Here's something else you can do with the PI: see how any given pitcher (or batter) has done against current members of an opposing team.

Later today Carlos Zambrano starts against Barry Bonds and the slumping San Fransisco Giants.  Here's how Zambrano has done against those guys in his career so far.

If I'm Bruce Bochy, I put Durham, Klesko, and Roberts in the lineup today.  Sure it's a small sample size (especially for Roberts), but the way Z has pitched lately, you need all the help you can get.

Last night Shane Victornio and Aaron Rowand both had 5 hits in a regular 9-inning game. It made me wonder how often two or more players from the same team have gotten 5 or more hits in a 9-inning game.

Here's what I found... Read the rest of this entry »

This article over at The Hardball Times got me to thinking about K/BB ratios for young pitchers. Bill James pointed out in his Baseball Abstract that there aren't too many consistent statistical indicators for young pitchers, with the possible exception of having a low strikeout rate. Few pitchers who have had low K rates in the first few years last very long in baseball.

Anyway, using the PI Pitching Season Finder, I looked at some related data. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like all the discussion of Albert Pujols' demise were premature. So far, in four games since the break, he's got 4 HR and 5 RBI. (You can find that info on his batting splits page.)

There was also a lot of talk recently about the Phillies 10,000th loss. I'm not sure that number is terribly meaningful, especially since most of their truly terrible seasons came in the 1930s and 1940s.

But I wanted to comment on a stat about both Pujols and the Phillies:

Read the rest of this entry »

The A's and Cubs just swapped catchers.  Wanna know why?  Well, let's look at PI features and find out why.

Here's the production AL teams are getting from their catchers.   The A's are next-to-last.  And they're paying good money for that, too.

The Cubs were in a similar position.  The were also next-to-last in their league in offensive performance from catchers.  So why would the Cubs make this trade?  At least Oakland can clear some salary (even if they are picking up some cost, the Cubs will also get some).

Well, the above actually overestimates Cubs catchers.  They began the year with Michael Barrett.  But he ran into some problems getting in a fist fight with the star pitcher while hitting far worse than last year (though far better than Jason Kendall), leading the league in passed balls, committed several other bad defensive plays, and numerous numbskulled manuvers on the bases.  Oh, and after the Zambrano fight he got in a dugout shouting match with Rich Hill, another starting pitcher.  One usually sees such all around meltdowns when Nazis attempt to open the Ark of the Lord.

Aside from him, Cubs catcher OPS+ are as follows:

Blanco 25
Hill 17
Soto 6
Bowen -29.

Yea, that's 153 of the ugliest plate appearances you'll ever see.  Insanely, Jason Kendall represents a big upgrade for the Cubs.  Beane can clear salary (and Bowen really should be much better).  The Cubs can afford it, hope Kendall can have one of those unexpected veteran regenerations, and were just sick to death of hoping one of their catchers would hit half as well as their pitchers.  (To be fair, those Cubs pitchers can hit!)

The Yankees Kei Igawa pitched 5 innings in the Bronx tonight - facing 26 batters, fanning 7, and throwing 115 pitches.  This made me curious - wondering if any other pitcher this season has thrown 5 (or less) innings in a game, where they threw 115+ pitches, and faced 26 batters (or less) and had 7 strikeouts (or less)?  Thanks to Baseball-Reference's Player Index Picthing Game Finder, the answer is ready within seconds.

It's only happened once before this season:  On May 14, 2007, when Nate Robertson of the Tigers threw 5 innings, faced 25 batters, whiffed 3 and threw 115 pitches.

If the Yankees and Tigers manage to face-off in the post-season again this year, I'm rooting for an Igawa-Robertson match-up in one of the games.  It will be a fun (?)  little contest to see, head-to-head, who can throw the most pitches in the least amount of innings.  I just hope that Al Leiter gets to do the analysis of the two for FOX in that contest - offering some expert opinion on high-pitch, low inning total, counts.

Sorry for my absence...had a bit of a vacation.

