Rangers/Giants by the numbers
Posted by Andy on October 25, 2010
Although this has almost nothing to do with this year's World Series, here's a look at the historical stats in matchups between these two teams.
The two teams have played a total of 22 games against each other. The Giants lead the all-time series 15-7 and have won the last 7 games, dating back to July of 2001. (Since interleague play started rotating through divisions, these two teams now play only one every 3 years with the most recent games coming in the 2009 season. I presume that means we'll need to wait until 2012 to see a rematch of this year's World Series.)
Four players have more than 1 HR for the Giants against the Rangers:
| Rk | Player | #Matching | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | J.T. Snow | 6 | Ind. Games | 25 | 20 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 18 | 4 | 2 |
| 2 | Barry Bonds | 4 | Ind. Games | 19 | 16 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 1 |
| 3 | Rich Aurilia | 3 | Ind. Games | 13 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | Aaron Rowand | 2 | Ind. Games | 9 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
I'm suprised that Bonds isn't the leader but Snow just crushed the Rangers. Think about that...7 homers and 18 RBI in just 6 games. Snow actually played in 61 games against the Rangers, most of course while he was with the Angels.
Just two Rangers have multiple homers against the Giants:
| Rk | Player | #Matching | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Juan Gonzalez | 2 | Ind. Games | 9 | 9 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| 2 | Will Clark | 2 | Ind. Games | 10 | 9 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
Note the irony of Will Clark being one of the leaders. Despite playing for the Rangers, Orioles, and having a great stint with the Cardinals at the end of his career, Clark will always be remembered as a Giant. Clark played just 5 games against the Giants.
For pitchers, 3 Giants have 2 wins against the Rangers:
| Rk | Player | #Matching | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | SV | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sergio Romo | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1.20 |
| 2 | Livan Hernandez | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 7.07 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.0 | 18 | 11 | 2 | 4 | 11 | 1.57 |
| 3 | Mark Gardner | 2 | Ind. Games | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 1.06 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 17.0 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0.71 |
Romo's two wins came in back-to-back games in 2009. Both were short relief appearances where he was the pitcher of record when the Giants went ahead late.
No Ranger pitcher has more than 1 win against the Giants, which is unsurprising since the Rangers have only 7 total wins against the Giants. The 7 guys are an interesting bunch, including Mike Morgan and current Ranger Darren Oliver.
October 25th, 2010 at 9:21 am
This is a tangent considering we're talking about the teams moreso than the player. This inspired me to look at the stats on Will Clark's career, and outside of DH (since there are no fielding stats), he started over 1800 games at first base, and never played another position at any time during his career.
Is there any other player who has played more games without ever playing a second position, even for an inning? Most players at some point have to be versatile due to an extra innings game or a weird double switch or a myriad of reasons, this has to be rare!
October 25th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Derek Jeter has played 2270 games at shortstop, 19 as a DH, and 7 as a pinch hitter only. He has never played a defensive position other than shortstop.
Bobby Doerr played 1852 of his 1865 games at second base. He never played another defensive position. His career batting splits are incomplete, but as there was no DH rule then, his other 13 games must have been as a pinch hitter only.
October 25th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Luis Aparicio played 2581 games at shortstop, plus 18 more as PH/PR. No other position or DH games shown.
If "outfield" is 1 position, Barry Bonds (2874 G) and Rickey Henderson (2826) are ahead of Looie. If it's 3 positions, they're disqualified.
I think Aparicio's the winner here.
October 25th, 2010 at 10:13 am
The leaders in defensive games by position with no defensive games played at any other position:
SS: Aparacio 2581 (very honorable mention - O. Smith 2511; both are particularly impressive since no DH)
2B: Whitaker 2308
3B: Rolen 1873
C: Ferrell 1806
1B: McGriff 2219
Since the outfield is only split since 1954, I did not figure that.
October 25th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Just a point of reference, remember these two teams played the first Interleague game in history!
October 25th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
"Although this has almost nothing to do with this year's World Series, here's a look at the historical stats in matchups between these two teams."
