The Yankees did it last night, becoming just the 8th team since 1919:

On the one hand it's amazing that some of the teams lost, but I guess most teams would not steal 5 bases in a game if they already had a comfortable lead from 5 homers.

Here are the players with the fewest career strikeouts who have at least one 5+ strikeout game as a batter:

A lot of these guys are pitchers. A few are also active so eventually they'll come off this list.

Among position players, the "winner" is Dave Stegman, who was the second overall pick in the secondary June 1976 draft.

The Mets haven't been able to hurt the Braves very often in the past 20 years. During Atlanta's long run of NL East dominance, in the few years that the Mets also contended, there were a number of late-season series wherein the Gothamites had the chance to make a move in the standings and a statement about their status; and of course, there was the 1999 NLCS. Every time, Atlanta reestablished their supremacy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are two recent additions to the Play Index Event Finders (batting and pitching):

• Sean just added Balls in Play and Balls Not in Play as event options. This means you can search for things like all playable balls hit to center field against the Twins, etc.
• We also now have Pulled, Opposite Field, and Middle breakouts in the event finders, so you can call up a list of every ball Jose Bautista hit the other way this season.

Curtis Granderson since last Aug 14:

111 games
468 plate appearances
.271 / .353 / .597
82 runs scored
16 doubles
3 triples
35 homers
84 RBI

Over 162 games, that projects to 52 HR, 123 RBI, and 120 runs scored.

Major League Baseball & MLB Encyclopedia - Baseball-Reference.com

We have historical totals for major league baseball on our leagues directory and I noticed that we are fast approaching the 200,000th game in major league history.

There is probably some room for interpretation on when exactly it will occur.  How do you count forfeits, suspended games etc. And I'm including the National Association in my total, but the fact remains that some time between July 1 and the end of the season MLB will have played 200,000 games, no matter how you count it.

UPDATE:

I'm using NA, UA, AA, PL and FL in my calculations. If you use all of those we are 266 away. using what I have of the schedule, it appears we'll hit 200k on July 4th. Assuming there are less that 5 rainouts between now and then. The second question is when do we mark a game as completed? The 5th? The end of the game?

Some Pirates notes:

With their shutout win last night, the Pirates are now 33-33. Here is the last time they were at at least .500 in each of their recent seasons:

• 2010: 7-7 on April 21st
• 2009: 12-12 on May 3rd
• 2008: 7-7 on April 15th (although they were within 1 game of .500 as late as June 12th at 33-34)
• 2007: 12-12 on April 30th
• 2006: 0-0 on Opening Day
• 2005: 30-30 on June 11nd
• 2004: 23-23 on May 30th
• 2003: 14-14 on May 2nd
• 2002: 19-19 on May 15th
• 2001: 4-4 on April 11th

So, by that measure, this has been the most successful season in a long time, making it until after games on June 14th with a .500 record.

Last night's shutout was their 5th of the season, a pace of about 12 for a full season.

It's been a while since they've had that many shutouts in a season:

Andrew McCutchen is currently second in the NL in WAR among position players. The last time they had a player finish the season in the top 10 was 2006, when Freddy Sanchez was 10th. The last time they had a player finish the season as high as second was 1990-1992, when  Barry Bonds finished first in the NL each year.

Of course, from the damning-with-faint-praise department, we could chalk up some of the Pirates' success this year to the weakening of other teams in their division...

There's a new leader in the AL Central, and also atop the pitching Game Score leaderboard. Justin Verlander smoked Cleveland in a 2-hit shutout, with 12 strikeouts and 1 walk; his bid for yet another no-hitter was broken up after 7.1 IP. His game score of 94 topped the previous high of 93 by James Shields on May 22.

• Detroit scored 4 runs on 11 hits, all singles, 3 by rookie LF Andy Dirks.

Speaking of James Shields, he became the first pitcher with 3 CG shutouts this year, snapping a 9-game Boston win streak in which they averaged over 9 R/G.

• Since 2000, the season high in CG shutouts is 5, by C.C. Sabathia (2008), Dontrelle Willis (2005) and A.J. Burnett (2002).
• Tim Wakefield pitched well, but missed a chance at his 197th career win.

A 21st-century first: The Pirates, who had not won a 1-0 game in almost 3 years, beat the Astros by that score tonight and evened their season record at 33-33. Pittsburgh has not been at .500 or above this late in a season since 1999. They need just 37 wins in their last 96 games to reach 70 wins for the first time since 2004.

• Every other MLB team had at least one 1-0 win since 2009. (A table of the 21 1-0 games this year appears at the end of this post.)
• Jeff Karstens had his 2nd straight scoreless start, going 6.2 IP on 3 hits without a walk while lowering his ERA to 2.66.
• See Andy's post for more on the 2011 Pirates:
  http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/11849

Read the rest of this entry »

[NOTE: The question has been answered correctly.
Next time, I'll try to put a little more "challenge" in the Trivia Challenge!]

What do these 10 pitchers have in common? It is a complete list, sorted alphabetically, of pitchers who have done something on a big-league ballfield within a certain timeframe.

If no one gets it quickly, I'll give hints -- but I don't think I'll have to. BTW, the Play Index might be of some help.

Carlos Carrasco

Josh Johnson

Hiroki Kuroda

Tim Lincecum

Kyle Lohse

Daisuke Matsuzaka

Michael Pineda

Anibal Sanchez

Tim Stauffer

Jason Vargas

Here are a few quick lists of some players who might be overrated so far in 2011.

First, a few pitchers who have ERA+ values over 100 but have also allowed a ton of inherited baserunners to score:

Ouchie...Slaten and Ziegler have each allowed double-digit runners to score.

Here are guys currently leading in BAbip (batting average on balls put in play):

Nobody has had a BAbip as high as .415 in a long time so there's a good chance that Travis Hafner is in for a bit of a decline as the season goes on.

And of course, here are some pitchers with some nice W-L records but below-average ERAs: