Single-season outs leaders

Certainly he was helped by setting the all-time Plate Appearance record, but Jimmy Rollins also cracked the top twenty all-time for outs made in a season, coming in at #20, with a whopping 527 outs used. Rollins has finished in the league's top ten in outs made every year of his career and returned to the top spot after a couple year hiatus.

Sure, he was helped by all those PA, but Dykstra only produced 468 outs in his historic season. The Phillies could have scored a lot of runs with 59 more outs to play with. Might have won another game or two.

Yesterday, a reader pointed out that Brett Myers threw the first and last pitches of the Phillies season. This might seem rare, but it has happened 67 times in the last 51 years, mostly with ace starters throwing a complete game on the final day of the season, but it has happened a few times with the opening day starter pitching the final day in relief. Here are the seventeen times it has happened.

| CIN              |      1958 | Brooks Lawrence |   2 |
| CIN              |      1959 | Bob Purkey      |   2 |
| LAD              |      1960 | Don Drysdale    |   2 |
| BAL              |      1961 | Milt Pappas     |   2 |
| LAA              |      1962 | Eli Grba        |   2 |
| STL              |      1963 | Ernie Broglio   |   2 |
| MLN              |      1964 | Warren Spahn    |   2 |
| MLN              |      1965 | Tony Cloninger  |   2 |
| CAL              |      1967 | George Brunet   |   2 |
| OAK              |      1968 | Catfish Hunter  |   2 |
| SDP              |      1974 | Bill Greif      |   2 |
| SEA              |      1980 | Mike Parrott    |   2 |
| SDP              |      1997 | Joey Hamilton   |   2 |
| BOS              |      1997 | Tom Gordon      |   2 |
| CIN              |      2002 | Joey Hamilton   |   2 |
| DET              |      2006 | Kenny Rogers    |   2 |
| PHI              |      2007 | Brett Myers     |   2 |

Isn't baseball awesome?

Not everybody can win, and there are plenty of disappointed fans out there today, but it's certainly been exciting. Frankly, it's nice to see some good ol' fashioned pennant fever, and today's one-game playoff will be great to watch.

A few news and notes:

• Fare thee well to Craig Biggio, a heck of a player who I hope next tips his cap at Cooperstown in 2013. I have sung Biggio's praises before so I'll just mention it's amazing how much he reminds me of Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount. Both played well for full seasons in both the infield and outfield (with Biggio also playing at catcher for his first few years), both were incredibly consistent hitters throughout their career, and both played their entire career with just one franchise. I have just two things to say to Biggio: congratulations, and thank you.
• ESPN.com was kind enough to list out all the one-game playoff games in history right here, and I thought I'd link up to the box scores for you. 1999 Mets/Reds, 1998 Cubs/Giants, 1995 Mariners/Angels, 1980 Astros/Dodgers, 1978 Yankees/BoSox. The box score for the 1948 game is not available. I think that 1980 Astros/Dodgers game was amazing. The 'Stros had a 3 game lead going into the final series with the Dodgers, and they got swept in 3 games in LA, then had to play the tie-breaking game in LA as well. I would have given the Dodgers a huge advantage in that one, but the late Joe Niekro came up huge. I see that for the Dodgers, Rick Sutcliffe and Fernando both pitched in relief.
• Ryan Howard finished with "just" 199 K's, avoiding a dreaded figure of 200. It's tough to look at a guy who had 47 HR and 136 RBI and question whether he had a really good season, but it is true that his BA/OBP/SLG are all down significantly from last year, that his K rate was significantly higher, and for such huge power numbers he still finished just 3rd on the team in Runs Created. Also, his defense over the weekend was very shaky, perhaps due to nerves. Of course, his bat wasn't too shabby, finishing with homers in 4 straight games. I'll be very interested to see what he does in the post-season.

• Finally, I am leaving voting open for the NL MVP through Tuesday night. Go ahead and vote if you haven't already. Matt Holliday wins the batting title unless he goes 0-for-5 today.

Today, with the season on the line, Tom Glavine was utterly dreadful.  He had a game score of 11.  It was not, however, the worst start of his life.   Going by game score, it was tied for 7th worst.  (The start ain't up there yet, but tommorrow Sean Forman will include today's result and you can see for yourself, if you have a PI subscription).

He only got one out, making it the second shortest start of his life.  This was the only time he recorded no outs.  In every other start he had at least 2 outs before getting yanked.

UPDATE 2: I'm extending the MVP voting until the end of the day on Tuesday, in view of the extra regular-season game to be played.

UPDATE: I'm extending the MVP voting until the end of the day on Monday, in view of the extra regular-season game to be played.

You know what I'm talking about.

Jimmy Rollins just got his 20th triple, batting in a big run for the Phillies as they try to win the NL East.

