Meet the new Roy, same as the old Roy
Posted by Andy on July 29, 2010
Word has it that Roy Oswalt has waived his no-trade clause, clearing the way for his trade to the Phillies. That means the Phillies are pitching two Roys at the top of their rotation, the other being Roy Halladay of course.
Has any team ever had two pitchers so good with the same first name?
July 29th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Don Drysdale and Don Sutton were teammates on the Dodgers for a few years, although their peaks didn't overlap.
July 29th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Also, in 1998, David Wells and David Cone combined to go 38-11 for the Yankees, finishing 3rd and 4th in the Cy Young voting with a 127 and 125 ERA+, respectively.
July 29th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I smell a new feature for the play index!
July 29th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
From 1946-1956 the Indians had Bob Feller and Bob Lemon, two Hall-of-Famers... I don't think any duo could top that.
July 29th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
One has to figure that the Phils are favorite in the NL East. The Braves seem to be finally slipping and with a loss today (currently losing to the Nats in a rain delay) the phils can move to 2.5 back.
July 29th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
"Has any team ever had two pitchers so good with the same first name?"
I don't know but Halladay's middle name isn't even Roy. Harry Leroy Halladay.
That said, it's too bad Colbert Hamels doesn't go by Bert. Could have had Bert and Brett as the Phils 1-2 in the 2008 WS
July 29th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I wouldn't count the Braves out yet; I think their bullpen is better than Philly's and they have a deeper starting rotation. They've hit a rough patch the last week with 2 walk-off losses in Florida and, as you noted, in danger of blowing a series at Washington...but ultimately they have a favorable schedule down the stretch (more home games than road and they've been the best home team in baseball). Regardless, it will be a run race to watch.
On a related note, Brooks Conrad of ATL hit his second pinch-hit grandslam of the season vs Florida over the weekend...wondering if that's a record or what the record would be for a season?
July 29th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
#1 Dont forget Don Newcombe whose peak was earlier than Drysdale but they were teammates. The Dodger Dons stretch from 1949 - 1980 with:
All-star appearances in 49, 50, 51, 55 and Cy/MVP in 56 Newcombe
All-star appearances in 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68 and Cy in 62 Drysdale
All-star appearances in 72, 73, 75, 77 and finishing 4th and 3rd Cy Young voting in 74 & 76 Sutton.
July 29th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Although George Mullin was the ace the 1909 Tigers had Ed Willett (ERA+ 108), Ed Summers (ERA+ 113), and Ed Kilian (ERA+ 148) as starters 2, 3, and 4. I always that was pretty cool. However looking at the first names of players back then it seems half the league was named either Bill, Ed, or George
July 29th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I think the 62 Mets had two Bob Millers on the pitching staff.
July 29th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
And didnt the 1999ish Mets have 2 different Bobby Jones(es)?
July 29th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
The Mets and double Bob pitchers are pretty weird:
Bob Miller '62: RHP 21 GS, 1 CG, 143.2 IP 85 ERA+
Bobby Jones '00" RHP 27 GS, 1 CG, 154.2 IP 88 ERA+
Bob Miller '62: LHP 17 G, 0 GS, 20.1 IP, 59 ERA+
Bobby Jones '00: LHP 11 G, 1 GS, 21.2 IP 109 ERA+
July 29th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I remember the 1983 Tidewater Tides had two "Kelvin" players: Kelvin Moore and Kelvin Chapman. Seven years later, Kelvin Torve played for them as well.
The only other player named Kelvin in MLB history was Kelvin Jimenez (one of 3 pitchers to have an ERA of 7.50 or higher and have 3 or more wins against no losses): http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/shareit/SW9SG
July 29th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
@ #7 CKS
The record for pinch hit grand slams in a season is two. I made a post about it and career pinch hit grand slams here: http://www.freedomcardboard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=98771
Here are the players to hit two in one season:
Davey Johnson, April 30, 1978 and June 3, 1978
Mike Ivie, May 28, 1978 and June 30, 1978
Darryl Strawberry, May 2, 1998 and August 4, 1998
Ben Broussard, June 23, 2004 and August 12, 2004
Brooks Conrad, May 20, 2010 and July 24, 2010
July 29th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
The only two players named Mariano to make the bigs both played for the 1996 Yankees
July 29th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
When new Tigers (minor league) pitcher Giovanni Soto makes the bigs & coupled with Cubs catcher Geovanny Soto it will be a first for that last name. Not quite Bobby Jones... or even a few years back when there were two Ryan Braun's in the league.
