I have not checked in here in a while, principally because (a) I have learning a new computer architecture and tools, and porting several year's work, (b) SABR's new web site has taken some of my thunder--it is now announcing things I used to announce, and with nice pictures, (c) I have been bummed about the Red Sox, and (d) I have been lazy.
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In January 2004, Tangotiger posted this at his site:

http://www.tangotiger.net/archives/stud0268.shtml

It linked to a very cool mathematical method for determining the probability that any team was the "true" best team in a season. Unfortunately, though, webpages sometimes have a tendency to disappear over the course of 7 years. That's just what happened here -- the original link is now dead.

However, I contacted the creator of the methodology, Dr. Jesse Frey (Professor of Mathematical Science at Villanova), and he was gracious enough to re-upload the original study to his current site:

http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/jesse.frey/BestTeam/forprimer.htm

Now sabermetricians can once again estimate the probability of any team truly being baseball's best. And for what it's worth, here are the current results from a very simplified version:

Automatic Player Linker / Add your site to our newsfeeds

This weekend, we added a version of our Linker Tool that will work on Spanish-language sites:

B-R Linker.es Bookmarklet

When you use that bookmarklet on a post, it will now find matching names with tildes and accent marks, ensuring that players like Magglio Ordóñez, etc. will never again go unlinked again.

And if you like this feature, be sure to email us to let us know you want to be added to our player newsfeeds. ¡Muchas gracias!

Yesterday, Mariano Rivera blew a save in his second straight appearance. That was the 8th time in his career that he's done that. Here were the first 7:

Going back to 1997, Rivera's appeared in 908 games. He has 68 blown saves. (These numbers don't count yesterday's game.)

I can't figure out whether 8 back-to-back blown saves is about the expected number given his total number of appearances and blown saves. My gut feeling is that Rivera's poor performances tend to come in clusters and are not even close to randomly distributed through his career, but I can't seem to figure out how to go about figuring this out...who can help?

On another recent post we were discussing lefthanders playing third base. The Play Index can easily tell us which players since 1919 threw lefty and also played at 3B:

Mario Valdez came in as a pinch-hitter and then played the 9th inning as the 3rd baseman, getting no chances.

Don Mattingly, mustache and all, is the last player to start a game at third.

As long as we're at it...left-handed catchers:

Left-handed 2B:

Left-handed shortstops:

I think we can all agree that the final two words of this post should be:

LOU GEHRIG?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Through Friday, the Phillies led all of MLB with 5 team shutouts:

Coming in 19 games, that projects to 42 shutouts in a full season.

That's never happened before:

And it's probably not going to happen this year. I believe shutouts tend to be a little bit more common in April than in later months.

Within their first 17 games this season, the Yankees have 5 games where they've hit 3 or more homeruns in the contest. Since 1919, how many teams have 5+ games within their first 17 games where they had 3+ homeruns?

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Follow along with events from the last several hours for me:

• Last night I was reading Josh Wilker's Cardboard Gods and was reading the entry with the 1978 Topps Tom Seaver. Wilker noted it was Seaver's first card in a Reds uniform. He remarked about the other movement in Seaver's career from that point forward. (Incidentally, a review of the book by me and hopefully a special contest will be forthcoming on this blog.)
• Just before I went to sleep (but after my wife turned out the light) I checked Seaver's career stats on the B-R.com mobile site on my iPhone.
• I was very surprised to see that Seaver had won 21 games in 1977 after splitting the season between the Mets and the Reds. I had always thought that Rick Sutcliffe in 1984 had been the only guy in recent times (which for me is usually post-WWII) to win 20+ in a season in which he changed teams. Maybe it's that Sutcliffe is the only guy to win the Cy Young in such a season?
• Anyway, that got me to thinking about who else might have done it. The Play Index doesn't allow for an easy way to search for this, as the "Franchises Played For" criterion is for careers only, not individual seasons.
• So I turned to Google and searched for something like "win 20 games playing for two teams Sutcliffe Seaver".
• The first thing that came up with a link in Google Books to a Baseball Digest article from January 1985 by Larry F. Rasmussen. The article was of course writing about Sutcliffe's achievements from the season that had just ended, and includes a list of other pitchers to win 20 while switching teams. In fact, Rasmussen broke it down into players who did it while switching leagues, and others like Seaver who did it while switching teams in the same league. Anyway, it's been done a fair number of times, and the last time before Seaver was by Virgil Trucks in 1953. Has it happened since 1985? I can't think of a case. (The first couple of cases that flew into my mind were CC Sabathia in 2008 when he won 11 after going to the Brewers, but he had won only 6 with the Indians, and David Cone, who won 9 with the Yankees in 1995 but had won only 9 with the Blue Jays.)

