Today, I found myself looking at the seasons that Jim Spencer and Oscar Gamble had for the 1979 Yankees...and that got me wondering about which teams had the most batters with great offensive seasons where they had 300 or less PA that year. So, I went to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder and set it for "From 1901 to 2007, Played games at C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF, DH, and OF, (requiring OPSp>=150 and PA<=300), sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria" - and this is what I found:

 Year Lg Team                              Number Players Matching
 +----+--+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+
  1977 AL New York Yankees                       5 Cliff Johnson / Dave Kingman / Mickey Klutts / Gene Locklear / Marty Perez
  1975 AL Boston Red Sox                         5 Carlton Fisk / Tim McCarver / Deron Johnson / Kim Andrew / Andy Merchant
  2007 AL Seattle Mariners                       4 Charlton Jimerson / Mike Morse / Jeff Clement / Wladimir Balentien
  1999 NL Arizona Diamondbacks                   4 Erubiel Durazo / Turner Ward / Edwin Diaz / Danny Klassen
  1993 NL Atlanta Braves                         4 Fred McGriff / Ryan Klesko / Javy Lopez / Chipper Jones
  1967 AL New York Yankees                       4 Billy Bryan / Frank Tepedino / Tom Shopay / Lou Clinton
  1955 AL Chicago White Sox                      4 Clint Courtney / Ron Northey / Stan Jok / Ed White
  1935 NL Brooklyn Dodgers                       4 Babe Phelps / Vince Sherlock / Frank Skaff / Ralph Onis
  1934 AL St. Louis Browns                       4 Rogers Hornsby / Grover Hartley / Art Scharein / Charley O'Leary

There's some interesting names on these lists.  Enjoy.

			

He just got traded to Minnesota.  What does the future hold?  Well, he's one of only 102 players since 1901 to play 190 games before his age 22 season. 

Hall of Famers on that list: Robin Yount, Johnny Bench, Orlando Cepeda, Bill Mazeroski, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Mel Ott, Arky Vaughn, Jimmie Foxx, Freddie Lindstrom, Travis Jackson, Rogers Hornsby, Ray Schalk, Ty Cobb.   That's 20.  One-fifth.  Oh, wait.  I missed Harry Heilman.  21.

Notable layers not currently eligible for Cooperstown on the list: Miguel Cabrera, Carl Crawford, Adrian Beltre, Andruw Jones, Alex Rodriquez, Ivan Rodriquez, Juan Gonzalez, Ken Griffey, Gary Sheffield, Sammy Sosa, Roberto Alomar, and Rickey Henderson.  That's 12 more.  At least 5 (I & A-Rods, Griffey, Rickey, and one from the remainder) should get in.

Noteworthy players not currently in Cooperstown on the list: Alan Trammell, Buddy Bell, Ted Simmons, Garry Templeton, Rusty Staub, Boog Powell, Joe Torre, Ron Santo, Vada Pinson, Curt Flood, Eddie Yost, Phil Cavaretta, Cecil Travis, Dick Bartell, Charlie Grimm, Stuffy McInnis, Sherry Magee.  That's 16 more. 

That's half the list.  Not too shabby a company.

 Well, that's not totally fair.  With 192 games, he's at the bottom of the games played list.  Let's look at within 20 either way: 172-212. 

Only 43 players here, including Young himself.  Among the others:

Hall of Famers: Cal Ripken, Joe Morgan, Joe Medwick, Harry Heilman, and Tris Speaker. 

Not-eligible for Hall notables: Juan Gonzalez, Sammy Sosa, and Joe Jackson.

Other notables: Jose Canseco, Bob Horner, Garry Templeton, Greg Luzinski, Joe Torre, Zoilo Versailles, Larry Doyle, Clyde Milan, and Donie Bush. 

Not as impressive a bunch of names, but really I don't think young'uns get as early a start nowadays. 

