Player and Team Gamelogs Video Tutorial - Baseball-Reference.com

I just put the finishing touches on an 8-minute video highlighting all of the features we've packed into the gamelogs for players and teams, batting and pitching.  I hope you'll agree with me that we have the best gamelogs in the business.  And if you don't, please tell me what I can do to improve them.

The voice is yours truly.  Not much of a future in radio, and the video capture and editing is done using Camtasia which is a fantastic tool for creating video screen captures and demo videos.  Really top notch.

We also have a tutorial for the box scores in the main video area.  Next up is splits and then the various finder tools.

Just one pitcher in history has 2 seasons with at least 50 IP and a WHIP under 0.8, but another one has a chance to do it this year.

Can you name these two pitchers? Click through for the answers. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I picked on Joe Morgan a bit in my last post, I thought I'd mention that I think he had two of the greatest all-around seasons in baseball history.

Here is the complete list of all seasons where a player had at least 90 RBI, 100 BB, 60 SB, and 10 HR:

  Cnt Player            Year  SB RBI  BB HR Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+----+---+---+---+--+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
    1 Joe Morgan        1976  60 111 114 27  32 CIN NL 141 599 472 113 151 30  5   8  41   1   0  12   2  9  .320  .444  .576 1.020 *4
    2 Joe Morgan        1975  67  94 132 17  31 CIN NL 146 639 498 107 163 27  6   3  52   3   0   6   3 10  .327  .466  .508  .974 *4

That's it, folks. Fittingly, Morgan was MVP both years, and the Big Red Machine won the World Series both years as well.

What's your opinion on the best all-around seasons of all time? Post it below in the comments.

Reader vonhayes pointed out that Joe Carter had the worst all-time OPS+ for a season with 100 RBIs, and he's right. (I try not to assume that readers are male or female, despite the fact that our readership here is probably predominantly male, but seeing as he's named himself after a male baseball player, I am going to assume he's male.) Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody's noticing because the Nationals are so bad, but Wily Mo Pena has been on fire since joining them.

In 28 games, he's got 103 ABs, 8 HR, and 19 RBI. He's still the same guy, though, as he's managed just 6 walks to go with his 26 strikeouts.

His splits for 2007 show that he's got 4 HR, 12 RBI, and 13 runs scored in 16 games so far in Sept/Oct.

Last year, the Red Sox looked foolish for trading Bronson Arroyo for Pena. Despite Arroyo's struggles this year (a very high WHIP of 1.406), his ERA is still below league average and he's a fairly valuable starting pitcher.

Wow-it's a pretty exciting end to the regular season. There are divisional races in the AL East and all three divisions in the NL, and the Wild Card is the NL is also up for grabs. Here are a few items of note:

• Micah Owings doubled last night (oh, and he pitched a 2-hit shutout), giving him 9 extra base hits on the season, tied for 2nd most in the last 20 years. He's got a shot at tying or breaking that record, held by Jason Marquis with 10. Also, since 1956, he's got the highest SLG for any pitcher with at least 50 plate appearances.

• After a brutal start with the Red Sox, Eric Gagne ran off 6 scoreless outings in the previous 7 appearances before falling apart last night. In 250 career relief appearances with the Dodgers, Gagne allowed at least one extra-base hit in 46 of those games (18%.) Meanwhile, in 15 games with Boston, he's allowed an XBH in 8 of them (53%.) Ouch. Or another way to look at it is that he had 206 appearances (82%) with Dodgers allowing no earned runs, and just 8 with Boston (53%.)
• Jason Werth tripled twice for the Phillies last night (I wish Rollins had those 2 triples) making it the 12th instance when someone tripled twice in a game this year. That man, Curtis Granderson, has done it twice.

The question popped into my head: Has there every been a pitcher, when making his big league debut, who has faced only one batter and threw a wild pitch during that plate appearance -without retiring the batter?  So, I decided to use Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Event finder and set it for "From 1957 to 2007, In first 1 games, (requiring IP=0, WP=1, and BF=1), sorted by most recent date in a game."  And, I found out that, since 1957, there are only two times where a pitcher making his major league debut faced one batter, didn't retire him, and threw a wild pitch in the process:  Bud Black on September 5, 1981 and Tom Baker on August 2, 1963.