July 29th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
That be Mariano Duncan and Mo?
July 29th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Duncan had quite the nice year for the Yanks as well:
NYY AL 109 417 400 62 136 34 3 8 56 4 3 9 77 .340 .352 .500 .852 112 200 10 1 2 5 1 4/5D79
July 29th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
"Has any team ever had two pitchers so good with the same first name?"
1884 Providence Grays:
Charlie Radbourn: 59-12, 1.38 ERA, 678.2 IP, 207 ERA+
Charlie Sweeney: 17-8, 1.55 ERA, 221 IP, 185 ERA+
The Charlies were 76-20, and the team finished 84-28. Second place Boston only had 73 wins, so the team could have forfeited all of the games the Charlies didn't get the decision and still have won the NL title. They had 26.3 combined WAR.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
The Angels let Francisco Rodriguez leave in 2008 because they had another one in the minor leagues...
July 29th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
i gotta agree with #5. i've been waiting for the Braves to return to their early season form and it looks like it's happening with series losses to Florida and Washington, and the Reds coming up next.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
People don't realize how good Oswalt really is because of his record. Check out http://www.thefantasybaseballguru.com leave comments ask qs and tell me what you think.
July 29th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
If you're gonna plug your own website you could at least give us some more insightful commenting to motivate us to read more of your writing...
July 29th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Jim Kaat and Jim Perry pitched for the Twins from 1964 through 1972 and accumulated 279 wins and 42.3 WAR between them. Not quite Feller and Lemon quoted above (353W/73.1 WAR), but pretty darned good.
July 29th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
@#14 Leatherman: Thanks for that info! Great stuff.
@#21 Tommy: I don't think the Braves' early season form was reflective of how good (or bad) the team was. They lost 9 in a row at one point in April. You know the adage: a team is never as good as it looks during a winning streak and never as bad as it looks during a losing streak. Now the Phillies are red-hot and the Braves are playing around .500 ball since the All-Star break, so things are leveling out...I never expected the Braves to maintain a 6 or 7 game division lead, but at the same time, I don't think the last two weeks is necessarily a harbinger that it's over for ATL. I do think the Braves need another bat (preferably a corner outfielder, and move Heyward to CF) but I also hope they don't do something ridiculous like the Teixeira trade from July '07, which haunts them to this day. I think this team is better than the one that made the run at the wild card last September and I fully expect it to go down to the last two weeks (Braves and Phillies have 6 games in the last 12, I believe).
July 29th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Max, Oswalt won over 60% of his decisions every season until last year. He's a two-time 20-game winner. What the hell are you talking about?
July 29th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Now all the Phillies have to do is to, at some point, pick up Peter Munro (although he hasn't pitched in the majors since 2004), Kirk Saarloos (his last big league appearance wasn't as long ago, in 2008), and Octavio Dotel (he's still active, now with the Pirates), and they will have had, not at the same time, though, every pitcher who appeared in that combined no-hitter by the Astros against the Yankees. They've already gotten the pitcher who finished the game, Billy Wagner (too much of a lead for a save), the guy who got the win (Brad Lidge), and the starter (Oswalt).
That was one game in which the official scorer really had to come up with a deserving winner. Oswalt left early with an injury, when the Astros already had gone ahead to stay.
Another interesting thing about this trade is that the Astros turned around and sent minor league outfielder Anthony Gose, whom they got in the trade, to Toronto for Brett Wallace. This was the second time in less than a year in which the Phillies traded a minor league outfielder for a pitcher named Roy, and the team who got him then traded him immediately for Brett Wallace.
Finally, in 2001, when Jimmy Rollins had a pretty good rookie year, Phillies fans nonetheless knew he was not going to win the award commonly abbreviated as ROY (Rookie-of-the-Year) in the National League due to the presence of Albert Pujols. But at least he was going to come in second, right? Wrong! He came in 3rd, with Oswalt finishing between Pujols and Rollins.
