Archive for the 'Event Finders' Category

8 Home Runs in Postseason, Deciding Game and as last play of game - Baseball-Reference PI

The Play Index is now fully integrated with postseason data.  Within the event finder you can find all of the various events in the postseason for every team or by individual team.   You can also select by type of series and game in the series (including the last game of the series).

The game finders and streak finders also now include postseason data and allow you search by series type and game as well.

I was just playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Streak finder to see how some 21-year olds, or younger, started their big league pitching careers, when I noticed how close Josh Beckett and Phil Hughes were on the list that I had generated.  Here's a summary of their stats over their first seven games in the big leagues:

At first blush, with the exception of some errors made behind them, and perhaps some runners left on that came in to score (after they left a game), the numbers are pretty darn close, huh?

Even the number of pitches thrown and those for strikes are within a tick of each other. 

Josh Beckett had a great game in his 8th career start.  Maybe Phil Hughes can do the same?

Taking Professor Dave's advice, I have re-done this graph with games played on the x-axis and homers hit on the y-axis. It's not more intuitive. Plus, I made each player's like the same color as his uniform...A-rod is navy, Bonds is orange, Pujols is red, and Aaron is light blue, like those old Atlanta uniforms.

Much comment and analysis after the jump.

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There will be lots of talk about A-rod's 500th homer. I thought I'd look at some slightly different data.

For 5 members of the 500 HR club, I looked at their PI event log for homers to find their 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, and 500th homers, then I looked at their PI career game log to find out which career game number those homers were hit in.

Here are the results, represented graphically:

Read the rest of this entry »

Some fans may not remember the only time in history that a team has led off a game with three consecutive homers:

It was done by the Padres in 1987 when Marvell Wynne, Tony Gwynn, and John Kruk hit consecutive dingers in the bottom of the first. Let's take a look at the box score. Incidentally, I found it by first going to Wynne's PI event log for homers, then limiting it to 1st-inning homers, of which he had only 3. From there it was easy to find. (Knowing that Wynne was one of the guys who hit a homer helped too.)

The three homers didn't help the Padres win, who dropped to 1-6 after this game. The Giants went on to win the division and lost the NLCS to the Cardinals.

By the way, Topps commemorated the three consecutive homers leading off the game with a series of cards on the bottom of boxes for 1988 packs of cards:

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of folks were interested to read that Julio Franco has faced 1167 pitchers in his career.

I started wondering to what degree that number was affected by his era. Right off, we know that Franco's plate appearances are spread over a larger number of years than most other players. He first came up in 1982, and he didn't play in American baseball in 1995, 1998, or 2000 (as I recall, he spent some of that "time off" playing in Japan, and some in Mexico.) Since pitchers are constantly coming and going in baseball, spreading out PAs over more years definitely means more unique pitchers faced.

Anyway:

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I was curious as to which batters in baseball were swinging hot sticks in this past month (of July 2007).  So, I went to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index and looked up the leaders in hits, via Batter Events, for this season - using a filter for July.  This is what I found:

Robinson Cano 42
Edgar Renteria 42
Hideki Matsui 39
Melky Cabrera 39
Jimmy Rollins 39
Derek Jeter 38
Ryan Braun 38
Hanley Ramirez 36
Chipper Jones 36
Bobby Abreu 36
Delmon Young 36
Curtis Granderson 36

Those on the leader list here in bold are on the New York Yankees.    This means that the Top 5 guys in the A.L. - for most hits in the month of July 2007 - were all members of the Yankees.   That's some hit parade, huh?

One the the fun things that you can do with Player Index is looking at when hits came, via the Batter Events Finder.

For example, to date, in 2007, when the Yankees have 2 outs against them, and they're behind in the score, with runners on base, who has gotten hits to put them ahead in the score?  Here's the answer:

Alex Rodriguez 3 times
Johnny Damon 2 times
Derek Jeter 1 time
Bobby Abreu 1 time

   Yr#   G# Date          Batter            Tm   Opp Pitcher           Score       Result Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc.

