Box Score Notes from Wednesday, June 1
Posted by John Autin on June 2, 2011
A very quick peek around the majors with a focus on stats:
Nationals 2, Phillies 1: Six relievers combined for 6.2 scoreless IP in this 9-inning game. Their ERAs afterward, from lowest to highest:
- Antonio Bastardo (PHI), 1.33 in 20.1 IP
- Todd Coffey (WAS), 1.69 in 21.1 IP
- Tyler Clippard (WAS), 1.95 in 32.1 IP
- Drew Storen (WAS), 1.95 in 27.2 IP
- Michael Stutes (PHI), 2.03 in 13.1 IP
- Doug Slaten (WAS), 2.19 in 12.1 IP
Cleveland 13, Toronto 9: Asdrubal Cabrera had 3 doubles and is now slugging .534. The highest slugging average by a qualifying Cleveland SS is .536 by Lou Boudreau in 1948, his MVP season. The only other mark over .500 was Jhonny Peralta's .520 in 2005. With 39 RBI in the club's 53 games, Cabrera is on pace for 119 RBI, which would eclipse Joe Sewell's franchise SS record of 109 from 1923. Sewell and Boudreau are the only Cleveland shortstops ever to reach 100 RBI (twice each).
- Kyle Drabek, who has walked at least 3 in 11 of his 12 starts, reached that mark in less than an inning tonight, increasing his MLB-high total to 45 walks in 63.1 IP, with 43 Ks. Drabek is only 23 and has never pitched at AAA; I wouldn't be surprised if tonight punched his ticket to Las Vegas.
- Jose Bautista grounded into a double play for just the 2nd time this year; he also hit a 2-run single and walked.
Orioles 2, Mariners 1: After 3 sharp tuneups in the minors, Brian Matusz made his season debut and fought Michael Pineda to a draw, allowing 1 run on 4 hits and no walks in 5.2 IP. Matusz finished last season strong, with a 2.18 ERA and 3.25 K/BB ratio over his last 11 starts.
- Ichiro Suzuki had 2 singles in 4 trips, bidding goodbye to one of the worst hitting months of his career. Ichiro hit .210 in May with just 3 extra-base hits, all doubles. His numbers have been in steep decline since last June. In 625 AB from June 20, 2010 through May 2011, Ichiro hit .288 and slugged .342, with had 23 doubles, 1 triple and 3 HRs. He has 9 doubles and no triples or HRs this year.
Rangers 3, Rays 0: Colby Lewis threw 8 shutout innings and has a 2.04 ERA in 53 IP over his last 7 starts.
Reds 4, Brewers 3: Milwaukee led 3-0 after 6, but the NL leader in HRs and RBIs (Jay Bruce) hit a 2-run shot in the 7th and the reigning MVP (Joey Votto) followed suit in the 8th.
- In his last 87 games dating to Aug. 13, 2011, Jay Bruce has 32 HRs, 73 RBI, a .319 BA and .659 SLG. On the other hand, just 8 doubles. Go figure.
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:40 am
Elias reporting that 3 consecutive triples by Blue Jays were first in MLB since 81 Expos.
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:45 am
Back in the old days of this blog, Sean Forman posted something about the young Jay Bruce in re players whose career BA never dropped below .300. That was obviously premature, as he quickly fell off and ended his rookie year at .254. I knew he had a good May but had no idea he was leading the league in HR and RBI (and TB, I see). And is only 24. That Bruce/Votto combo might be something yet.
Colby Lewis is ptiching that well, huh? Maybe I should actually check my fantasy team....
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:48 am
Huh, why are Bruce's defensive stats off so much from last season? (Besides the fact that such stats are imperfect, particularly over only 2 months.) Last season he was rated extremely high. So far TZ has him terrible in 2011, UZR has him mediocre, and DRS says neutral. Reds fans, does he look worse/different in the field thus far? Frank Clingenpeel?
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:52 am
The Blue Jays had back-to-back-to-back triples in tonight's game from the unlikely trio of Eric Thames, Rajai Davis and Jayson Nix.
From the report I read, it is apparently the first time this has happened since a 1981 game in Montreal against the Padres.
When did this last happen outside Canada?
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:53 am
@1. @4.
Sorry, Eric. See you beat me to it on the triples story.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:02 am
I wondered how Votto was doing this season; I thought he was playing well but I don't necessarily keep up that well. I see his OPS+ is an impressive 168, compared to Bruce's 150. But Votto only has 6 HR and 30 RBI, compared to Bruce's 16 and 44. Well, Votto is obviously being pitched around. Both of them are hitting extremely well with RISP, but Votto has walked nearly 1/3 of the time with RISP. Votto has batted 3rd almost every game, while Bruce usually bats 5th (both bat lefty). Cleanup started as Rolen and has been Phillips of late. I wonder if Bruce should move to 4th. Usually I like splitting the lefties, as Dusty Baker has done. But neither Bruce nor Votto has a big platoon split over their careers, so I don't think they'd be too hurt if the opposition wants to challenge them with a lefty reliever in the late innings, and perhaps Votto would receive more hittable pitches. (Votto actually does have a fair split, but he has hit so well in his young career that his weaker numbers vs lefties are still impressive.) Rolen has not hit well this season, and Phillips has never been a cleanup-worthy hitter.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:30 am
Don't look now by Jay Bruce is on track to join some pretty select company.
