Archive for the 'Box Scores' Category

• Jimmy Rollins hit his 30th homer last night, joining the 30/30 club (the other 30 being stolen bases, in case you've been living under a rock since 1987.) Courtesy of some stats given out during the Phillies' radio broadcast of last night's game, Rollins becomes only the second Phillie ever to have a 30/30 season (Bobby Abreu has done it twice,) and just the 3rd full-time shortstop to do it. That should earn him a few more MVP votes.

• Manny Ramirez returned to the Boston lineup yesterday after missing 24 games with an oblique strain, but he batted 2nd instead of his customary 4th. I assume that Francona was trying to prevent Manny from swinging for the fences and instead just try to make contact, as Manny's oblique is almost certainly not fully healed. Anyway, before last night Manny had just 9 of his career 8331 plate appearances from the 2-hole, and most of those came in his early years with Cleveland. He has batted 4th the most by far, with 5474 PAs hitting cleanup.

• Matt Cain. It's too painful to even go into details of last night's game, but let's just say he was robbed again.

• Prince Fielder homered twice last night to give him 50 on the season, and now he and his Big Daddy are the only father-son combo to each have 50-homer seasons. However, I am very disappointed in both generations of Fielder for airing their family dispute publicly. Cecil has called Prince disrespectful, and now Prince says he's glad to stick it to his father. I understand that people sometimes have differences, but family issues should stay within the family. Public jabs like that only make everyone involved look increasingly immature and irrational.

In a shocking bit of frivolity, this game between Boston and Baltimore a couple of weeks ago featured opposing pitchers whose names sound the same but are spelled differently.

The starter for the Red Sox was Jon Lester, who has overcome off-season cancer to pitch again in the majors this year. Daniel Cabrera started for the Orioles, but was relieved by Jon Leicester, whose last name is pronounced like "Lester." (Those of you familiar with Leicester Square in London will be familiar with its pronunciation.)

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other two baseball players with exact homophonic names (except those that are actually spelled the same, such as Chris Young and Chris Young,) much less two players pitching for opposing sides in the same game.

But surely you readers out there can think of some other examples? Please comment.

As a general baseball fan, I'd really like to see Kansas City become a competitive team once again. That region is great for baseball, and a lot of great bits of MLB history have happened there.

I'm thoroughly encouraged by Kansas City's pitching staff.

First of all, everybody laughed when KC picked up Gil Meche. Well, he's got an ERA+ of 129, has pitched 202 innings, and has put together one of the most solid seasons for a Royals starting pitcher in a long time. Brian Bannister (who I didn't know until just now is the son of Floyd Bannister) has been equally solid, and together they make a great 1-2 punch.

Now, add that Zack Greinke made his best all-time career start last night, and he might be back on track to becoming another solid starter.

KC's relief pitching has also been good. As of today, here are the splits for relief pitching in the American League. Altogether they've got the 6th best AL ERA and allowed the 3rd-fewest walks with the 2nd-most strikeouts.

My feeling is that solid pitching is a lot more important than hitting, because it's significantly easier to either develop (from within) or attract (as free agents) good hitting, especially with a good young pitching staff. Ultimately they'll need both to be successful, but I think they're pretty close to having the more difficult one nailed.

Following Steve's lead, let's take a quick look at some historical post-season happenings, specifically the 1996 AL Division Series between the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees. Or, as I like to call it, the Juan Gonzalez show.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Curtis Granderson became the founding third member of the 20/20/20/20 club (HR, SB, 2B, and 3B.) Here are the members of the 15/15/15/15 club. Carl Crawford (2005 & 2006) and Juan Samuel (1984 & 1987) have done it twice. Jimmy Rollins needs 2 SB and 3 3B this year to join the 20/20/20/20 club, so he's got a shot.

• Who's got the longest streak in the 2000's of most starts without allowing a walk? Yes, the answer is Greg Maddux, but it's not his current streak of 8 starts. In 2001 he did it in 9 straight games. The list includes streaks of 7 straight games by David Wells and Javier Vazquez. The longest streak since 1957 was by Bill Fischer in 1962, with 11 straight starts with no walks. Fischer did have a relief appearance in the middle of his streak, earning a blown save. Over the 11 starts, Fischer went 2-8 with 71 IP, 86 hits, 0 walks and just 18 strikeouts. That's a pretty weird streak.