I heard a great interview with Bert Blyleven today, and it made me think more about his Hall of Fame candidacy, what with the vote coming up again (see the end of the post for a special announcement on this.) He'll be on the ballot for the 12th time, meaning there are just 4 more chances for the writers to finally get it right and put him in. He is significantly more qualified than quite a number of pitchers already in the HOF, and there are many sites out there with more info on it (including my previous post on this blog about him.) We're not talking about someone like Jim Rice or Tony Perez here, whose numbers are fringe for the HOF.

Anyway, since this whole thing is starting to feel like Blyleven against the HOF, I thought I'd post his lifetime pitching lines against HOF batters:

                    **PA**  AB  H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS   SH  SF IBB HBP GDP G_miss YR_miss
+-----------------+-------+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+------+-------+
 Reggie Jackson      140   131  28  6  0  6  12   8  49  .214  .264  .397  .661   0   0   2   1   1
 George Brett        128   117  27  5  1  2  10   6  15  .231  .281  .342  .623   0   2   0   3   6
 Robin Yount         114   110  20  8  1  1   7   4   4  .182  .211  .300  .511   0   0   0   0   2
 Paul Molitor         80    74  19  8  0  0   4   5  14  .257  .304  .365  .669   1   0   0   0   0
 Cal Ripken           78    67  19  0  0  3  10  10   9  .284  .372  .418  .790   0   1   0   0   0
 Carlton Fisk         70    63  17  1  0  4  10   3   9  .270  .343  .476  .819   0   0   0   4   0
 Eddie Murray         67    62  26  3  0  7  13   5  10  .419  .463  .806 1.269   0   0   0   0   1
 Carl Yastrzemski     65    58  19  4  0  1   7   5   6  .328  .385  .448  .833   0   1   0   1   0
 Rod Carew            53    50  13  1  0  0   2   3   4  .260  .302  .280  .582   0   0   0   0   1
 Dave Winfield        53    48  12  2  0  4   8   3  11  .250  .302  .542  .844   0   1   0   1   1
 Brooks Robinson      51    48  12  0  0  1   3   1   1  .250  .294  .313  .607   0   0   0   2   0
 Wade Boggs           46    43  11  4  0  1   3   3   2  .256  .304  .419  .723   0   0   1   0   1
 Gary Carter          45    42  11  5  0  1   7   2   7  .262  .295  .452  .747   1   0   0   0   2
 Kirby Puckett        41    41  17  2  1  1   6   0   4  .415  .415  .585 1.000   0   0   0   0   2
 Joe Morgan           36    32   6  0  0  1   3   2   3  .188  .222  .281  .503   0   2   0   0   0
 Mike Schmidt         33    23   8  1  0  2   7   7   5  .348  .485  .652 1.137   0   2   0   1   0
 Tony Perez           25    23   7  1  0  1   1   1   3  .304  .360  .478  .838   0   0   0   1   0
 Frank Robinson       21    20   7  1  0  2   3   1   5  .350  .381  .700 1.081   0   0   0   0   0
 Ozzie Smith          21    20   4  1  0  0   0   1   8  .200  .238  .250  .488   0   0   0   0   0
 Johnny Bench         19    17   4  1  0  2   3   1   2  .235  .263  .647  .910   0   1   0   0   0
+-----------------+-------+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+------+-------+
                    **PA**  AB  H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS   SH  SF IBB HBP GDP G_miss YR_miss
+-----------------+-------+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+------+-------+
 Willie McCovey       19    16   6  2  0  0   3   3   2  .375  .474  .500  .974   0   0   2   0   0
 Steve Carlton        18    15   2  0  0  0   3   0   2  .133  .167  .133  .300   0   2   0   1   0
 Luis Aparicio        17    16   3  1  0  0   1   0   2  .188  .176  .250  .426   0   1   0   0   1
 Billy Williams       17    15   1  0  0  0   0   2   3  .067  .176  .067  .243   0   0   1   0   0
 Al Kaline            11    10   1  0  0  0   1   1   1  .100  .182  .100  .282   0   0   0   0   2
 Phil Niekro          11    11   0  0  0  0   0   0   3  .000  .000  .000  .000   0   0   0   0   0
 Lou Brock            10    10   5  0  0  0   0   0   1  .500  .500  .500 1.000   0   0   0   0   0
 Orlando Cepeda        9     8   1  0  0  0   0   1   1  .125  .222  .125  .347   0   0   0   0   0
 Jim Palmer            8     8   2  1  0  0   1   0   4  .250  .250  .375  .625   0   0   0   0   0
 Gaylord Perry         8     5   1  0  0  1   2   1   3  .200  .333  .800 1.133   2   0   0   0   0
 Hank Aaron            7     7   0  0  0  0   0   0   1  .000  .000  .000  .000   0   0   0   0   0
 Don Sutton            7     5   1  0  0  0   0   1   1  .200  .333  .200  .533   1   0   0   0   0
 Tom Seaver            3     2   1  0  0  0   0   0   0  .500  .500  .500 1.000   1   0   0   0   0
 Rollie Fingers        1     1   0  0  0  0   0   0   0  .000  .000  .000  .000   0   0   0   0   0

