• Curtis Granderson became the founding third member of the 20/20/20/20 club (HR, SB, 2B, and 3B.) Here are the members of the 15/15/15/15 club. Carl Crawford (2005 & 2006) and Juan Samuel (1984 & 1987) have done it twice. Jimmy Rollins needs 2 SB and 3 3B this year to join the 20/20/20/20 club, so he's got a shot.

• Who's got the longest streak in the 2000's of most starts without allowing a walk? Yes, the answer is Greg Maddux, but it's not his current streak of 8 starts. In 2001 he did it in 9 straight games. The list includes streaks of 7 straight games by David Wells and Javier Vazquez. The longest streak since 1957 was by Bill Fischer in 1962, with 11 straight starts with no walks. Fischer did have a relief appearance in the middle of his streak, earning a blown save. Over the 11 starts, Fischer went 2-8 with 71 IP, 86 hits, 0 walks and just 18 strikeouts. That's a pretty weird streak.

• The Brewers led off their game on Sunday with 3 straight homers. It's just the third time it's been done, with the first occurrence back in 1987 by the Padres. It took me a while to find the second time it was done. I went to the Team Batting Event Finder, set it to all teams, home runs, then limited the events to homers in the 1st inning with no outs. Here's the list for 1994. Reading down the list, you'll notice the game where three such homers occurred, but that's not the game. From the boxscore, we see that Jacob Brumfield led off with a homer, and Bret Boone followed with one. But then Barry Larkin reached on an error, ahead of Kevin Mitchell homering. Here's a 1996 game by the Rockies where something similar happened. And one by the Mets in 1999. Finally, here's the game: in 2003 by the Braves, when Rafael Furcal, Mark DeRosa, and Gary Sheffield homered in the bottom of the first.

• Coming in to Sunday, there were 7 pitchers who had 30 starts allowing 6 or fewer earned runs. The ERAs of these players were Dontrelle Willis 5.01, Brandon Webb 2.91, C. C. Sabathia 3.15, Scott Kazmir 3.79, Tim Hudson 3.47, Dan Haren 3.03, Aaron Harang 3.64. Remember that song "One of These Things is Not Like the Others"? Maybe that explains why Dontrelle Willis finally gave up 7 ER on Sunday against the Phillies.

In 1963, baseball expanded the strike zone.  Prior to the '69 season, they lowered the mound.  In between from 1963-8 you had eight years of meager offense.  Among those players with at least 3000 PA (averaging 3.1 per game for those years), only 7 hit .300.  Mighty damn impressive for Clemente to be that far ahead of everyone like that.  Only one out of every eight.

In comparison, 31 out of 43 hit .300 from 1925-30.  Clemente wouldn't have been in the top third then.

This is a simple search that results in players who have passed away at a young age. Click through for details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using the PI Batting Season Finder, setting Age to at least 40, and sorting by teams give you:

 Year Lg Team                              Number Players Matching
+----+--+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+
 2007 NL New York Mets                          6 Moises Alou / Julio Franco / Tom Glavine / Orlando Hernandez / Jeff Conine / Sandy Alomar
 1947 AL Chicago White Sox                      5 Luke Appling / Earl Caldwell / Thornton Lee / Red Ruffing / Joe Kuhel
 1983 NL Philadelphia Phillies                  4 Pete Rose / Tony Perez / Ron Reed / Bill Robinson
 1958 AL New York Yankees                       4 Enos Slaughter / Virgil Trucks / Sal Maglie / Murry Dickson
 1945 NL Brooklyn Dodgers                       4 Babe Herman / Curt Davis / Clyde Sukeforth / Ray Hayworth
 1945 AL New York Yankees                       4 Jim Turner / Red Ruffing / Paul Schreiber / Paul Waner
 1944 NL Brooklyn Dodgers                       4 Paul Waner / Curt Davis / Ray Hayworth / Johnny Cooney
 1928 AL Philadelphia Athletics                 4 Ty Cobb / Tris Speaker / Eddie Collins / Jack Quinn

I had to set plate appearances to 1 or more, or else a few pitchers showed up on the list.

