1919 Box Scores, Splits & More
Posted by Sean Forman on March 28, 2011
Thanks to the phenomenal work of RetroSheet, we now have 1919 box scores, gamelogs and splits on the site. The play index has also been updated with 1919 data where appropriate.
In addition, a couple dozen previously undiscovered play-by-play accounts have been added for more recent seasons and numerous bugs have been fixed both in our scripts and in the retrosheet data.
Please let us know if you come across any bugs or things that need to be fixed.
March 28th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
This is fantastic -- we members of the 1919 Black Sox Group salute you!
March 28th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
This is the very very very first thing I went to look for:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?id=ruthba01&t=p&year=1919
All 17 games he pitched that season, and 16 have the box scores. All sorts of fun stuff! Here are all the games in which Ruth pitched against Sisler, Speaker, Cobb *and* Shoeless Joe!! I am going to be examining these all closely for the next few days, but here are some of the highlights:
*May 15th, he came in relief in the 2nd to pitch 11 innings for the win
*May 20th, Sisler got the upperhand on Ruth, but Ruth hit a grand slam to get the upperhand on the Browns.
*June 10th, Ruth goes head-to-head against Cicotte, and Cicotte gets the win in a game decided by fielding errors. Joe Jackson goes 1 for 4 against Ruth, with a single.
*June 14th, 13-inning CG loss.
*July 21st, Cobb goes 3 for 4 against Ruth; Ruth gets his 14th home run.
*July 30th, Ruth gets a save!
*September 30th, the game Ruth ties Ned Williamson's major league mark of 27 home runs. He was the starting pitcher, but was relieved in the 6th when the White Sox tied the score 3-3. Ruth got even by hitting his record-tying homer in the bottom of the ninth.
March 28th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
So, wait - Ruth was relieved as a pitcher, but stayed in the game (presumably as an outfielder)? Bet that hasn't happened too many times since 1919.
March 28th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
That game against the White Sox actually was Sept. 20th, not the 30th. Another cool thing about that game and others on the list is that Ruth was both the starting pitcher and cleanup hitter. Has anyone else ever done that?
March 28th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Is it possible to have a "was" and/or "was not" button for the batting order position in the PI batting game finder ?
Sort of like the "was or was not born in"... for the season finder.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
@4
It looks like Ruth is the only SP to bat cleanup since 1919. He did many times in 1919 and once in 1920.
Several starting cleanup hitters took the mound as a reliever, though. Rothrock (1928), TWilliams (1940) and Wallach (1987) all entered the game in blow-out losses presumably to rest the other pitchers. Ty Cobb retired the last three batters of a game in 1925 to pick up a save.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
My favorite part of 1919 is Slim Sallee's box scores.
- Slim Sallee's season high in strikeouts was four. He had two or fewer in every other game.
- Sallee's high in walks was three. Like with K's, he did that only once.
- He had six starts in which he neither struck out nor walked a batter. Four were complete games; he didn't make it past the second inning in the other two.
March 28th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
The outfielders' totals are still lumped together as one position, even though Retrosheet breaks them out by field.
March 28th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Someone I knew who just died in the past couple of months was born on July 15, 1919, so in his memory, I just looked up the games for that day, which was a Tuesday. There were only 6 games. All 8 AL teams played that day, and the Yankees and Tigers even played a doubleheader. There was only one NL game, between the Cubs and the Boston Braves in Boston. In fact, both Chicago teams played and beat their Boston rivals that day, as the White Sox topped the Red Sox in the Windy City.
In that game between the two Sox teams, Babe Ruth played LF and batted cleanup. Although he went 0 for 3, he had the only RBI in his team's 3-1 loss. There's a notation of SH in the last column in the box score. I'm guessing that this means "sacrifice hit". I can't imagine The Babe bunting (then again, he was a pitcher, after all), so I wondered if it was a sacrifice fly. But third baseman Ossie Vitt also has SH in that column, and he had no RBI, so it couldn't have been a sac fly. I guess that Ruth was capable of laying down a sacrifice bunt even in the cleanup spot.
One of those outs nonetheless plated a run, but two of his outs were strikeouts. The losing pitcher for Boston was Bill James, who I'm sure is not the stats guy. The winning pitcher for Chicago was Eddie Cicotte, already mentioned in this thread. Both pitchers went the distance.
In Cleveland, Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators shut out the Indians, 3-0. The losing pitcher was Jim Bagby, Sr. The Indians' double play combination was made up of two guys who would each gain baseball immortality the following season as a result of just one play. At shortstop was Ray Chapman, who is often cited as the only guy to be killed in a major league game, although I have read in recent years that a guy named Powers on the Philadelphia A's also died as a result of a game injury in the first decade of the 20th century. On a more positive note, 2nd baseman Bill Wambsganss is remembered for his World Series unassisted triple play.
The Yankees and Tigers split their doubleheader in Detroit. The home team took the first game, 13-2, while the visitors won the 2nd game, 3-0, in six innings. In those days, it was likely darkness, rather than rain, that caused the second game to be called. The Yankees' starter and loser in the first game was Ernie Shore, whose most famous major league game most certainly was the one in which he relieved Babe Ruth and retired 26 straight batters when both were with the Red Sox. Ty Cobb went 1-for-3 with two RBI and also two runs scored. Wally Pipp was the Yankees' first baseman in both games.
Philadelphia beat St. Louis 5-4. That was the A's over the Browns, of course. Connie Mack was the A's manager. I recognize very few names on either team in the box score. George Sisler and Ken Williams hit back-to-back in the 4th and 5th spot in the order.