July 29th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
JT @26
"Max" posted a tangentially relevant comment of minimal to zero value on all of the most recent blog posts in an apparent attempt to increase traffic to his site.
July 29th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Johnny Twisto - I'll tell you exactly what he is talking about. He has posted essentially meaningless comments in the last 7 blog entries here on BR, all in the name of plugging his website. Is there anyway to prevent jackwagons like this from posting?
July 29th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Looking into it.
July 29th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Yeah I realized that, but I didn't notice if his other meaningless comments were actually incorrect as well. Anyway, moving on...
July 29th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
How about this, the Phils have the pitchers with the most wins this decade (Halladay #1, Oswalt #2). For the record, thats since 2001. When was the last time that happened?
July 30th, 2010 at 9:55 am
@32 - not too long ago. Maddux & Glavine were 1/2 in wins in the 90's and remained teammates until 2002. . . .
July 30th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Josh at #19 got me thinking, what is the record for the most percentage of team wins by two teammates in the modern era?
And not to be repetitive, but that D-bag Max is getting really annoying.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Brian @ #34
I don't know the answer for sure, but I'm gonna take a stab:
Hal Newhouser (29) and Dizzy Trout (27) had 56 of the Tigers' 88 wins in 1944. That amounts to 63.6%. It might not be the record but it's damn impressive.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Thanks Leatherman, I haven't found anything better than that yet!
July 30th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Strwberry nd Gooden both had the unusual middle name of Eugene. Weird. Back to back first round picks, for the same team, different coasts, same weird middle name???
July 30th, 2010 at 11:27 am
@34&35...That trumps what I found. The White Sox had two pitchers account for 50%+ of their teams' wins each year from '72-'74, and the Phillies did so in '72 as well with Carlton (27) and somebody named Bucky Brandon (7) for 60%+ of their lowly 56 team wins.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:30 am
@37...Strawberry was drafted in 1980; Gooden in 1982. Somebody named Terry Blocker was their first pick in '81.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:49 am
@16 - Now it's when new "Indians" pitcher Giovanni Soto...
July 30th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Jack Chesbro (41 wins) and Jack Powell (23 wins) accounted for 69.6% of the New York Highlanders' 92 wins in 1904.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
To #26 & #28 -- I don't know "Max" from Adam, but I think your slams are hasty. Isn't it obvious that he's talking about Oswalt's record THIS SEASON? -- i.e., 6-12, most losses in the majors.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Best duo ever: Cy Young and Roger Clemens - think they never pitched together? Think they don't have the same name? Think again Batman!!
July 30th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
John Autin, do you really think people "don't realize" Roy Oswalt is a good pitcher because he has a bad record for a bad team this season, after compiling exceptional records for the past decade?
July 30th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Josh at #19 got me thinking, what is the record for the most percentage of team wins by two teammates in the modern era?
I'll propose Elmer Meyers and Bullet Joe Bush, 1916 Athletics: 29 of 36 wins, or 80.6%.
July 30th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
For two consecutive years, in 1989 and 1990, the first pick in the whole draft was someone with the first name of Larry - Larry Benard "Ben" McDonald and Larry Wayne "Chipper" Jones.
When I moved to Philadelphia in the mid-1980s, the top two stars in the "other" sports played with balls (as opposed to pucks) both had the middle name of Wade - Randall Wade Cunningham and Charles Wade Barkley. I don't know all of the Phillies' players middle names from that time period, but the one player with Wade in the middle that I have noticed in all of these years is Matthew Wade Stairs. He wore Cunningham's old Eagles number, 12, as did Randall Carlito Simon during his short tenure with the Phils a couple of years earlier. If the Phillies ever get a player with the last name of Cunningham, would they dare assign him #12?
Both Marlon Byrd and Marlon Anderson originally came up with the Phillies. They may be the only two players ever with the first name of Marlon. Both broke up no-hitters late in the game during the same week, possibly even on the same day, but while playing for different teams, a few years ago. Both were with the Phillies in the 2002 season.
