August 22, 2002
Posted by Andy on January 14, 2008
A little over five years ago, we saw this three-way trade:
The Oakland Athletics sent a player to be named later, Carlos Pena, and Franklyn German to the Detroit Tigers. The New York Yankees sent Ted Lilly, John-Ford Griffin, and Jason Arnold (minors) to the Oakland Athletics. The Detroit Tigers sent Jeff Weaver to the New York Yankees. The Detroit Tigers sent cash to the Oakland Athletics. The Oakland Athletics sent Jeremy Bonderman (August 22, 2002) to the Detroit Tigers to complete the trade.
This is a trade that, at different times over the last 5 years, has really looked quite different.
At the time, the Yankees were trying to get a reliable starter to help them into the playoffs. So the big news was them giving up Lilly to Oakland and getting Weaver from Detroit. The Tigers were getting Carlos Pena, at that time still a pretty highly-touted youngster. Bonderman and the other kids were unknowns and weren't key parts of the trade.
Weaver was pretty good for the Yankees in 2002, but was pretty bad in 2003. Several years and teams later, he's put together mostly disappointing seasons and he may be washed up at age 30.
Ted Lilly ended up being average for Oakland, and then put together several mediocre seasons for Toronto.
Bonderman, meanwhile, looked like a joke in 2003, losing 19 games and avoiding 20 losses only by being kept out at the end of the year. And Carlos Pena was just as bad, flaming out with the Tigers, then the Yankees, and then the Red Sox.
But then, Bonderman had a pretty nice year in 2006 and seemed to be on his way to becoming one of the great starters in the AL.
But in 2007, it was a different story:
- Bonderman put up another below-average season for Detroit, though at just age 24, he still has plenty of time to improve. Check out this list of pitchers who had a similar season at age 24. (See the link to see the criteria I use.) If Bonderman turns into Hunter, Sutton, Lackey, oreven Escobar, I think Detroit will be happy.
- Meanwhile, Lilly at age 31 put up a great season for the Cubs. A list of similar seasons from the last 40 years reveals a number of guys who pitched well past 31: Jenkins, Gaylord Perry, Marichal, Palmer, Maddux, Johnson, and a bunch more.
- And what about Carlos Pena, the forgotten man of the trade? Well in 2007, all he did was have the best offensive year in Tampa Bay history, smacking 46 HR with 121 RBI in just 148 games. He'll be 30 this May, and it'll be very interesting to see what the rest of his career holds.
January 14th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Is that list every Tampa Bay player to ever qualify for a batting title? In ten years, they've managed only 38?
January 14th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Yes, that would appear to be the case. Kind of amazing. Plus, it's 11 seasons, not 10.
Here is the same list for the Yankees, 1997-2007:
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/T4qj
72 players for them.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Tampa Bay's first season was 1998.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Oh yeah...I always forget that. You're right about 10 seasons, not 11.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Here's the breakdown for Tampa Bay:
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/EPwN
In 2006 Tampa joined a small but quickly growing list of teams with only 1 batting title qualifier.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/NEY9
(BTW- if there was a team with 0 would this PI search have told me as much? Does it only include teams with at least 1?)
January 14th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I believe that search would NOT tell you if there were zero qualifiers, unless Sean happened to code it very intelligently (which is certainly possible.) If you were searching for, say, teams with players having at least 50 SB, then it would certainly not display teams with 0 such qualifiers. So I expect this one to behave the same way.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
In this case all teams (1270) are accounted for. No team has ever gone without a player qualifying for the batting title.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I realized that I goofed and only used the teams since 1957.
If you use 1901 as the starting year the list of teams with 1 stays the same and no still no team of 2182 has ever had 0.
The record is 11 by the 1923 Tigers.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/YkKM
January 14th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Good job figuring that out, at least.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Keep in mind that batting title qualifications has not always been 3.1 PA per game. I didn't check, but in 1923, it may have been playing 100 games.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:50 am
The qualifications have changed a lot. 100 games sounds familiar, and I remember that some controversy was resolved when a league president or commissioner determined that "100 games" meant 100 games in the field. By 1954, batting title eligibility was based on at-bats, not plate appearances, and Ted Williams lost a batting title because of the many walks that he took.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/leader_glossary.shtml#min_req
What are the minimum requirements to lead a Rate Stat?
This is a bit of a dicey proposition as the standards have changed quite a bit throughout time. Here are how I computed them for the website. Thanks to Bill Deane, Gerry Myerson and Total Baseball for clarifying some of these issues.
Batting Average, OBP, Slugging Percentage, OPS
Prior to 1920, a player must have appeared in 60% of the team's games to qualify for a title. This number was rounded to the nearest integer.
From 1920-1937 (unclear, and previously thought to be until 1944), a player must have appeared in 100 games.
From 1938-1944, the AL used 400 at bats and the NL stayed with 100 games as found by Paul Rivard of SABR.
From 1945-1956, a player must have 2.6 at bats per team game. Note however, that from 1951-1954 a player could lead if they still led after the necessary number of hitless at bats were added to their at bat total.
From 1957 to the present, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances per team game. Note however, that from 1967 to the present a player could lead if they still led after the necessary number of hitless plate appearances were added to their at bat total.