 ------+---+-------------+-----------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------

      1   1 2007-04-07    Alex Rodriguez    NYY  BAL Steve Trachsel    down   0-1  HR     b 1 1--   2 2-1   4   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF); Abreu Scores

      2   2               Alex Rodriguez    NYY  BAL Chris Ray         down   6-7  HR     b 9 123   2 1-2   4   4 *ENDED GAME*:Home Run (Fly Ball to CF); Cano Scores; Jeter Scores; Abreu Scores

      3   1 2007-04-19    Alex Rodriguez    NYY  CLE Joe Borowski      down   5-6  HR     b 9 -23   2 1-0   1   3 *ENDED GAME*:Home Run (Fly Ball to LF-CF); Jeter Scores; Abreu Scores

      4   1 2007-04-27    Johnny Damon      NYY  BOS Daisuke Matsuzak  down   1-2  1B     b 4 123   2 3-2   6   2 Single to RF (Line Drive); Giambi Scores; Matsui Scores; Posada to 3B

      5   1 2007-05-20    Johnny Damon      NYY @NYM John Maine        down   0-1  2B     t 4 -23   2 1-2   6   2 Double to 2B (Pop Fly); Abreu Scores; Mientkiewicz Scores

      6   1 2007-06-16    Derek Jeter       NYY  NYM Tom Glavine       down   4-5  HR     b 4 1--   2 0-0   1   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to LF); Damon Scores

      7   1 2007-07-14    Bobby Abreu       NYY @TBD Andy Sonnanstine  down   2-3  HR     t 5 -2-   2 0-1   2   2 Home Run (Fly Ball to RF); Thompson Scores

How about with 2 outs against them, and they're behind in the score, with runners on base, who has gotten hits to tie the score?  Here's the answer:

Miguel Cairo 2 times
Hideki Matsui 1 time
Robinson Cano 1 time
Johnny Damon 1 time
Jorge Posada 1 time
Melky Cabrera 1 time
Alex Rodriguez 1 time

   Yr#   G# Date          Batter            Tm   Opp Pitcher           Score       Result Inn RoB Out Cnt Pit RBI Play Desc. ------+---+-------------+-----------------+---+----+-----------------+-----------+------+---+---+---+---+---+---+-------------------------

      1   1 2007-04-05    Hideki Matsui     NYY  TBD Ruddy Lugo        down   4-6  1B     b 7 123   2 1-1   3   2 Single to RF (Ground Ball); Jeter Scores; Abreu Scores; Giambi to 2B

      2   1 2007-04-06    Robinson Cano     NYY  BAL Adam Loewen       down   1-2  2B     b 2 1--   2 1-2   4   1 Double to RF (Line Drive); Matsui Scores; Cano to 3B/Adv on throw

      3   1 2007-04-14    Jorge Posada      NYY @OAK Joe Blanton       down   2-3  2B     t 7 1--   2 1-2   4   1 Double to RF (Line Drive); Cano Scores

      4   1 2007-05-16(1) Melky Cabrera     NYY @CHW John Danks        down   1-2  2B     t 6 12-   2 3-1   5   1 Double to LF (Ground Ball); Posada Scores; Abreu to 3B

      5   1 2007-06-05    Miguel Cairo      NYY @CHW Mark Buehrle      down   0-1  1B     t 5 -2-   2 1-2   4   1 Single to CF (Ground Ball); Cano Scores

      6   1 2007-06-16    Johnny Damon      NYY  NYM Tom Glavine       down   1-2  1B     b 2 --3   2 3-2   6   1 Single to LF (Line Drive); Cano Scores

      7   1 2007-07-05    Miguel Cairo      NYY  MIN Kevin Slowey      down   1-2  2B     b 2 --3   2 3-2   6   1 Double to LF (Line Drive); Phillips Scores

      8   1 2007-07-17    Alex Rodriguez    NYY  TOR Roy Halladay      down   0-1  1B     b 1 --3   2 1-2   4   1 Single to RF (Line Drive); Damon Scores

Who would have thought that, to date, Johnny Damon has one less "big" two-out hit for the Yankees this season than Alex Rodriguez?  Well, now you know.

Yesterday, the White Sox walked in three straight which led a user to ask if this had happened before. I was surprised to see it was as common as it was. Since 1957, three runners (not necessarily consecutively) had been walked in in a game 191 times. Three consecutively is a surprisingly high percentage of these. The following are all of the instances where it was consecutive. The numbers are the event numbers of the play where it happened. I think the first game is the canonical example of "losing the strike zone." You can't do this in the Play Index at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

All of MLB: 165 Home Runs in All-Star Game History - Baseball-Reference PI

I've just added event finders for the All-Star Game to get to these, go to the Play Index main page, and select "All-Star Game Batting or Pitching Event Finder" on the left side.  Using these you can then view all of the instances where an event occurred in All-Star Game history.  <a href="/pi/shareit/ZkZR">Here are all 31 HBP</a>. No one has plunked two batters in their HOF history.