These days, Tuesdays are usually game days, but in the days of train travel, they may have been off days more frequently. That may be one explanation for there being just one NL game. Or maybe there were rainouts. With the A's and Yankees both on the road, the Phillies and either the Dodgers or Giants may have been scheduled to play at home that day but got rained out as a storm system covered most of New Jersey and its nearby cities. Maybe it spread out to the west to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, too, thus causing any games to be played there to be postponed, too.
March 28th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
DoubleDiamond, I always thought teams usually traveled on Mondays and Thursdays and played the other days back then.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:12 am
Random things...
*From Jul 9, 1919 to Sep 28, 1919, Cobb batted .408 over the course of 75 games.
*Ruth hit 9 HRs at home, and 20 on the road.
*Joe Jackson had a 24 game streak of games without a strike out from Jul 13 to Aug 7 (104 PAs), a 20 game streak from Apr 23 to May 17 (90 PAs), and a 19 game streak from Jun 13 to Jul 2 (84 PAs)
*Aug 10, Cicotte had a 12 inning complete game 1-0 shut out
*Eric Erickson struck out 12 Senators on Jun 28
*May 11, Walter Johnson and Jack Quinn each pitched 12 complete innings of shut out ball, ending in a 0-0 tie. Johnson struck out 9, walked 1 and gave up 2 singles.
*Lefty Williams pitched three complete game wins on 2 days rest after pitching a complete game: July 6, Aug 24 and Aug 27 (the last two were in a row)
*Coveleski gave up 10 or more hits in a game 11 times, and went 6-5 in them.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:40 am
*Johnny Pesky was born September 27, 1919. So what did the Red Sox do? They lost two games in a double header. Allen Russell started the first game for Boston, lasted 3.1 innings before he was taken out, and earned the loss. Having only pitched a few innings, Boston had him start the second game too. He pitched a complete game loss, going 0-2 for the day in two starts. Btw, in game one, Ruth hit his 29th home run.
*Career debut games of Frankie Frisch: pinch hit out against Pete Alexander in the 9th inning, June 17; Lefty O'Doul: pinch hit strike out, April 29; George Uhle: starting pitcher, went 6.1 innings for the win, held Sisler hitless, April 30.
March 29th, 2011 at 9:29 am
@Kingturtle: And the stuff about Pesky is significant exactly why? There's zero correlation between what a future player's future team does on the day of his birth and his life, the price of tea in China, or anything else.
March 29th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
@9, DoubleDiamond -- I believe that "SH" for Ruth was what we would now call a sacrifice fly. The official scoring of "sac flies" has changed several times over the decades. For several years, sac flies were lumped in with sac bunts.
Lou Gehrig in 1927 hit .373-47-175, yet his record reflects 21 sacrifice hits. A game search reveals that he had 19 games with at least 1 SH, and that he had at least 1 RBI in all but 4 of those; I'm guessing those 4 were the only sac bunts Lou laid down.
On the other hand, there were some years in which a sac fly was not credited with an RBI ... but I don't know which years.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
As an aside to @4 / @6 -- It may interest you to note that a starting pitcher has batted #3 in the order quite recently.
On May 17, 2009, Andy Sonnanstine of TB was the starting pitcher in a game against Cleveland, and batted 3rd in the order.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TBA/TBA200905170.shtml
It wasn't intentional, alas; it was the result of a lineup card goof. Joe Maddon had submitted a lineup card listing two third basemen (Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria); he had meant to list Longoria, who was batting 3rd, as the DH. Tampa was at home, and so when their turn came to bat and the umps realized the faulty lineup, they ruled that Tampa lost the DH and Sonnanstine had to bat in the spot where Longoria had been listed, since Longoria was the only player who had not yet appeared in the field.
Naturally, Sonnanstine went 1 for 3, with an RBI double, and earned the win despite a rocky performance.
Curiously (but I suppose by rule), Longoria was judged never to have been in the starting lineup, and thus was eligible to enter the game later on, which he did in the 6th. After drawing a 2-out walk, and with Carlos Pena batting, Longoria was picked off base, ending the inning. (Just like a pitcher!)
Sonnanstine, who never once batted during 5 years in the minors, is 7 for 22 in the majors and has drawn 3 walks for a slick .400 OBP.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
SP batting 5th: Johnny Lindell twice in 1953 (his one year as a MLB rotation SP); Jack Bentley in 1926.
I'll bet that Lindell is the only player who has led a league in triples and total bases as a hitter (both in 1944) and in walks as a pitcher (1953). Ruth never led the league in triples or in walks issued.
March 29th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
SP batting 6th: 19 times from 1919 on; 15 came in 1952-53 -- 4 by Willard Nixon, 3 each by Mickey McDermott and Mel Parnell.
Nixon, McDermott and Parnell were all pure pitchers. Nixon and McDermott were decent hitters, batting .242-.252 with some walks (OBP of .305-./312); McDermott even had a little power. Parnell wasn't much of a hitter.
The last SP who batted 6th was Gary Peters in 1968, against Mel Stottlemyre. I've no idea why. Peters was a good hitter for a pitcher -- .222 career BA with 19 HRs in 875 PA -- but not a good hitter, period. And he didn't have any success against Stottlemyre, going 2 for 20 before that game and 5 for 37 career, with no HRs. Maybe manager Eddie Stanky just picked the batting order out of a hat; it was also the only game all year that Luis Aparacio batted #8.
March 29th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
@Stu Baron, i never said it was significant. i had titled my post 'random things'. but the pesky thing helped me stumble on a strange occurrence...a pitcher starting two games of a double-header. little did the pesky family know that their boy was going to be a red sock. little did the red sox know on that strange day that a future favorite player of theirs was born on that day, a player they'd name a foul pole after. just fun stuff. nothing significant.