games played, and 4) active players with under 1000 games played. I'm talking about only positional players here, not pitchers (or pitchers' similarity scores as batters.)

Go ahead and post whatever you find in the comments. I'll check back on this post at the end of the year (Dec 31) and see who posted the earliest comments with the best answers. Comment as many times as you like.

What are the prizes? As of now, there are none beyond bragging rights. However I am going to add some next week so stay tuned.