Thank you for recognizing this. It is fun and interesting to look at stats and historical records such as these, but they are fruitless when trying to make legitimate predictions. Far too often, we hear things like, "Team A has never lost to Team B!" only to find out they've played just twice, both over 50 years ago. Historical precedent (or lackthereof) is far to often held up as predictive analysis. Just because something has never happened before does not mean it will never happen. It's absence might indicate the unlikelihood of it, or it might just mean we're still waiting for the first time.
While it may not be Rangers/Giants specific, are there any current players with recent success against their opponent? My guess is that Huff has had his fair share of ABs against the Rangers, going back to his Rays and Orioles days. Lee might have thrown against the Giants last year. Hamilton played in the NL a few years back. Any one done anything worth considering?
Andy, thanks for offering the perspective and context that is far too often missing from such data.
October 25th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Matt Holliday has yet to play any defensive position besides left field. He's only made three appearances as a DH.
October 25th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
I'm still waiting, and hope I'll be kept waiting, to read that these two franchises last met in the World Series in 1933 and had also played each other in the 1924 Fall Classic. Yes, the New York Giants played the Washington Senators in those two years, but the Senators franchise they played was the one that became the Minnesota Twins.
Because there was no intervening time period between the departure of the first American League Senators and the establishment of the second, many baseball fans over the years have thought of the Minnesota Twins as being one of the expansion teams, along with the Los Angeles Angels, while the Senators team of 1961 was just the same one as 1960 following a housekeeping. (One or two players, no doubt the new team's picks in the expansion draft, played as Washington Senators both years.) Even as an 8-going-on-9-year old kid, I understood the difference.
As of now, only one team from each expansion (if the 1961 AL and 1962 NL expansions are considered to be separate) has won the World Series, although others have come close in recent years.
1961 - Angels have won, Senators/Rangers have not
1962 - Mets have won twice, Astros have not (finally making it to WS in 2005)
1969 - Royals have won; Padres, Pilots/Brewers, and Expos/Nationals have not
1977 - Blue Jays have won twice, Mariners have not
1993 - Marlins have won twice, Rockies (but did make it to WS in 2007)
1998 - Diamondbacks have won, [Devil] Rays have not (but did make it to the WS in 2008)
Counting this year, four of the six most recent World Series have featured an expansion team that had never been in the World Series before. In each of the previous three, the first-time team lost, and in two of those, in 2005 and 2007, that first-time team was swept. So the Astros and Rockies are still looking for their first World Series game victory (just as my beloved Washington Capitals are still looking for their first Stanley Cup finals game victory, having been swept the only time they made it there, in 1998). The Padres have made it to two World Series, winning only one game. (Their World Series won-lost record is the same as that of the pre-1980 Phillies - first losing a five-game series and then getting swept.) The Brewers' only World Series appearance also resulted in a loss, but that one went the full seven games, so their franchise won-lost record is 3-4. Of the expansion teams that have won a World Series, the Royals are the only one that lost one before they won one. The Mets have lost two World Series in addition to their two victories.
(The Mets and the Marlins, as well as the Phillies, will next be eligible to win the World Series in 2014 and after that not until 1925 because all three teams have demonstrated that they are only capable of winning the World Series in years in which July 4 falls on a Friday. Look up 1969, 1980, 1986, 1997, 2003, and 2008 in a perpetual calendar if you don't believe me. In fact, the Phillies will need to wait until 2036 because they can only win in leap years.)
October 25th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Correction to that last parenthetical part of my previous post - of course, it will be 2025, not 1925. I had too many Washington Senators World Series years on my brain.
Or maybe it will be in the year 2525, as that old song put it.
October 25th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Will Clark and some others were limited to first base because they were lefthanded throwers. However, this did not preclude them from playing the outfield or filling in as what Jayson Stark would call a "mystery pitcher". Those who only played first base, though, were probably precluded from the outfield due to lack of speed and from pitching or the outfield due to lack of a good arm.