Here are the teams from just this year ranked by 40-year old batters:

 Year Lg Team                              Number Players Matching
+----+--+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+
 2007 NL New York Mets                          6 Moises Alou / Julio Franco / Tom Glavine / Orlando Hernandez / Jeff Conine / Sandy Alomar
 2007 NL San Diego Padres                       3 Doug Brocail / Greg Maddux / David Wells
 2007 NL Atlanta Braves                         2 John Smoltz / Julio Franco
 2007 AL Boston Red Sox                         2 Tim Wakefield / Curt Schilling
 2007 NL Cincinnati Reds                        2 Jeff Conine / Mike Stanton
 2007 NL Houston Astros                         2 Craig Biggio / Woody Williams
 2007 NL San Francisco Giants                   2 Omar Vizquel / Barry Bonds
 2007 NL Arizona Diamondbacks                   1 Randy Johnson
 2007 AL Cleveland Indians                      1 Kenny Lofton
 2007 NL Colorado Rockies                       1 Steve Finley
 2007 AL Detroit Tigers                         1 Kenny Rogers
 2007 NL Los Angeles Dodgers                    1 David Wells
 2007 AL New York Yankees                       1 Roger Clemens
 2007 NL Philadelphia Phillies                  1 Jamie Moyer
 2007 AL Texas Rangers                          1 Kenny Lofton

Hard to believe Jeff Conine is 40 already...

What's the most PA any has had in a single season without getting a hit?  Any readers of the ol' Baseball Hall of Shame books should know the answer - it's Bob Buhl in 1958.  It's never been seriously threatened.

For position players, the mark is 35 by Hal Finney, a defensive replacement middle infielder for the 1936 Pirates.  Please note David Ortiz is #4 on that list.

Most PA in a career without a hit?  For position players it's Larry Littleton with 27.  For pitchers, it's Randy Tate with 47.

From the last 10 years, longest streaks with at least 1 RBI in each game:

                   StreakStart  Streak End Games    AB    R    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  SO   BB   SB   CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Teams
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Mike Piazza        2000-06-14  2000-07-02    15     63   14   22   3   0   8   28    9    4    0   0  .349  .388  .778 1.166 NYM                                         

 Mike Sweeney       1999-06-23  1999-07-04    13     52   14   23   4   0   4   19    5    5    1   0  .442  .508  .750 1.258 KCR                                         

 Garret Anderson    2007-08-26  2007-09-06    11     40   12   19   3   0   7   21    3    7    1   0  .475  .531 1.075 1.606 LAA
 Carlos Guillen     2007-06-16  2007-06-28    11     35   11   16   3   0   4   17    3    5    1   1  .457  .500  .886 1.386 DET

Anderson's is active. Aside from missed playing time, he's put together a pretty nice season in 2007, recovering a bit over substandard seasons in 2004-2006. (Although had he not had those 10 RBI in one game, it might not look quite as good.)

How about Piazza getting 28 RBI in 15 games? Is that a record? In those 15 games he had 3 doubles and 8 homers. Many of his RBIs came on singles, of which he had 11. Kind of amazing that with 28 RBI, he slugged "only" .778 over that period.

Here's a very neat way to see how many pitchers each team has under or over a certain age.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Rodriguez has 48 homeruns (so far) this season.  Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batter vs. Pitcher function, we can see that A-Rod has gone yard against 46 different pitchers this year.  The only pitchers that Alex has tagged twice this year are Curt Schilling and Chris Bootcheck.

Bootcheck was in two different games.  But, Rodriguez got Schilling twice, this year, in the same game:  April 20th.

If Alex hits 50 homers this year, he'll become the first right-handed batter in A.L. history to have three 50+ homer seasons.  Considering the unique nature of that mark, it's nice that A-Rod is sharing it with so many different pitchers this season.

• The Rick Ankiel Story got a lot more interesting yesterday. In addition to his 2-HR, 7-RBI performance in yesterday's game, word came out that he allegedly received HGH shipments but stopped them before the hormone was officially banned by baseball. Time will tell whether this puts a permanent tarnish on Ankiel's reputation, and whether MLB takes any disciplinary action against him.Meanwhile, Ankiel now has 9 HR and 29 RBI in his first 23 games as an outfielder. If we ignore the batting that Ankiel did in his previous career as a pitcher, we note that he's already had 2 different 2-HR games in his first 23. Only 6 other players since 1957 have had 2 different games with at least 2 HR in their first 23:

                     Games Link to Individual Games
  +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
   Shane Spencer         2 Ind. Games
   George Scott          2 Ind. Games
   Mark Quinn            2 Ind. Games
   Carlos May            2 Ind. Games
   J.D. Drew             2 Ind. Games
   Russell Branyan       2 Ind. Games

  Ankiel's season so far looks pretty similar to Spencer's performance in September of 1998. And, yes, Red Sox fans, read it and weep: JD Drew was once a power hitter.

