OK, here's one for you - which players left the game still playing pretty durn well?  Go to batting season finder, sort from last year to last year, from 1921-2000.  (Why 1921-2000?  If you toss in 1920 you get a bunch of Black Sox and if you get recent seasons you get guys still playing.  Knocking it back a year or two and some still show up).  Only 56 men have had an OPS+ of 100 or better with 400 or more PA.

Clemente was definately unavailable.  The distorted batting averages of 1968 sunk Mantle.  Kirby Puckett had his eye problems, and Albert Belle had a degenerative hip.

Same thing for pitchers - 150 IP and 100 or better ERA+.  Only 26 qualify. Koufax I knew.  Sirotka had arm problems (I'm guessing a lot of these guys had arm problems).  No idea who Phil Douglas was.   Don Wilson died.  Larry Jackson really did just step away with some gas left in the tank.

Willis lost his 8th straight decision on Friday, and he now has 12 straight starts without a win. Here are the longest streaks of starts without a win over 2006 and 2007: Read the rest of this entry »

Hideki Matsui just finished a monster July (winning AL Player of the month honors.) I guess that's why they call him Godzilla.

Image hotlinked from slate.com
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Taking Professor Dave's advice, I have re-done this graph with games played on the x-axis and homers hit on the y-axis. It's not more intuitive. Plus, I made each player's like the same color as his uniform...A-rod is navy, Bonds is orange, Pujols is red, and Aaron is light blue, like those old Atlanta uniforms.

Much comment and analysis after the jump.

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Barely a week after turning 32, Alex Rodriquez hit his 500th homer.  Neat trick.  That puts him 255 behind Aaron, and 254 behind Bonds, who will almost certainly end up a little higher.

Right now A-Rod's on pace, but how many have hit at least 255 homers after age 32?  Well, it's not a perfect science as A-Rod's still in his age 31 season, but let's not get carried away.

Go to Batting Season Finder.  The key is in the top yellow bar choose the Find Totals for Matching Seasons or Careers option, look from 1876-2007 (I know no one did it in the 19th century, but humor me), and select ages 32-onward on the bottom of the left margin.

On the right, I'm going to look for guys with 200 or more homers, to get an idea of how many have even come close.  Sort by HR, and here's the results.

Only seven guys have ever hit 255 or more homers from age 32 onward.  To do that, A-Rod's got to be a better bopper than Reggie Jackson was.  In fairness, to A-Rod, he should get another 15 or so homers this year, meaning he'll only need 240, but then again Bonds isn't done either.

Hearing that he only needs 255 from age 32-onward makes it sound easy, and really compared to what he's done I guess it is.  But damn, 755 is a mighty high number to get to.  Hell, Frank Robinson didn't even get 200 more from that point onward.

There will be lots of talk about A-rod's 500th homer. I thought I'd look at some slightly different data.

For 5 members of the 500 HR club, I looked at their PI event log for homers to find their 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, and 500th homers, then I looked at their PI career game log to find out which career game number those homers were hit in.

Here are the results, represented graphically:

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Here is something truly impressive. Following up on our recent discussions about most hits in the 80's and 90's, I looked up who has the most hits so far in the 00's. The answer won't surprise you, but something about it might:

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The other day, I noted how Joe Carter hit 3 homers in game 5 different times. It made me curious to see who has the most 3+ homer games in his career, since 1957.

Once again, everything's coming up Sosa: Read the rest of this entry »

Let's dole out some love for the two young players named Chris Young.

First, best WHIP so far in 2007 for starting pitchers, minimum of 5 starts:

  Cnt Player             **WHIP** GS Year Age Tm  Lg  G  CG SHO GF  W  L  W-L% SV   IP   H   R   ER  BB  SO   ERA  ERA+ HR  BF   AB  2B 3B IBB HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS Pk BK WP   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  OPS+  Pit  Str