October 25th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
I thought Dwight Evans might have a claim to the outfield argument but he played 2092 of his 2146 in RF...
October 25th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
DoubleD -- Nice work on the expansion history. I confess that I myself had a moment's thought about a "rematch" of that Senators-Giants WS before memory kicked in. As penance, I offer a few notes on that '33 clash, irrelevant though it is to the upcoming tilt:
-- 5 games were played in 5 days; no off days. And just 1 day off after the end of the regular season. There have been other Series without off days, but virtually all of those were played in one city. NYC to Washington isn't a long trek, but it's more than a hop on a streetcar.
-- 1933 was the first of the 5 seasons that punched the HOF ticket of "King Carl" Hubbell. Hub was a good pitcher in his 5 previous seasons, but from 1933-37 he was the best: 3 ERA titles (ditto ERA+); 2 MVP Awards (the only NL pitcher to do that, I believe); average season of 23-10 with a 2.52 ERA in almost 300 IP, during a hitter's era; his iconic performance in the '34 A-S game; and 4-2, 1.79 ERA in 6 WS starts. In '33 he beat the Sens twice without allowing an ER, going 11 innings in game 4.
-- Although the Giants won in 5 games, it was a pretty even Series. NY's last 2 wins went extra innings.
-- Washington used 4 different SPs in the first 4 games, quite a rarity in that age. The lack of rest days was a factor, of course, but that didn't stop Hubbell from logging 20 IP in games 1 & 4.
-- The Nats' only win came in game 3, a 5-hit shutout by the veteran Earl Whitehill in his only WS appearance. (I wonder if he's the only hurler to do that.... See Whitehill P.S. below.)
-- I believe it's been noted in these threads before that the Senators of the 1920s and '30s had remarkable continuity in their roster; even when they did trade someone away, they sometimes got him back later, like Goose Goslin and Buddy Myer.
_______________
P.S. Earl Whitehill was acquired from Detroit for Firpo Marberry in the winter of '32, in what amounts to a challenge trade of 34-year-old pitchers; each team may have thought that the man they were parting with had seen his best days, but both Whitehill and Marberry produced outstanding seasons in '33, with Whitehill winning a career-high 22 games. He was probably grateful to finally reach the Series after 10 years with so-so Tigers teams, but had he stayed with Detroit, he would have gotten two shots at the brass ring (1934-35) instead of just one.
Whitehill was not a HOF talent, but he logged over 3,500 innings in 17 seasons, finishing with 218 wins and an even 100 ERA+. (Curiously, when I did a P-I search centered on the Whitehill's IP and ERA+, 5 of the 10 hits had strong Tigers ties: George Mullin, Hooks Dauss and Mickey Lolich were longtime Bengals; Joe Niekro was on the '71 AL East champs; and Doyle Alexander pitched Detroit to their last division title in '87.)
October 25th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Nice find on Whitehill. A very nice career and I don't think I ever heard of him. Only 28 pitchers have had more 11+ win-seasons. I can't easily tell who had more than 13 straight such seasons, but it's not too many.
October 25th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
John,
Great stuff on Hubbell. I will add a "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" connection between King Carl and the man who could lay claim until recently as the greatest postseason pitcher Texas Rangers history -- John Burkett.
Burkett was the only pitcher who had won a playoff game for the Rangers before this month.
Burkett was drafted by the Giants, a fairly high pick. He hurt his arm and wound up in what was then a new program called extended spring training. It was designed for the kids who had already signed and were going to play short-season A. The teams participating often sent guys down on rehab assignments.
After his playing days, Hubbell was the player development guy for the Giants for like 30 years. Then he became a scout. By this time he was past 80 and he was not doing a lot scouting, though I think he was still drawing a small check. But he showed up every day and watched the Giants who were teamed with the Brewers -- we called them the Bruants -- play. John charted pitches when he didn't start and we often sat together (I was the scorekeeper). Hubb would sit near by. I talked to the old guy some -- I had his autograph when I was a kid, so I knew who he was -- got him going on some stories.