The Baker game is interesting - Tom came into the game in the 8th inning, making his debut, to face Willie McCovey.  Baker threw a wild pitch and then hit McCovey with a pitch.  (Cal Koonce was then brought in to replace Baker.)

That's one wild cherry, for sure.

All of MLB: The 91 final outs by a batter in the World Series - Baseball-Reference PI

I saw a post in a forum suggesting we show not only the SO and non-SO outs, but all outs together, so I've added that option to the Play Index Event Finder.  The above list is the list of all 90 batters who made the final out in a World Series.  When we get the baserunning events added in we'll be able to make a complete list of every final out in the play index.

Here's a very difficult trivia question.

I generated the following batting line using the PI Batting Season Finder:

 **HR**  PA    AB    R    H   2B  3B  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB   CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   25    776   701   95  175  42   5  105   51   0  131   1   23  0   5    2   0  .250  .301  .431  .732

Your job is to identify the player.

Assuming nobody gets it, I'll post some clues on following days.

Frank Thomas hit 3 homers in a game yesterday, becoming the 4th-oldest player since 1957 to do it. Here's the list of everyone 37 and over (all since1957):

 Cnt AgeY.D                   Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt PA AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS BOr Positions
+----+------+-----------------+-------------+---+----+-------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+--+---+--+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+---------+
    1 41.229 Stan Musial       1962-07-08    STL @NYM W 15-1   5  4  3  3  0  0  3   4  1   0  1   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 4th LF
    2 40.123 Reggie Jackson    1986-09-18    CAL  KCR W 18-3   6  4  4  3  0  0  3   7  2   0  0   0  0  0   0   1  0  0 4th DH
    3 39.192 Dave Winfield     1991-04-13    CAL @MIN W 15-9   6  6  4  5  1  0  3   6  0   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 4th RF
    4 39.113 Frank Thomas      2007-09-17    TOR  BOS W  6-1   4  4  3  3  0  0  3   5  0   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 4th DH
    5 39.047 Steve Finley      2004-04-28    ARI  CHC L  3-4   4  4  3  3  0  0  3   3  0   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 5th CF
    6 38.287 Ted Williams      1957-06-13    BOS @CLE W  9-3   5  5  3  3  0  0  3   5  0   0  1   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 3rd LF
    7 38.251 Ted Williams      1957-05-08    BOS @CHW W  4-1   5  4  3  3  0  0  3   4  1   1  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 3rd LF
    8 38.059 Lee Lacy          1986-06-08    BAL @NYY W 18-9   6  6  4  4  0  0  3   6  0   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 2nd RF
    9 38.034 Barry Bonds       2002-08-27    SFG @COL W  7-4   5  4  4  4  1  0  3   3  1   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 3rd LF
   10 37.260 Mike Schmidt      1987-06-14    PHI @MON W 11-6   4  4  3  3  0  0  3   6  0   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 4th 3B
   11 37.207 Larry Walker      2004-06-25    COL @CLE W 10-8   6  4  4  4  1  0  3   5  2   0  0   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 5th RF
   12 37.047 Barry Bonds       2001-09-09    SFG @COL W  9-4   6  5  3  3  0  0  3   5  1   0  1   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 3rd LF
   13 37.015 Pete Rose         1978-04-29    CIN @NYM W 14-7   6  6  4  5  0  0  3   4  0   0  1   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 1st 3B
   14 37.001 Moises Alou       2003-07-04    CHC  STL L  8-11  5  5  3  3  0  0  3   5  0   0  1   0  0  0   0   0  0  0 4th LF

A couple of surprising names on this list: Lee Lacy and Pete Rose each had only a handful of 2-HR games, and only one 3-HR game each (both after the age of 37.) By comparison, Reggie Jackson had 42 games with at least 2 HR, including 2 games with 3 each, 17 years apart. (This doesn't count his post-season multi-homer games.)

I wonder if Babe Ruth would've made this list (if the box score data went far back enough,) given that he had 41 HR in his Age 37 season, and 34 and 22 the following years.