Dave Concepcion had his number retired by the Cincinnati Reds the other day, and I wanted to write a bit about him.

From an offensive statistic standpoint, it's hard to find his name at the top of many lists. He was a solid player for many years, highly regarded enough to make 9 All-Star games and win 5 Gold Gloves.

Using a search as I did in my last post, here are all of the players, by team, to have at least 900 R, 900 RBI, and 300 SB:

 Franchise                         Number Players Matching
+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+
 Cincinnati Reds                        2 Dave Concepcion / Barry Larkin
 Chicago Cubs                           1 Ryne Sandberg
 Houston Astros                         1 Craig Biggio
 Kansas City Royals                     1 Amos Otis
 San Diego Padres                       1 Tony Gwynn
 San Francisco Giants                   1 Willie Mays

That's a short list, and there's our man right at the top. Incidentally, if you remove the team restriction, there are 25 players to have done it in their careers (but most playing for different teams, such as Reggie Sanders.)

Chris' recent post about various teams with guys having at least 50 career homers gave me an idea about how to use the PI, and it worked.

It turns out that you can generate lists of the total number of players for each team to meet a certain criteria over their career simply by doing the following: Batting Season Finder, check the bubble at the top for "Find totals for matching seasons or careers", then in the bottom right set your criterion (such as HR >= 50), and then in the top right pick to sort by teams w/players in years. Because you've already chosen to also sum by career, it gives you a result like this:

This is a team-by-team list of all players with at least 50 career homers, 1901 to 1979 (following Chris' search):

Read the rest of this entry »

Fewest walks while qualifying for the batting title - Baseball-Reference PI

Slim Rodriguez is at 5 BB so far this year.  Can he beat Dunston's modern record of 8 in 1997?

To do this, I used the Batting Season Finder, selected "Qualified for Batting Title" in minimum playing time and then Sorted by BB and checked ascending.

The White Sox, historically have not been a power-hitting team.  In fact, in their first 8 decades, they only had 22 guys hit 50 dingers for them in their franchise history.   And only 3 over 100, the highest was a measly 154 (the mortal Bill Melton).  Keep in mind, that's career info.  To compare:

The Senators were always a sucky team, but the Was/Min franchise had 25 over 50, and 5 over the the White Sox leader through 1979.

The Browns also sucked. Yet the StL/Bal team had 5 guys with more homers than Bill Melton.

And the Yanks? They had their share as well.

Most consecutive scoreless outings to start career with at least one strikeout in at least each outing - Baseball-Reference PI

With one more scoreless outing with a strikeout Joba Chamberlain will take sole possession of the longest such streak to start a career with 8 games.  What other future Hall of Famer shares the distinction of having seven such games?  Why Joel Johnston, of course.   Others with a high number of scoreless innings and strikeouts to start their careers include four with six and a bunch with five.  Todd Wellemeyer for instance started his career with 7 2/3rd scoreless innings with 13 strikeouts and no walks and just two hits allowed.

Joba is a couple years younger than most of the other guys on this list, though Victor Cruz was just 20 when he debuted.

How you can do this: I went to the Pitching Streak Finder in the Play Index.  Checked "To Start Player's Career", Selected R = 0 and SO >= 1 for "with the following in each game:" and hit submit.

David Wells will shortly start his 12th tour of duty with a major league team. That's 2 each with Toronto, New York, and San Diego (putting him in the Jeff Conine club), and one with Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Chicago (AL), Boston, and now Los Angeles.

I think there is a lot to like about Wells, both as a pitcher and as a candid person who is not afraid to take responsibility or make justifiable accusations about existing problems with MLB. But I have to say, Wells looks quite classless in this article (link via MLBTradeRumors.com.) I don't care what kind of person you are. Replacing another player at his job and then making fun of him while he effectively cleans out his desk is one of the crassest things I have ever heard.

But anyway, this blog is about stats, so let's look at some data about David Wells: Read the rest of this entry »

This is an easy Season Finder search, but the results surprised me. Most seasons with at least 20 HR and 20 SB since 1901: Read the rest of this entry »

Times on base isn't a stat we look at all that often. The basic total, times on base, correlates pretty nicely with OBP, but I want to look at this in a little more detail. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, as promised, here are the results that led to the generation of the trivia question a couple of days ago. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should probably read that post first, then click through.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some game for the O's today, huh?  According to the AP Report:

The Texas Rangers became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record Wednesday in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles.

Trailing 3-0 in the opener of a doubleheader, the Rangers scored five runs in the fourth, nine in the sixth, 10 in the eighth and six in the ninth.

It was the ninth time a major league team scored 30 runs, the first since Chicago set the major league record in a 36-7 rout of Louisville in a National League game on June 28, 1897, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

What I found interesting is that Baltimore used just 4 pitchers to allow those 30 earned runs in this contest.  This made me wonder:  How many times, since 1957, has a team allowed 21+ ER in a game and used 4 pitchers or less in the contest?  Thanks to BB-Ref.com Play Index, we have the answer:

Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  IP   H  R ER BB SO HR Pit Str IR IS  BF  AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk Ptchrs   ERA 

+----+-------------+---+----+-------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+------+------+ 

1 2004-08-31    NYY  CLE L  0-22  9   22 22 22  9  6  3 218 122  3  2  59  49  5  1   0   0  0  1   0  1  0  1      4  22.00 

2 1996-04-28    COL  MON L  9-21  9   20 21 21  8  8  3 214 120  3  1  56  46  6  0   0   1  1  0   0  0  0  0      4  21.00 

3 1987-06-03    HOU  CHC L  7-22  8   21 22 22  9  6  6          0  0  54  44  3  0   0   0  0  1   1  1  0  1      4  24.75 

4 1962-08-19    KCA  NYY L  7-21  9   20 21 21  5  2  4          0  0  53  46  4  2   0   1  1  0   0  3  0  1      4  21.00 

5 1960-06-26(2) BOS  CHW L  7-21  8   22 21 21  5  8  3          6  6  53  46  3  2   0   1  0  1   0  1  0  1      4  23.62

Prior to today, it's just five times since 1957.  Note: the only two times that it's happened in the N.L., it was at Wrigley and Coors.  No shock there.

Still, four pitchers to allow 30 runs.  Leo Mazzone must have rocked himself silly today.