The only player with the first name of Roy to win the ROY award was Roy Sievers of the St. Louis Browns in 1949, the third year of the award and the first year for which there were separate AL and NL awards. Siervers' real first name is Roy, as is Oswalt's, and both have the same middle name, Edward. I know that Oswalt finished second in the NL in 2001. It would take me a while to see if any other guys who played under the first name of Roy finished that high in the balloting. Roy Sievers played for the Washington Senators through most of the 1950s and was never in the right place to play in the World Series. He was traded to the White Sox in the 1959-1960 offseason. He even played for the 1964 Phillies, but he was sold to the expansion Senators in July of that year. Hmm, maybe he would have been the difference for that team.
Sievers played for the Chisox 50 years ago today against his old team in Griffith Stadium. He went 1 for 4 with a run scored and 2 RBI's, and he also walked once. His hit was a 2-run homer. In the top of the 11th inning, with future Hall-of-Famers Luis Aparacio and Nellie Fox on base with nobody out, he was safe on an error. Aparicio scored from third, but no RBI was recorded. So, all three of Chicago's runs in their 3-2 victory that day resulted from at-bats by Sievers.
Coincidentally, the almost-ROY (but for Pujols) Roy will be appearing for the defending World Series losers, for whom he did not play the previous year, in Washington today.
Oh, and by the way, whenever I hear a name that sounds like "Sever" or "Severs", the first baseball player whose name comes to mind is someone who was a Rookie-of-the-Year and whose birthday falls between November 16 and November 19. Roy Sievers, of course.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
@38
Surely Carlton winning 27 of 59 games is a record for one player? That's pushing 50%...
July 30th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
PS: Roy's debut ain't going so good - so far he's given up 5 runs (4 earned) in 5 innings. Looks like his W/L record won't be improving any time soon.
Actually that reminds me, there has been a lot of chat on recent HOF poll posts on this site regarding whether landmarks should guarantee HOF entry (eg 3000 hits, 300 wins). It struck me surely 3000 hits should carry more weight than 300 wins as wins are far more team-dependent that hits?
An example:
Roy Oswalt started 291 games for the Astros. He got 143 wins. But the Astros won 179 of those games or 61.5%. Overall for 2001-2010 the Astros are 802-756 or 51.5%. This means they won 49.2% of games Oswalt didn't start.
Andy Pettitte has started 393 games for the Yankees and won 203. The Yankees won 251 of these games (63.9%). Overall from 95-03 and 07-10 the Yankees are 1216-807 or 60.1%.
I've just realised these numbers aren't 100% because both pitchers made a few relief appearances but they should be close enough to illustrate the point, which is that while Pettitte may finish with more wins and have a better shot at 300, he has merely made a very strong Yankees team a bit better whereas Oswalt made an average Astros team a lot better. Not saying Pettitte isn't a great pitcher because he still added value to the Yankees (as good as they have been) over his career, but pitching for the Yankees has clearly been worth a few extra wins per year versus playing for a losing team, a la Houston of late.
July 30th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
John Autin @42,
"Max" made posts in 7 or 8 different discussions on this blog in a style that could best be described as an attempt to imitate a spambot. Having read these posts, it was clear that his intent was not to add any useful points to the discussion, but merely to post the url for his website. One of the administrators of this blog @30 has said he is looking into how to keep "Max" and his ilk off the blog.
Based upon the content of his posts, I had no reason to believe that "Max" had any intention to engage in a conversation with anyone on this blog, that is why I addressed my criticism of his post to JT and not to "Max."
I considered all of this (except that Andy is seeing if he can ban him) at the time I typed my comment, which was not made in haste.
His website might contain some of the most insightful baseball commentary available, it might contain pornography, I really don't know because I have no intention of clicking on his link. Either way, I don't think his post were an appropriate use of this forum.
July 31st, 2010 at 4:05 pm
@ 39
Was it Terry 'Eugene' Blocker ?
July 31st, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Interesting examples of Bobs, Dons and Daves - but those names were extremely popular names in the era that the respective pitchers were born in. Roy was far, far less common when Oswalt and Halladay were born.
August 1st, 2010 at 4:56 am
oswalt is not that good..... thats why the cards took a sniff, and said no thanks.
August 1st, 2010 at 11:05 pm
^ Max, I stand corrected.