• The Brewers led off their game on Sunday with 3 straight homers. It's just the third time it's been done, with the first occurrence back in 1987 by the Padres. It took me a while to find the second time it was done. I went to the Team Batting Event Finder, set it to all teams, home runs, then limited the events to homers in the 1st inning with no outs. Here's the list for 1994. Reading down the list, you'll notice the game where three such homers occurred, but that's not the game. From the boxscore, we see that Jacob Brumfield led off with a homer, and Bret Boone followed with one. But then Barry Larkin reached on an error, ahead of Kevin Mitchell homering. Here's a 1996 game by the Rockies where something similar happened. And one by the Mets in 1999. Finally, here's the game: in 2003 by the Braves, when Rafael Furcal, Mark DeRosa, and Gary Sheffield homered in the bottom of the first.

• Coming in to Sunday, there were 7 pitchers who had 30 starts allowing 6 or fewer earned runs. The ERAs of these players were Dontrelle Willis 5.01, Brandon Webb 2.91, C. C. Sabathia 3.15, Scott Kazmir 3.79, Tim Hudson 3.47, Dan Haren 3.03, Aaron Harang 3.64. Remember that song "One of These Things is Not Like the Others"? Maybe that explains why Dontrelle Willis finally gave up 7 ER on Sunday against the Phillies.

• Before yesterday, Jake Peavy was 3-0 in 4 starts this season against Arizona, allowing 5 ER in 26.1 innings for a 1.71 ERA, with 8 walks and 45 (!!) strikeouts. Yesterday, he gave up 8 ER alone in just 4 innings.

• Carlos Pena set the record for RBIs in a game by a Devil Ray. He's already got the Tampa Bay record for HR in a season. With 13 RBIs, he'll have that season record too. Not bad for a guy who's been traded or released 5 times.

• The use of the Play Index by baseball journalists is becoming quite prevalent. Here's an example by Peter Abraham of the Journal News.

I have seen a lot of stats mentioned in different places about various records of Red Sox pitchers vs the Yankees, and the reverse. (Many over at Peter Abraham's LoHud Yankees Blog.)

Let's take a look. First, Red Sox starters this year against the Yankees:

  Pitcher         G  GS GF  W  L  S CG SHO   IP    ERA   H   R   ER HR  BB IBB  SO HBP
+--------------+---+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+-----+------+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+
  Schilling        3  3  0  0  1  0  0   0  18     7.00  29  15  14  6   2   0  10   0 
  Matsuzaka        3  3  0  2  1  0  0   0  19.1   6.98  19  15  15  3   8   0  16   3 
  Beckett          3  3  0  1  1  0  0   0  19.2   5.49  30  13  12  1   6   0  18   0
  Wakefield        3  3  0  0  3  0  0   0  14    10.93  19  17  17  4  17   0   7   1
  Tavarez          2  2  0  2  0  0  0   0  10.2   4.22   6   5   5  1   6   0   4   0 

There you have it, folks. Julian Tavarez, your Yankee-killer. (Joking aside, I think Tavarez has done a great job for Boston this year. He's got fantastic stats as a #5 starter and has helped keep their bullpen fresh.)

Now, as turnabout is fair play, the Yankee starters' performance against Boston this year:

  Pitcher         G  GS GF  W  L  S CG SHO   IP    ERA   H   R   ER HR  BB IBB  SO HBP
+--------------+---+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+-----+------+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+
  Pettitte*        6  5  0  2  1  0  0   0  30.1   4.75  36  16  16  4  12   0  19   1 
  Wang             3  3  0  2  1  0  0   0  18     4.50  23   9   9  2   8   0   7   2 
  Mussina          2  2  0  0  1  0  0   0  11.2   9.26  19  12  12  4   5   1   3   0 
  Clemens          1  1  0  1  0  0  0   0   6     1.50   2   1   1  1   5   0   2   1 
  Karstens         2  2  0  0  1  0  0   0   4.1  14.54  11   7   7  1   2   0   1   0 
  C. Wright        1  1  0  0  0  0  0   0   3    12.00   5   4   4  4   3   0   3   0 

*Numbers include 1 scoreless inning in relief on 4/22/07

I guess the Yankees' numbers are somewhat better, especially that the three truly unimpressive performances above are by guys not currently in the rotation.

Here are the total lines for pitching by each staff (not just starters) against the other team:

Pitching Team      G   W   L   S   CG SHO   IP     ERA    H    R   ER   HR  BB  IBB  SO  HBP
+-+------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+------+------+----+----+----+---+----+---+----+---+
Yankees (vs BOS)   14   7   7   4   0   0  122     5.61  145   79   76  21   68   5   75   7
Boston  (vs NYY)   14   7   7   4   0   0  121     5.43  135   75   73  18   59   0   86   7  

Pretty similar, although the edge goes to Boston.Their bullpen has been a lot better than the Yankees' in their head-to-head matchups.