Barring injury, Bruce should pass 2000 career PAs by the end of the year. If he keeps up his current HR clip of better than 1 per 18 AB, he'll join this group of just 16 players since 1901 who have homered at the same rate in 2000+ PAs over their first 4 seasons.
Albert Pujols
Mark Teixeira
Ted Williams
Frank Robinson
Ralph Kiner
Joe DiMaggio
Eddie Mathews
Chuck Klein
Mark Reynolds
Troy Glaus
Jose Canseco
Adam Dunn
Darryl Strawberry
Prince Fielder
Todd Helton
Tony Conigliaro
Not a bad group to join. And, he's only 24.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:45 am
Bruce is also the first player to have 20+ HR and HR > 2B in each of his first 3 seasons, since Pete Incaviglia and Cory Snyder did it in 1986-88.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:56 am
And, Bruce is well on his way to being the first player since Ralph Kiner (1946-49) to start his career with 4 straight 20+ HR and HR > 2B seasons.
June 2nd, 2011 at 9:04 am
I thought for a moment that all of those D. Murphys active this year was bad enough; now there were two Jose Bautistas in the American League, with possibly both of them in the AL East. Or maybe the one I knew of was traded by Toronto to division rival Baltimore or expansion twin/league rival Seattle.
But I just checked, and there's still only one active Jose Bautista, and he's still with Toronto. Was the notation about his GIDP supposed to go under the Cleveland-Toronto game instead?
(There was another Jose Bautista several years ago, but he was a pitcher. His trivia claim to fame was being a Jewish person from the Dominican Republic.)
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:35 am
@10, DoubleDiamond -- Um, yes, I misplaced the Jose Bautista item; I'll fix that. Also, I considered listing him by the nickname "Joey Bats," since that moniker automatically links to THE Jose Bautista, instead of to a choice of two. Or I could have manually set the link. What can I say ... got lazy late in the game.
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:42 am
@6, Johnny Twisto -- Funny, I recalled Jay Bruce having a huge platoon split in his first 2 years, so I looked it up. He has leveled his career split by going big in the opposite direction the last year-plus; he hit lefties better than righties last year (concentrated in the HR rate), and is destroying them this year -- 16 for 42, 5 HRs, 1.292 OPS.
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:47 am
@4, Doug -- Alas, I don't think the Play Index can search for consecutive batting events within a game. I can find games wherein a team had at least 3 players hit at least 1 triple, but there are too many of those to check manually for consecutivity(?).
June 2nd, 2011 at 11:04 am
@2: I remember that post, "Can Jay Bruce be the first?" http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/677
I loved it, and have thought about it a lot (with every player that gets a hit in their first AB).
June 2nd, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Asdrubal Cabrera has long had the record for rbis by a player named after a Carthaginian general. Anibal Sanchez, of course, has the record for wins. He'll hold it for a while yet, unless Amilcar Gaxiola gets his act together.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:26 pm
@15, Morten -- Love the historical references, but ... how do you know that Cabrera isn't named after any of the other dozen or so famous Carthaginian Hasdrubals? 🙂
I don't know Carthage from Haulage, but from a quick perusal of the cast of characters, it seems that Hasdrubal:Carthage as Rube:old-time baseball.
June 2nd, 2011 at 3:21 pm
JA/12, that's a tricky thing with splits. It's better to take a bigger sample, so looking at Bruce's career, his OPS vs lefties is only 60 points lower than vs righties. But that ignores the probability that his true talent has changed over the past few seasons. Maybe he really was overmatched against them in '08 (as opposed to just having a bad stretch) and really is great against them now. But no lefty who consistently puts up ~850 OPS vs righties is truly as good against lefties as Bruce has been since 2010. So if you regress his recent performance toward the mean, well, maybe a fair projection ends up looking like his career splits.
June 2nd, 2011 at 3:36 pm
are AL right fielders THAT bad in 2011?
Ichico has an 88 OPS+ but 0.7 oWAR. If that's correct it is astounding. I can see that possible for centerfield but can't imagine an 88 OPS+ being above replacement for a corner outfielder.
June 2nd, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Wasn't Scipio Spinks named after somebody back then?
June 2nd, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Doug B, WAR is not directly affected by the offensive performance of a position for a single season (I believe the positional adjustments are made on decade-by-decade basis). Anyway, Ichiro is certainly close to replacement offensively so far. 0.7 WAR is 6 runs, and he's getting 4 of those runs from his baserunning (including ROE and GIDP). He's only 2 runs above replacement based on his bat. That can be a rounding error. So you're right, the 88 OPS+ is in the range of replacement for a corner OF.
June 2nd, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Yes, Scipio Spinks was named after Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. It's a shame he doesn't have a son in the majors. Scipio Spinks Jr. vs. Anibal Sanchez would be a rematch for the ages. Like Ali-Frazier, for history buffs.