Anyway, a neat feature I found on the PI Team Batting Game Finder is that the results can be ranked by total number of batters in the game (for one team).

Limiting the results to just 2007, here are the top games:

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  PA  AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS LOB **Batrs**
+----+-------------+---+----+-------+---+---+--+--+--+--+--+---+--+---+--+---+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+-----
    1 2007-07-03    PHI @HOU L  4-5   55  53  4 16  7  0  0   4  1   1  8   1  0  0   0   1  2  0  12      22  
    2 2007-06-20    STL  KCR W  7-6   61  53  7 17  3  0  1   6  7   2 14   0  0  1   1   1  1  0  15      22  
    3 2007-05-08    CHC  PIT L  3-4   58  55  3 14  1  0  0   3  2   2 12   1  0  0   1   1  2  1  10      22  
    4 2007-04-23    CHC  MIL L  4-5   51  43  4 11  3  0  1   4  6   1 10   0  1  1   1   2  0  1  11      22  

22? That seems like a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

This is something minor, but it is an example of a new feature that you can do at b-ref.  If you want to find out which team in a league has hit into the most GIDP, go the the league splits page, and at the top of the page click on the red text where it says "total."  Total team offensive stats for 26 different categories will pop up, including some that have never been on the league main page.  Doing so, you can get how NL teams are ranked at GIDP, or BABIP, or Times Reached on Error, or whatever.

I was just using Baseball-Reference.com's Player Index Batting Game Finder - and had it set for "From 1957 to 2007, Playing for NYY, Team Won, (requiring H=0, BB=0, SH=0, and SF=0), sorted by greatest PA in a single game" (Hey, sometimes I find myself looking at the strangest things when it comes to baseball stats). 

And, I came across the Game of June 2, 1982 - where the New York Yankees were visiting the Toronto Blue Jays.

In this contest, New York won 12-6.  However, the Yankees fourth and fifth batters in the line-up (John Mayberry and Graig Nettles) went a combined 0 for 14 in this game - with no walks, HBP, sac hits, sac flies, or reaching on an error. (The hitting stars in this game for the Yankees were Dave Collins, Bobby Murcer, Andre Robertson and Butch Wynegar.)

Without having the stats to back it up, I would suggest that having your team win a game, and where it scores 12 runs (or more) and where you have two players, batting back-to-back in the heart of the line-up, each going 0 for 7 with no productivity whatsoever from their PAs, is a rare situation.

Well, let's put it this way - it hasn't happened for the Yankees in the last 19 years.  So, if you're a fan of the Bronx Bombers, and you're 18 years or younger, you've never seen it happen for your favorite team.

That's the beauty of baseball.  Sometimes, even what appears to be just a vanilla game in the month of June, almost two decades ago, has something in it that's interesting and very rare - if you just manage to figure out what it is...

One of the really cool things about PI are the inning reports you can get for each team since 1957.

For example, did you know that the all-time-great '98 Yankees peaked in the 4th and 5th innings offensively (with a minor revival in the 9th), but their pitching was tops in the first and last innings. The 1st inning productivity is odd because that is the most productive inning, offensively speaking, over history, because managers work so hard to manufacture their entire lineup to focus around it, often costing production in the second and even third innings. But the Yankees held offenses back the best in the first. The 9th inning production can be explained in one word: Mariano.

Two more somewhat interesting inning reports:

• The '86 Tigers, for reasons I cannot explain or imagine, exploded in the 7th inning offensively.
• Last year's historically bad Royals did not help themselves late in games. Thanks to their Hall of Fame-caliber, sterling bullpen, Kansas City would have coughed up 7.61 runs per game if every inning was the 8th inning. Wow. But even better than that, the starting pitchers decide to out-do the 'pen: If every inning was the 3rd inning for the Royals in 2006, Kansas City would have yielded 7.67 runs per game.

Take the time to check out some fun inning reports of your own. This post took about five searches to find three interesting things, so it doesn't take long to enjoy yourself.