Now, those 7 HBP by each team are a bit ominous...

Reader denniscookfanclub posed the question of how many times a team has scored at least 10 runs while at least half were unearned. I've done a search for almost this: a pitching game finder where at least 10 runs were allowed, but no more than 5 were earned. (This is actually slightly more restrictive than denniscookfanclub's idea.)

I was shocked to see how many such games there have been. The full list is shared here. There have been a whopping 352 such games since 1957! Here is a sample:

Read the rest of this entry »

There is an absolutely fantastic interview with Tim Raines over here at Baseball Prospectus (shout out to the guys over at The Book for pointing it out.) I'll let you read the interview on your own, but I'll use the PI to point out a few of the things that Raines mentions. Read the rest of this entry »

Johan Santana struck out 17 batters in 8 innings today, and was replaced by Joe Nathan starting the 9th, meaning he missed out on a chance of tying the record for K's in a nine inning game.

Getting 17 in 8 innings isn't even the record. Not counting Santana's game, here are the leaders since 1957 for K's in a game while pitching 8 innings or less:

  Cnt Player            Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt App,Dec    IP   H  R ER BB **SO** HR Pit Str GmSc IR IS BF AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk BK WP   ERA
+----+-----------------+-------------+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+------+--+---+---+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+--+--+------+
    1 Randy Johnson     1992-09-27    SEA @TEX L  2-3  GS-8       8    6  2  2  4   18    0 160 111   76       34 30  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  1  0  0  0  0   2.25 

    2 Randy Johnson     1999-06-30    ARI @CIN L  0-2  CG 8  ,L   8    7  2  2  0   17    1 134  96   77       30 30  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  2  0  1  0  0   2.25 

    3 Jake Peavy        2007-04-25    SDP @ARI L  2-3  GS-7       7    2  0  0  3   16    0 116  74   86       25 22  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
    4 Jake Peavy        2006-05-22    SDP  ATL L  1-3  GS-7  ,L   7    3  2  2  1   16    1 114  74   78       25 24  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  1  0  0  0  0   2.57 
    5 Mark Prior        2003-06-26    CHC  MIL L  3-5  GS-8       8    4  2  2  0   16    1 127  86   82       27 27  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  1  0  0  1   2.25 
    6 Randy Johnson     2001-09-27    ARI  MIL W 13-11 GS-7  ,W   6.2  7  5  5  2   16    1 126  81   54       30 28  2  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  1   6.75 
    7 Randy Johnson     2001-08-23    ARI @PIT L  1-5  GS-7  ,L   7    5  4  4  2   16    1 115  78   65       28 26  1  0   0   0  0  0   1  0  0  0  0  0   5.14 
    8 Randy Johnson     2001-07-18    ARI @SDP W  3-0   3-9f ,W   7    1  0  0  1   16    0 109  68       0  0 23 22  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
    9 Pedro Martinez    2001-04-08    BOS  TBD W  3-0  GS-8  ,W   8    3  0  0  3   16    0 112  75   89       29 26  0  0   0   0  0  0   1  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
   10 Kerry Wood        1998-08-26    CHC @CIN W  9-2  GS-8  ,W   8    3  2  1  3   16    1 133  85   83       30 27  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   1.12 
   11 Curt Schilling    1997-09-01    PHI  NYY W  5-1  GS-8  ,W   8    7  1  1  0   16    0 124  86   80       31 31  3  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   1.12 
   12 Roger Clemens     1997-07-12    TOR @BOS W  3-1  GS-8  ,W   8    4  1  1  0   16    0           86       30 28  1  0   0   2  0  0   0  1  1  0  0  0   1.12 
   13 David Cone        1997-06-23    NYY @DET W  5-2  GS-8  ,W   8    4  2  2  2   16    2 127  82   80       30 28  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  1  0  0  0  1   2.25 
   14 Hideo Nomo        1995-06-14    LAD @PIT W  8-5  GS-8  ,W   8    6  3  2  2   16    0 125  76   74       33 30  1  0   0   1  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  1   2.25 
   15 Sid Fernandez     1989-07-14    NYM @ATL L  2-3  CG 9  ,L   8    6  3  3  0   16    1 121  91   74       30 29  1  0   0   0  1  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   3.38 
   16 Nolan Ryan        1987-09-09    HOU  SFG W  4-2  GS-8  ,W   8    6  2  2  2   16    0           76       33 30  0  0   0   1  0  0   0  2  0  0  0  0   2.25 
   17 Jose Rijo         1986-04-19    OAK @SEA W  7-2  GS-9  ,W   8    5  2  2  4   16    0           76       33 29  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  1  0   2.25 
   18 Dwight Gooden     1984-09-17    NYM @PHI L  1-2  CG 8  ,L   8    7  2  1  0   16    0           78       30 30  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  5  0  1  2  1   1.12 
   19 Steve Carlton     1970-05-21    STL @PHI L  3-4  GS-8       8    9  3  3  2   16    1           66       32 30  1  1   0   0  0  0   0  0  3  1  0  0   3.38 
   20 Steve Carlton     1967-09-20    STL @PHI L  1-3  CG 8  ,L   8    8  3  3  3   16    0           67       35 31  2  0   0   0  0  1   0  2  0  0  0  1   3.38 