  Ankiel's day yesterday also gives him 5 different games with at least 3 RBI in his first 23. Only two players have done at least that well since 1957:

                     Games Link to Individual Games
  +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
   Albert Pujols         6 Ind. Games
   Alvin Davis           5 Ind. Games

  Can you imagine if Ankiel continues to hit as well as Albert Pujols?

• Tim Wakefield got his first no-decision of the season last night! But he kept alive his streak of either pitching masterfully or getting bombed, giving up 6 ER in less than 4 innings. That's 11 starts with 0 or 1 ER, 12 starts with 4 or more ER, and just 4 starts with 3 ER (and 0 starts with 2 ER, oddly enough.)I heard some talk this morning that the BoSox need to drop Wakefield from the rotation and replace him with Clay Buchholz. How quickly we forget that Wakefield just had 3 consecutive starts, covering 22 innings, with 0 ER.

• Jayson Stark points out that Joe Borowski has 40 saves and a 5.50 ERA. He's going to finish by far with the highest ERA for a 40+ save season. The current leader is Antonio Alfonseca with 45 saves and a 4.24 ERA for the 2000 Marlins. The only other player as high as 4.00 was Bobby Jenks last year with 41 / 4.00. Amazingly, Borowski is going to become the only 40+ save guy to finish with an ERA+ under 100.

This is just a fun one: who has faced the most batters in a single season without completing a game?

Rick Helling.

Let's go backwards in time on that list and see who the record holders used to be among pitchers who started in at least 60% of their appearances.

Right now it's Rick Helling with 963, a mark he set in 2000.

Before that it was Joey Hamilto, with 958 in 1998.  (To be fair, I think all 958 PA came in one start - rimshot!)

Before that it was Wilson Alvarez with 946 in 1996.

You have to go all the way back to Kevin Brown in 1991 with 934 for the previous record holder.

Before then it was Steve Bedrosian - Steve Bedrosian?!? - in 1985 when he was made into a starter.  907 TBF, now only 26th on the list.

In the pre-Bedrosian days, you have to scroll all the way down to #114 on the list to see Milt Wilcox at 814 in 1984.  Man, Bedrosian just SHATTERED that mark, didn't he?

There's no one in the top 200 before 1984.  Wow.

OK, I'm curious.  Let's do a new search.

In 1978, Fred Norman had 777 TBF under Captain Hook without a complete game.  It's worth noting that Milt Wilcox in '84 was also under Sparky Anderson.

Before that you have to go back to 1966, when Bill Hands faced 698 under Leo Durocher.  And that includes 124 guys faced as a reliever.

Then it's Ken McBride with the 1964 Angels way down at 533.  It's possible/likely that every team in baseball this year will have one pitcher face more than 533 batters without recording a complete game.

In 1961, Earl Francis faced 458 batters with the defending champs.

The year before Don Larsen - yup, that Don Larsen - had 381 in KC.

That just edged him past Jack Kraus, who had 377 TBF for the doormat Phillies in 1945.

Unless I missed someone, that's the first time anyone faced 300 batters without a CG.  Hell, it's the first time anyone faced 200 without a complete game while startin 60% of the time or more.

In 1935, Flint Rhem had 195 TBF.  He only had 6 stinkin' starts.

In 1928 Garland Buckeye had 188 TBF in his 6 starts and 4 relief appearances.

In 1923, Frank Miller faced 180.

The year before Epp Sell - quit laughing, that's really his name - faced 149 batters in 5 starts and a duce of relief apperances.

Actually, he tied a mark set by the immortal Bernie Boland the year before.

Time for a new search. (sigh, & I thought this would be a quick, easy post.  This PI thingee really sucks you in).

Back to the deadball era:

1917: Earl Torkelson (sounds like a cartoon character's name, don't it?) faced 121.

In 1909 Harry Otis became the first man to ever face 100 batters without a CG (and at least 60% of all apperances being starts): 113 to be exact.  Three stinking starts.

In 1906 Ambrose Puttman (sounds like s Civil War golfer) faced 87

That broke the record of an actual good pitcher - Tommy Bond who in his two incomplete starts in 1882 faced 62 men.

That appears to be the earliest year the site has complete TBF info for.

Rick Helling: carrying on the proud tradition of Tommy Bond, Don Larsen and Civil War golfers.