Holy cow, can you believe Reggie had 140 PAs against him? And he hit terribly, as did George Brett, Robin Yount, and Paul Molitor. Cal Ripken and Carlton Fisk were so-so, but Eddie Murray had some serious PWNAGE going there.

I calculated an approximate average for all this data (should be within 2 or 3 points) and Blyleven's complete line against all HOF batters is .255/.306/.409. Remember that a lot of Bert's pitching came when offense was much less than today (for example in 1973, one of his best years, the AL hit.259/.328/.381) but that his career was through 1990 and that these numbers are against all HOFers. Pretty impressive stuff.

Now, for the special announcement, as per a great reader suggestion:

In the coming weeks, I am going to post another poll here, this time giving you a chance to vote on the Hall of Fame class of 2008. The real voting will be announced on January 8th, so I'll probably post it just before the end of the year. This is announcement is just to get you thinking seriously about who you'd vote in to the HOF, given the chance. So check out the names on this year's ballot, and get ready for my upcoming post!

News reports abound about the condition of Indians' reliever Juan Lara who was involved in a very serious car accident. Based on the information that alleges significant brain and spine damage for Lara, I'm inclined to guess that his baseball career is over. At this point, I simply hope he is able to live a happy & healthy life.

There have been way too many injuries and deaths in the sports world over the last 1-2 seasons. Baseball has lost Cory Lidle, Josh Hancock, Joe Kennedy, and hopefully will not add Lara to that list. Football has lost Sean Taylor, as well as Darrent Williams at the end of last season. Basketball hasn't lost any active players lately, but has lost several active players including Bobby Phills and Malik Sealy in 2000 and Drazen Petrovic in 1993. Going as far back as 1993, that was the year that MLB also lost Tim Crews and Steve Olin.

It seems to me that the rate of deaths and serious accidents for professional athletes is well above the baseline for the general population. I suppose there are lots of reasons for this, including more leisure time during the off-season, more money for activities like flying and driving sports cars, as well as (very generally speaking) more risk-taking personalities in general.

Anyway--no stats in this post. Just feeling a bit down about this, and sorry for the families out there who have lost loved ones.

I saw that Doug Brocail rejoined the Astros yesterday, and I noticed that he had a really fantastic year in 2007 as a 40-year-old reliever. Click through for some proof. Read the rest of this entry »

I just thought it was interesting to use Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder to look at Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, and Brett Butler during the period 1982 to 1995:

  Cnt Player            **OPS+**   PA   SB  From  To   Ages   G    AB    R    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF GDP  CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions Teams
+----+-----------------+--------+-----+----+----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----+---+---+---+----+----+---+----+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+-----------+
    1 Rickey Henderson     140    8136  960 1982 1995 23-36 1837  6698 1470 1928 342  43 219  744 1335  44  940  54   9  40 109 206  .288  .408  .450  .858 *78D      OAK-NYY-TOT-OAK 
    2 Tim Raines           126    8642  699 1982 1995 22-35 1944  7433 1305 2199 358 102 141  792 1083 136  775  35  37  54 111 125  .296  .385  .428  .813 *78/D49   MON-CHW     
    3 Brett Butler         112    8854  526 1982 1995 25-38 2034  7580 1268 2211 266 124  54  548 1059  23  828  36 131  48  60 243  .292  .379  .381  .760 *87/9     ATL-CLE-SFG-LAD-TOT 
 Seasons/Careers found: 3.