So Randy Johnson retains that record since 1957 (and I'm not sure if anybody before 1957 can tie or beat his 18, so it might be an all-time record.)

How about #6 on that list above? RJ got 16 strikeouts while pitching 6.2 innings. That's 20 outs with 16 coming by the K. Pretty impressive.

And here were the leaders for strikeouts in a game by a member of the Twins, prior to Santana's game today:

 Cnt Player            Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt App,Dec    IP   H  R ER BB **SO** HR Pit Str GmSc IR IS BF AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk BK WP   ERA
+----+-----------------+-------------+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+------+--+---+---+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+--+--+------+
    1 Bert Blyleven     1986-08-01    MIN  OAK W 10-1  CG 9  ,W   9    2  1  1  1   15    1           93       31 30  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   1.00 
    2 Jerry Koosman     1980-06-23    MIN  KCR W  4-1  CG 9  ,W   9   10  1  1  2   15    0           76       38 35  3  1   0   0  1  0   0  1  1  1  0  0   1.00 
    3 Joe Decker        1973-06-26    MIN @CHW W  4-0  SHO9  ,W   9    4  0  0  3   15    0           91       34 30  1  0   0   1  0  0   1  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
    4 Camilo Pascual    1961-07-19(1) MIN @LAA W  6-0  SHO9  ,W   9    5  0  0  1   15    0           91       34 33  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
    5 Camilo Pascual    1960-04-18    WSH  BOS W 10-1  CG 9  ,W   9    3  1  1  3   15    1           89       33 30  1  0   0   0  0  0   0  1  0  0  0  0   1.00 

    6 Johan Santana     2005-06-02    MIN  CLE W  4-3  GS-8       8    4  3  3  1   14    2 107  78   75       29 28  0  1   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   3.38 
    7 Johan Santana     2004-09-19    MIN  BAL W  5-1  GS-8  ,W   8    7  0  0  0   14    0 103  78   82       29 29  1  0   0   0  0  0   1  0  0  0  0  1   0.00 
    8 Bert Blyleven     1986-09-24    MIN  KCR L  1-2  CG 9  ,L   9    9  2  2  0   14    1           75       36 36  0  0   0   0  0  0   0  1  0  1  0  0   2.00 
    9 Dave Goltz        1977-07-25    MIN  OAK W  2-1  CG 11 ,W  11    8  1  1  1   14    0           90       41 40  1  0   0   0  0  0   1  3  0  0  0  1   0.82 
   10 Bert Blyleven     1974-08-30    MIN  BOS W  3-2  CG 9  ,W   9    4  2  0  2   14    0           87       35 32  0  0   0   0  1  0   0  0  0  0  0  0   0.00 
   11 Dave Boswell      1969-09-19    MIN  SEP W  2-1  CG 9  ,W   9    5  1  1  1   14    0           86       32 31  1  1   0   0  0  0   1  1  0  0  0  1   1.00 
   12 Camilo Pascual    1964-10-01    MIN  KCA L  4-5  CG 12 ,L  12   12  5  1  3   14    1           77       52 49  2  1   0   0  0  0   2  1  1  0  0  0   0.75 

How about my man Bert Blyleven!

I love performances such as Santana's. Too much offense, too many homers, and not enough pitchers kicking butt. I had the pleasure of being at one of Randy Johnson's 19 K games in 1997, and it was the most exciting game I've ever been at (and that includes numerous walk-off wins, Red Sox-Yankees games, and near no-hitters.)

Congrats to Santana.