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

    1 Chris Young         0.986   20 2007  28 SDP NL  20  0   0  0  9  3  .750  0 118.2  78  30  24  39 114   1.82  224  4  473  424 15  4   0   4   2   3   3  28  0  2  3  3  .184  .257  .267  .524   46 1941 1266
    2 Johan Santana       1.014   22 2007  28 MIN AL  22  1   1  0 11  8  .579  0 148   115  52  48  35 156   2.92  150 23  586  542 22  2   0   3   4   2   7   4  4  3  1  5  .212  .263  .387  .650   71 2213 1482
    3 Danny Haren         1.058   23 2007  26 OAK AL  23  0   0  0 13  3  .813  0 155   124  51  42  40 121   2.44  178 12  628  578 26  3   1   3   1   6   6  15  5  0  0  8  .215  .266  .332  .598   61 2443 1534
    4 Shawn Hill          1.060    8 2007  26 WSN NL   8  0   0  0  3  3  .500  0  50    37  18  15  16  33   2.70  157  2  204  181  8  2   1   5   2   0   5   2  1  0  0  1  .204  .287  .304  .591   62  731  432
    5 Jake Peavy          1.069   22 2007  26 SDP NL  22  0   0  0 11  5  .688  0 145   114  39  37  41 154   2.30  177  4  583  528 19  3   2   6   5   3  13  11  2  1  0  3  .216  .279  .286  .565   58 2341 1521
    6 Yovani Gallardo     1.079    6 2007  21 MIL NL   9  0   0  1  3  1  .750  0  46.1  34  15  14  16  40   2.72  159  1  185  167 12  1   0   0   1   1   3   0  1  1  0  1  .204  .272  .305  .577   56  722  456
    7 Jeremy Guthrie      1.085   18 2007  28 BAL AL  24  0   0  3  7  3  .700  0 130   107  47  43  34  91   2.98  149 14  517  473 25  1   1   3   2   5  17   2  3  0  1  5  .226  .280  .372  .652   72 1903 1205
    8 Javier Vazquez      1.086   21 2007  30 CHW AL  21  2   0  0  8  6  .571  0 143.2 122  60  58  34 132   3.63  125 19  575  530 28  2   1   3   3   5   9   5  1  0  0  4  .230  .278  .398  .676   74 2254 1457
    9 Erik Bedard         1.090   23 2007  28 BAL AL  23  1   1  0 11  4  .733  0 147.2 113  52  50  48 181   3.05  145 17  596  540 20  1   0   4   2   2  10   3  2  0  0  2  .209  .278  .344  .622   65 2383 1519
   10 Orlando Hernandez   1.093   17 2007  41 NYM NL  17  0   0  0  7  4  .636  0 104.1  73  38  35  41  85   3.02  138 13  421  368 12  2   2   3   6   3   8  14  3  1  0  2  .198  .282  .348  .630   72 1711 1030 

Young is the only one under 1.000 (not that the other guys on this list are shabby.)

Since 2000, a pitcher has made as many as 5 starts in a season and finished with a WHIP under 1.000 just 19 times. (And, mind you, 5 starts is not a very high barrier!) The full list is here, with Pedro doing it 4 times, Johan Santana 3 times, and a bunch of other guys once each.

And now, here's a search across 2006 and 2007, for players in their first or second year, who have at least 20 total HR and 10 total SB across those two seasons:

  Cnt Player             **HR**  SB  From  To   Ages   G    PA    AB    R    H   2B  3B  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF GDP  CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions Teams
+----+-----------------+-------+----+----+----+-----+----+-----+-----+----+----+---+---+----+----+---+----+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+-----------+
    1 Ian Kinsler          28     22 2006 2007 24-25  197   797   697  118  187  41   1   90   76   1  111   6   8  10  18   4  .268  .341  .451  .792 *4        TEX         
    2 Nick Markakis        27     15 2006 2007 22-23  254  1011   911  132  264  54   4  127   84   7  147   5   4   7  31   2  .290  .351  .447  .798 *9/78     BAL         
    3 Russell Martin       22     28 2006 2007 23-24  224   895   790  124  229  51   6  133   89   9  117   7   1   8  30   8  .290  .364  .453  .817 *2/D      LAD         
    4 Chris Young          21     18 2006 2007 22-23  127   477   437   65  106  22   2   50   28   0   89   6   1   5   3   2  .243  .294  .446  .740 *8        ARI         
    5 Ryan Zimmerman       20     11 2006 2006 21-21  157   682   614   84  176  47   3  110   61   7  120   2   1   4  15   8  .287  .351  .471  .822 *5        WSN         

For sure you've heard of all of these guys, except perhaps Chris Young of the Diamondbacks.

Now if one of these guys gets traded to the other's team, they could become the first teammates with the same name since...anybody?....anybody? Javier Lopez (C) and Ja

No cheating. Can you guess who it was? Post a comment with your guess.

I'll post the answer in a few days.