At his peak, Raines was better than Butler and just a tick below Rickey, I would imagine, based on these numbers, for some.

I have to wonder if Tim Raines, looking back, would now trade his Yankees World Series rings from 1996 and 1998 for a chance to play for a team where he would have gotten more PA (after 1995)?  With some more "full" seasons from 1996 to 1998, perhaps Raines would then be a slam dunk for Cooperstown - instead of being a debate...maybe? 

So, I went back and calculated triples by LHB and RHB for a bunch of years. Click through for lots of analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

Most Times on Base for a LFer either in the HOF or on the ballot - Baseball-Reference PI

With the HOF ballot released, I went in and added an option to the play index season finders (batting or pitching).  In the second column, you now have options for Yes (in the HOF), Yes or on Ballot, No (not in HOF), No but on Ballot, or the default Any Player.

The list above is IMO, Tim Raines best bet to get into the HOF.  He's better than Lou Brock who pretty much everyone sees as a HOFer.  Better BA, better OBP, better SLG, better OPS+, more net steals (SB-2*CS) , more Home Runs, and 130 more times on base.

Here are the totals for each 2007 team in terms of number of games with at least 3 HR hit:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 CHW 2007    25 Ind. Games
 MIL 2007    24 Ind. Games
 NYY 2007    23 Ind. Games
 CIN 2007    22 Ind. Games
 FLA 2007    21 Ind. Games
 PHI 2007    20 Ind. Games
 TEX 2007    19 Ind. Games
 SDP 2007    19 Ind. Games
 COL 2007    19 Ind. Games
 TOR 2007    18 Ind. Games
 NYM 2007    17 Ind. Games
 BOS 2007    17 Ind. Games
 TBD 2007    16 Ind. Games
 ATL 2007    16 Ind. Games
 DET 2007    15 Ind. Games
 CHC 2007    15 Ind. Games
 ARI 2007    15 Ind. Games
 STL 2007    14 Ind. Games
 OAK 2007    14 Ind. Games
 HOU 2007    14 Ind. Games
 PIT 2007    13 Ind. Games
 CLE 2007    11 Ind. Games
 SFG 2007    10 Ind. Games
 MIN 2007    10 Ind. Games
 WSN 2007     9 Ind. Games
 SEA 2007     8 Ind. Games
 BAL 2007     8 Ind. Games
 LAA 2007     7 Ind. Games
 KCR 2007     7 Ind. Games
 LAD 2007     5 Ind. Games

I'm surprised by the discrepancy between first place (25 such games for the White Sox) and last place (5 such games for the Trolley Dodgers.) LA was way down on the overall team-by-team homer list, with just 129 in the entire season. Averaging fewer than 1 HR per game, it's not so surprising I guess that they managed 3 in a game just 5 times.

Now here are the games in which team pitching allowed 3+ HR in 2007:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 HOU 2007    25 Ind. Games
 TBD 2007    22 Ind. Games
 PHI 2007    21 Ind. Games
 CIN 2007    21 Ind. Games
 MIN 2007    19 Ind. Games
 ATL 2007    18 Ind. Games
 TOR 2007    17 Ind. Games
 STL 2007    17 Ind. Games
 PIT 2007    17 Ind. Games
 LAA 2007    17 Ind. Games
 KCR 2007    17 Ind. Games
 FLA 2007    17 Ind. Games
 CLE 2007    17 Ind. Games
 NYM 2007    16 Ind. Games
 WSN 2007    15 Ind. Games
 MIL 2007    15 Ind. Games
 DET 2007    15 Ind. Games
 LAD 2007    14 Ind. Games
 CHC 2007    14 Ind. Games
 NYY 2007    13 Ind. Games
 ARI 2007    13 Ind. Games
 TEX 2007    12 Ind. Games
 SEA 2007    12 Ind. Games
 CHW 2007    12 Ind. Games
 BAL 2007    12 Ind. Games
 SFG 2007    11 Ind. Games
 COL 2007    10 Ind. Games
 OAK 2007     8 Ind. Games
 BOS 2007     8 Ind. Games
 SDP 2007     6 Ind. Games