Anyway, it's incredible that you can see all these back issues of publications like Baseball Digest on Google for free. Check out some of the other cool things in that issue:

• Wayne Stewart has a diary of the 1984 season starting on Page 78. It's a fun read, and I never knew that Tony LaRussa played lefthander Mike Squires at 3rd base. Has any lefthander gotten significant time at 3rd since? Also, the article talks about him handling chances without any errors, but doesn't that totally miss the point of why lefthanders don't play 3rd base? It has nothing to do with their ability to handle batted balls, but rather the time it takes to turn, set, and throw to the right side of the infield (or so I thought at least.) There's tons of other interesting stuff in this article.
• Check out the Personality Posters ad on page 93. Only $5.00 each!
• The mailbag on Page 10 has a neat question about outfields where all 3 members drove in 100 runs each. That sort of thing is easy as pie to find now. The 2003 Braves are the 4th team to do it.
• On Page 37, David Surdam writes about teams with 6+ guys having 80 or more RBI. As you might imagine, that record was beaten and diluted by the Steroid Era.
• You can't miss the feature on Page 47 entitled "Major League Baseball is Moving Toward Parity" by Bud Selig Rich Hofmann.
• See how times have changed with the crossword puzzle (actually an advertisement for Newport Cigarettes) on page 52.
• On Page 69, Lonnie Wheeler wonders if Eric Davis is the "Next Phenom for the Reds". I'll go ahead and answer that one: hell yes.
• Coming from the I-did-not-know-that file is a neat bit on Page 73 by Guy Waterman with an all-time All-Star team using players out-of-position, meaning at positions they played in the big leagues but not the positions we know them for (such as Hank Aaron at 2B and Johnny Bench at 3B.)

Anyway, be prepared to waste hours going through this...

Just for the fun of it, I ran a PI query this morning asking for: From 1919 to 2011, only 9-inning games, where XBH=0*H, sorted by greatest H

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Anibal Sanchez got pretty close to pitching another no-hitter last night.

A few thoughts on that:

• I was amazed to hear that this would have been the 5th no-hitter in Marlins' history, given that they've only been around since 1993 and many teams that have existed longer have quite a bit fewer than 4.
• Can you recall who threw the 4 previous no-no's for the Marlins? How easily we forget:

  Rk	Player	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	App,Dec	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	Pit	Str	GSc
  1	Anibal Sanchez	2006-09-06	FLA	ARI	W 2-0	SHO9 ,W	9.0	0	0	0	4	6	0	103	67	89
  2	A.J. Burnett	2001-05-12	FLA	SDP	W 3-0	SHO9 ,W	9.0	0	0	0	9	7	0	129	65	85
  3	Kevin Brown	1997-06-10	FLA	SFG	W 9-0	SHO9 ,W	9.0	0	0	0	0	7	0	98	67	94
  4	Al Leiter	1996-05-11	FLA	COL	W 11-0	SHO9 ,W	9.0	0	0	0	2	6	0	103	58	91

  Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
  Generated 4/23/2011.

  I remembered Sanchez, Brown, and Leiter, but somehow the idea that A. J. Burnett ever pitched a no-hitter is lost on me.

• Sanchez has had a lot of injuries so far in his career and while he's pitched well in 2009 and 2010 (and so far in 2011) he's one of the less-accomplished pitchers to throw a no-hitter (I'd say in the bottom half of all such pitchers--certainly I don't mean in the bottom few percent.) However, he could perhaps have joined this pretty short list of pitchers to throw at least 2 complete-game no-hitters of at least 9 innings:

  Player	#Matching
  Nolan Ryan	7	Ind. Games
  Sandy Koufax	4	Ind. Games
  Bob Feller	3	Ind. Games
  Don Wilson	2	Ind. Games
  Johnny Vander Meer	2	Ind. Games
  Virgil Trucks	2	Ind. Games
  Bill Stoneman	2	Ind. Games
  Warren Spahn	2	Ind. Games
  Allie Reynolds	2	Ind. Games
  Hideo Nomo	2	Ind. Games
  Jim Maloney	2	Ind. Games
  Randy Johnson	2	Ind. Games
  Ken Holtzman	2	Ind. Games
  Bob Forsch	2	Ind. Games
  Carl Erskine	2	Ind. Games
  Steve Busby	2	Ind. Games
  Jim Bunning	2	Ind. Games
  Mark Buehrle	2	Ind. Games

  Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
  Generated 4/23/2011.
• Sanchez allowed an unearned run in the first inning last night, giving me a good excuse to post this list of pitchers to throw a 9+ inning no-hitter while allowing at least  1 run (earned or unearned.)

  Rk	Player	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	App,Dec	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	GSc
  1	Darryl Kile	1993-09-08	HOU	NYM	W 7-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	0	1	9	93
  2	Joe Cowley	1986-09-19	CHW	CAL	W 7-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	1	7	8	84
  3	George Culver	1968-07-29 (2)	CIN	PHI	W 6-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	0	5	4	84
  4	Dean Chance	1967-08-25 (2)	MIN	CLE	W 2-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	1	5	8	86
  5	Ken Johnson	1964-04-23	HOU	CIN	L 0-1	CG 9 ,L	9.0	0	1	0	2	9	92
  6	Don Nottebart	1963-05-17	HOU	PHI	W 4-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	0	3	8	90
  7	Bob Feller	1951-07-01 (1)	CLE	DET	W 2-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	0	1	0	3	5	87
  8	Dazzy Vance	1925-09-13 (1)	BRO	PHI	W 10-1		9.0	0	1	0	1	9	93

  Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
  Generated 4/23/2011.

Of course, Sanchez allowed a 9th-inning leadoff single last night, and it's not as if this sort of 1-hitter is so incredibly rare. It's just that this (only fairly uncommon) near-miss at a no-no is of particularly statistical interest to me.