He's now the only player in major league history with 20 homers, 20 doubles, 20 stolen bases, 20 triples, and 200 hits in a single season.

Firstly, a couple of notes:

• It's the final day of the regular season, and it certainly is exciting. All eyes will be on the Phillies, Mets, Padres, and Rockies. I'm inclined to think there will be at least one playoff game on Monday.
• If you would like to place your votes for NL MVP, please do so by noon on Monday so I can add up all the votes. Place your votes in the comments for this post.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about Dale Sveum.

Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed a comment from "jmvbaseball" at another entry to the Stat of the Day blog that asked:  "The Yankees only have 3 pitchers with 100+ innings.  Have any other teams made the post season with such a flimsy rotation?"

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season Finder, we can look up the answer.

The 1995 Reds only had two pitchers with 100+ IP (Pete Schourek /John Smiley) - and they were a post-season team.  But, that was a shortened season.

If you're looking for the last full-season that a post-season team had only three pitchers with 100+ IP in a season, that would be last year - when the 2006 World Champion Cardinals had only three hurlers meet that mark:  Jason Marquis/Jeff Suppan/Chris Carpenter.

The full-season post-season team before that to do it was the 2004 Astros - with Roy Oswalt/Roger Clemens/Tim Redding.    The full-season post-season reaching 2002 Cardinals also did it - with Matt Morris/Jason Simontacchi /Woody Williams.  And, the full-season pennant winning 1997 Indians only had three 100+ IP hurlers:  Charles Nagy/Orel Hershiser/Chad Ogea.  That same season ('97), the Giants reached the post-season with just three reaching this mark:  Kirk Rueter/Shawn Estes/Mark Gardner.

So, to answer the question, yes, it's happened before.

Here's some Saturday frivolity for you. My friend ehanczyc, who is an occasional commenter here, reminded me of the greatest offensive career in history for a player who appeared in just one game.

Most of you old-time baseball fans probably know who it is...can you guess? The answer and analysis is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

• Not to go too crazy here, but Micah Owings just completed the greatest hitting season for a pitcher ever (well, since 1901, and, well, if you're judging just by OPS.) He capped off an amazing season yesterday with a ho-hum 4-for-4 performance with 3 doubles and 3 RBI. (And he pitched shutout ball into the 7th inning in a critical game for the Diamondbacks.) He finishes the year with a 1.050 OPS, tops among pitchers with at least 40 plate appearances in a season since 1901. His 12 extra-base hits are tied for 28th all-time and are the most singe Ferguson Jenkins' 14 in 1971. It's time for the Diamondbacks to seriously think about using him as a pinch-hitter, and if the kid can play some outfield, he might even get a few starts there in between mound appearances. (Editor's note: much to my surprise, Arizona did use Owings as a PH and his OPS for the season dropped a bit. See the comments below.)

• Lost in the hoopla of the Mets' collapse is that Jesus Matty Moises Alou had a 30-game hit streak snapped yesterday. That's the longest in the majors this year. Ichiro had a streak of 25 and another of 19 this year...not too shabby. (I kept in the Jesus and Matty because I did actually start to type those names by accident...only Felipe's name didn't come out.) By the way, Alou is hitting .344 on the year, giving him 4 seasons in his career with at least 300 ABs and a batting average higher than .330. Not too shabby.

• Ryan Howard did it! In yesterday's game, he finally broke the tie with Adan Dunn and moved into first place all-time for most strikeouts in a season. Of course, nobody cares since it happened after his 2-run first-inning HR put the Phillies up 4-0 and allowed them to tie the Mets for first place. I'm sure Howard would love to avoid striking out 3 times in the last 3 games, to finish below the magic number of 200.

• Yesterday I was reminded of something I had forgotten: Braves reliever Ron Mahay actually made it to the big leagues as an outfielder with Boston in 1995, getting a homer and 3 RBI in 20 ABs. As you can see from his minor league stats, starting in 1996 he went back to single-A to become a pitcher. He had a very nice season as a lefty reliever this year.

Did you know that there have been only 2 triples hit this season in the first inning of a game where the bases were loaded when the triple occurred?  Thanks to Play Index, it's easy to find unquie stats like this one.

Josh Willingham (a former catcher) and Jason Varitek (currently a catcher)  are the only two batters to pull this off this season, to date.  And, they did it within 20 days of each other back in May.

Just for the heck of it, I went back to see how many bases-loaded triples happened in the first inning, since 2000.  Basically, there's around 2-4 times that this occurs per season. 

And, in addition to the two this season, it's been done by Bobby Estalella in 2000, Jorge Posada in 2002, and Javy Lopez in 2003.  They're all catchers too.

Who says that catchers are slow?