Now, the data looks pretty similar, in the sense that the highs and lows are nearly identical, and of course the overall number of 3+ HR games is the same for batting and pitching (451, in 2007.) But of course the numberof games must be the same since every batting 3+ HR game was pitched by one team or another. If we dig just a bit deeper, though, we can learn more. With 451 such games, that means that each team averaged hitting 15.033 such games, as well as pitching 15.033 such games. Look at Detroit: they hit 15 3-HR games, and pitched 15 3-HR games. They were perfectly average in these regards. But by calculating the standard deviation of each feat, we can see that giving up 3+ Hr was more evenly spread.

For batting games with 3+ HR, the standard deviation in 2007 was 5.4. If you're not familiar with standard deviation, it gives a good numerical indicator of how far out the data is spread from the average. The higher the standard the deviation, the more spread out it is. For pitching games with 3+ HR, the standard deviation was just 4.3. This tells you that teams were closer to the average.

A less mathematical way to look at this is if you simply count the number of teams that were within 2 HR of the average (meaning between 13 and 17.) For batting, 11 out of 30 teams were in this central range near the average. For pitching, though, 15 out of 30 teams were in the central range.

What does this mean in terms of actual baseball? It means that there is a bigger variation among teams for hitting a bunch of homers in games than there is for pitching. Or stated more plainly, it means that pitching staffs are more even across MLB, at least in terms of giving up 3+ HR in a game. I would guess (although the data above does absolutely nothing to show this) that the data translates all the way to individual players. Some teams have 40+ or 50+ HR hitters that contribute greatly to their team hitting 3+ HR in a game, whereas other teams don't have 40+ or 50+ HR hitters. But when it comes to pitching, the HR totals and frequencies tend to be more averaged out.

I went back and calculated the 3+ HR game data for 2006, too. There were 540 3+ HR games, an average of exactly 18 per team. The batting 3+ HR games had a standard deviation of 6.0, whereas the pitching 3+ HR games had a standard deviation of just 5.4. On the larger basis of 540 HR (instead of 451), these numbers are just about identical.

A reader asked about the incidence of doubles of triples, broken down by whether the batters hit lefty or right.

Looking at 2007, that info is available on the ML Batting Splits page.

In 99448 AB, right-handed batters hit 5458 doubles and 426 triples.

In 68335 AB, left-handed batters hit 3739 doubles and 512 triples.

Right away, you can see that LHB hit triples at a much higher rate, given that they hit more triples in fewer at-bats. Normalizing by number of at-bats, here's the comparison:

For doubles, RHB hit 1 per 18.22 at-bats, where as LHB hit 1 per 18.28 at-bats. For all intents are purposes, that's absolutely identical. If there were a team of all lefties versus a team of all righties, the team of lefties would hit about 1 more double over the course of an entire season.

For triples, it's a different story. RHB hit 1 per 233.4 AB, whereas LHB hit 1 per 133.5 AB. That's a huge difference. Again comparing mythical teams of all lefties vs all righties, the lefty team would hit about 20 more triples per year.

Interestingly, RHB and LHB had virtually identical batting averages, with RHB hitting .2677 for the year and LHB hitting .2685 for the year. Looking just at singles, RHB hit 17,783 in 99,448 ABs and LHB hit 12,102 in 68,335 ABs. That 1 single per 5.59 ABs for righties, and 1 single per 5.65 ABs for lefties. That'd be a difference of just 11 singles over a year for a team of righties over a team of lefties.

For homers, righties has 2956, or 1 per 33.6 ABs. Lefties managed 2001, or 1 per 34.2 ABs. Over the course of a season, a team of righties would hit 3 more homers in a season as compared to a team of lefties.

So, lefties hit more singles and triples, whereas righties hit more doubles and homers. However, it's only the difference in triples that's very significant.