Although I am sure they exchanged a few words, I'm not sure if John ever had a real conversation with the King,
A lot of 19-year-olds just don't care about 80-year-old guys, even if they're HOF pitchers.
October 26th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Re: the data tables in Andy's post ... Am I the only one for whom the "Ind. Games" links aren't working? They only take me to the player's Game Finder page.
October 26th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Since at least 2 people didn't yawn at my historical digression....
1. I had no idea that Hubbell did any scouting. Turns out he was the Giants' farm director for 34 years (per B-R Bullpen), which means he had some kind of a hand in developing the boatload of talent the Giants churned out in the '50s and '60s. Seems unusual for a former pitcher to hold that role, but I don't really know.
2. Also didn't know that Hubbell was Tigers property for 2 years. They sold him to a Texas League team in April '28; a few months later, Hubbell made his MLB debut with the Giants, while that same day Detroit got drubbed 12-1 by the Yanks. Two weeks later, Hubbell threw a shutout in his first MLB start; Detroit's entire staff combined for 5 shutouts in 1928. Just shoot me now.
3. The '33 Giants had 2 veteran relief aces, Hi Bell and the 42-year-old Dolf Luque, a longtime SP (and one of the best pitchers not in the Hall of Fame, with 3,220 IP and a 118 ERA+). But their best reliever was Hubbell, who allowed just 3 runs in 35 relief innings. As great as Hubbell was in a starting role, he was even better out of the pen; in 231 relief IP, he had a 1.95 ERA and a 20-8 record.
4. The Polo Grounds was Hubbell's only home park, so it's no surprise that he had a huge home/road split in HRs allowed: 161 at home, 66 away. So his home park really hurt his stats, right? Nope -- his ERA split was 2.92 at home, 3.04 away. What the Polo Grounds gave in HRs, it took back in singles, doubles and triples, so that Hub's SLG allowed was almost the same either way.
October 26th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Hubbell's teammate Mel Ott is similar. 63% of his career HR at home, but 64% of his 2B and 3B on the road. Overall his OPS was 62 points higher at home, a pretty normal home/road split.
October 26th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I was playing one of those MLB videogames earlier this year (can't remember which one) and it has a beautiful rendition of the Polo Grounds where you can play games. The bullpens are in the field of play, way out in left- and right-center fields. I got (or gave up?) an inside-the-park home run when the ball rolled under the bullpen bench and the outfielder couldn't extract it because all the relief pitchers were sitting in the way.
October 26th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Johnny Twisto: PLEASE tell me you can remember which game that was, I need to try this out!
October 26th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I have it at home, I'll try to remember to check. The game has some serious flaws (although I can't remember what they are right now), but was generally pretty fun to play, and the stadium renderings are just super. (From the perspective of a non-hardcore gamer.) I think there are some other historic parks on there as well.
Funny thing is, I have a feeling the relievers who blocked the ball were on the same team as the outfielder.
October 26th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
It's Major League Baseball 2K9, with Tim Lincecum on the cover.
October 26th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Asides about Hubbell and the Polo Grounds. One day he told the story -- which I had never heard before -- about being with the Tigers and how Cobb wouldn't use him. It was almost 60 years later and he was still visibly angry about it. I mean, he was shaking with rage when he talked about Cobb.
The Polo Grounds had an odd shape. And the right field and left field walls were close to home to, less than 300 feet down the lines. But it was probably 450 feet to center the Eddie Grant memorial in center field. If memory serves me, one of the Total Baseball encyclopedia editions rated it as the most home run friendly park of the venues used after WWI.
The Yankees played home games there for the first three seasons they had Ruth. They often used him in center to keep him from crashing into the concrete walls in left and right.
The outfield sloped downward. Roger Kahn,I believe, wrote that if you stood in the dugout you could not see the outfielder's feet.
Part of the Polo Grounds is still in use in professional baseball. The light standards are used at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. which is the spring training home of the Oakland Athletics and is also used for the Arizona Fall League and Arizona League rookie ball.