Bear with me for a little fishing expedition here.

I went looking at Mike Schmidt's batter-vs-pitcher PI page. I thought "Let's see who Michael Jack really beat up on over the years" and sorted it by OPS. Since I didn't set a minimum number of PAs, the top of the list were the 7 guys who Schmidt had just one at-bat against, hitting a homer in each one (he had some walks as well against some guys.) That gives you a 5.000 OPS...a 1.000 OBP plus a 4.000 SLG. It's not a terribly meaningful number as it's based on just one at-bat, but I found it interested that Schmitty victimized 7 different pitchers this way:

                    PA  AB  H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG   **OPS**   SH  SF IBB HBP GDP G_miss YR_miss
+-----------------+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+-----+-----+-----+---------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-------+
 Dave Beard          1   1   1  0  0  1   3   0   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0
 Mike Dupree         1   1   1  0  0  1   2   0   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0
 Ken Holtzman        2   1   1  0  0  1   2   1   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0
 John Littlefield    3   1   1  0  0  1   2   2   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   2   0   0
 Dave Meads          1   1   1  0  0  1   1   0   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0
 Craig Skok          1   1   1  0  0  1   1   0   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0
 Milt Wilcox         1   1   1  0  0  1   2   0   0 1.000 1.000 4.000   5.000     0   0   0   0   0

It got me to thinking......for a slugger of Schmidt's caliber, is 7 such pitchers many, or few? There isn't an easy way to look this up, as creating a searchable database for all individual batter-vs-pitcher events would be a massive undertaking. But we can search easily for any individual batter we specify. So I decided to use Schmidt's main page and look up this stat for the 10 batters most similar to Schmidt in his career. Here are the totals:

Name              5.000 OPS against how many pitchers?

Eddie Matthews    3
Sammy Sosa	  22
Ken Griffey	  20
Harmon Killebrew  9
Mickey Mantle     2
Ernie Banks	  1
Willie McCovey    6
Gary Sheffield    10
Willie Stargell   7
Reggie Jackson    7

This list is ordered based on statistical similarity to Schmidt (click on a player's name if you want to see the pitchers he has 5.000 OPS against.) Notice anything interest about the list? How about if I reorder it by number of pitchers faced with a 5.000 OPS against:

Sammy Sosa	  22
Ken Griffey	  20
Gary Sheffield    10
Harmon Killebrew  9
Mike Schmidt      7
Willie Stargell   7
Reggie Jackson    7
Willie McCovey    6
Eddie Matthews    3 
Mickey Mantle     2
Ernie Banks	  1

Almost exactly, this list goes chronologically by the years the player was active. Therefore, I conclude that how many different pitchers a guy victimizes for only home runs is much more a product of how pitchers are used in his era than the talent of the individual batters. Basically, before the era of closers, it would be pretty rare for a guy to face a pitcher only 1 or 2 times in his career. Matthews, Mantle, Banks, and Killebrew didn't have too many opportunities for this statistical oddity to arise (although it would appear that Killebrew took advantage of whatever opportunities he had.)

This study could be taken a step further by looking at just how many different pitchers each guy faced with just one at-bat, and expanding the list of players looked at (If somebody wants to do that, drop me a line.) I am guessing the data will support my initial conclusion. Initially, at least, I rate Schmidt as "average" in the 5.000 OPS club.

Incidentally, on Sosa's list of 22 guys are two pitchers, Rocky Coppinger and Darren Winston, who he actually hit 2 homers against in each of 2 at bats (wow!) Griffey has done that too, victimizing Brad Pennington and Mel Rojas twice.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 8:40 am and is filed under Pitcher vs. Batter, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.