Archive for the 'Event Finders' Category

Yesterday Jonathan Papelbon blew a game for the Red Sox.

It was just Papelbon's second blown save of the year:

As painful a loss as it was for the Red Sox, Papelbon's on pace with his blown saves last year, which totaled only 3 for the season. This does not, of course, include Game 3 of last year's ALDS, which Papelbon blew, ending the Red Sox's season.

In a weird sort of turn back the clock moment, it was Jason Giambi who had the walk-off plate appearance, a 2-run homer, off Papelbon. With only 90 plate appearances so far this year, Giambi is practically invisible on the Rockies and it's easy to forget he's still playing.

Amazingly, Giambi's last walk-off plate appearance also came against Papelbon in 2008. Last night's was the 7th of Giambi's career, which includes 5 home runs and 2 singles. Yankees fans will remember a 14th-inning grand slam against the Twins, viewed by many as the day Giambi truly arrived in New York.

Mark Teixeira just hit a grand slam off Johan Santana. It was the Yankees' 7th slam of the year.

Here were the first 6:

All have come at home except Posada's first Granderson's.

Santana leads the majors with 3 slams allowed. Brandon League, Raul Valdes, and Joel Pineiro have allowed 2 each.

Last year, no team in baseball hit more than 8 all season. The Yankees seem likely to pass that total this year.

In another thread a reader named David asked the following question:

There were two pinch-hit home runs in extra innings in tonight's Twins-Phillies game (one by each team). Anyone have any idea how often that has happened?

I posed this question to the PI (using the batting event finder, searching for homeruns by all teams and filtering for "innings 10+" and pos. "PH". The game tot section then tells you if there were more than 1 in a game) and found only one other game since 1952.

On June 4, 1958 the Giants, who at one point lead the Braves 7-1,  were  trailing 9-7 with 2 outs in the bottom of the tenth.  However, in a series of moves that had to have made manager Bill Rigney look like a genius, Hank Sauer and Bob Schmidt hit back to back pinch hit home runs to tie the game. The Giants ended up losing an inning later, but since then there has never been 2 extra inning pinch hit home runs by one team  in a single  game .

Shane Victorino has his second bases-loaded triple of the season tonight against the Yankees.

This is one of the rarest plays in baseball.

Those are the first seven of the year before tonight's. Last year, there were 24 bases-loaded triples, including two each by Denard Span and Bobby Crosby.

The news of Oscar Azocar's passing at the young age of 45, brought back nostalgic memories of my youth. At a time when my team, the Yankees,  were bad, Azocar's free swinging style was a comical interlude in an all-together pitiful season. To commemorate this memory, I even chose the screen name "OscarAzocar"  several years ago when I started commenting on this website. Here are a couple of Azocar facts.

Azocar was famous for  taking few  pitches and his PA event finder listing confirms this. In fact, in July of 1990, Azocar went 7 consecutive at bats without taking a pitch.

For his career, Azocar saw only 1 pitch in 122 of his 460 plate appearances (26.5 %).

On the BBTF thread dedicated to Azocar, a commenter mentioned that Azocar holds the record for most career stolen bases without being caught. Here are the leaders (1951-2010, prior to 1951 the CS records are incomplete.)

In last nights' Cubs-Brewers game, Craig Counsell came up to the plate in the bottom of the tenth with Carlos Gomez on first. Counsell sacrificed and Gomez, seeing that nobody was covering third, kept running.  An errant throw by Xavier Nady allowed Gomez to score and the Brewers walked off with the win (video). Of course, this leads to the question if   there is a precedent for a team with a runner only on first  executing a sacrifice bunt and walked off with the win on the same play.

To find this, we can use the team batting event finder to search for sacrifice hits with a runner on first which  put a team in the lead and ended the game. Most of the plays returned will be sacrifice bunt attempts that were mishandled by the defense and the sacrifice was never actually executed  (The batter is still credited with a SH). A  much smaller number will be similar to the play from last night. How much smaller? From 1952-2010 , it happened only one other time.

On July 17, 1975 the Phillies beat the Astros 6-5 when Astros attempted to nab Larry Bowa at third base and instead threw the ball away. Bowa had started the play on first, but attempted to go all the way to third as the Astro's successfully retired Jay Johnstone for the sacrifice. Sounds familiar, doesn't it ?

Sometimes it  take 35 years, but in baseball even the most unique looking plays may not be so  unique after-all.

Recently, an inquiry to baseball-reference.com piqued my interest.  A reader wanted to know if a team has ever started a game with a natural cycle, (a single, double,triple and home run in order) by the first 4 batters. This question intrigued me and with the help of the PI event finder I was able to find only one occurrence since 1952.(I used the PI event finder to search for home runs by the #4 hitter with 0 outs and a runner on 3rd in the first inning and manually went through the results. If a team started with a single/double/triple and the #3 hitter scored before the HR by the #4 hitter, I  missed it.)

On August 16th 1978, the Twins were facing Royals pitcher Doug Bird and did just that. Here is the play by play for that inning.

A search for the reverse turned up no results. (Again my sort does have potential holes. I sorted through the results for doubles by the #3 hitter with 0 outs and a runner on 3rd in the first inning. Any basepath advances between the triple and double would have caused this search to miss those games.) Only 2 games in my search started with a homerun/triple/double.
May 25, 1955 - St. Louis Cardinals

August 17,1977- New York Yankees

Wow, Mariano Rivera just gave up a grand slam to Jason Kubel, blowing his first save at home since 2007. Click through to see the list of his previous 52 save chances at home.

Read the rest of this entry »

File this one under "The Elephant in the Room."

Via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Event Finder, through last night's games, there have been 36,900 Plate Appearances by batters in 2010 - again, to date,. Here is the overall outcome of those PA:

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Seeing this, it's safe to say that 11.6% of all Plate Appearances (this season to date) have ended up in a run being scored.  Most of those runs were the result of the batter reaching base via a hit.

In fact, this season, to date, 43.1% of the time a batter gets a hit a run comes around to score. And, 2.5% of the time he walks, a run comes around to score.  (Yes, I thought the "walk-run" rate would have been higher too.  But, that's what it is.)

Note that there have also been 6,812 strikeouts so far this season. Here is the overall outcome of those "strikeout" PA:

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Seeing this, it's safe to say that 0.06% of all batter strikeout plate appearances (this season to date) have ended up in a run being scored.

There have also been 17,554 "non-SO outs" recorded in PA by batters, to date, in 2010. Here is the overall outcome of those "non-SO out" PA:

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Seeing this, it's safe to say that 2.8% of all batter "non-SO out" PA (this season to date) have ended up in a run being scored.

In review, so far this season, overall, a run comes around to score 11.6% of the time that a batter steps to bat.  One scores 43.1% of the time that he gets a hit.  Further, one scores 2.5% of the time we wallks and 2.8% of the time he makes contact for an out.  (Maybe a walk is only as good as non-strikeout out?)  Lastly, and most importantly, a batter, to date this year, almost never makes a run come around to score a run when he strikes out.

Related, scoring runs in baseball is an important matter.  So, would you say that batters who strikeout are not helping teams score runs as much as batters who hit, walk, or make an out via contact?

At least...that's what these queries show me today.  If anyone wants to check my math, etc.,  you have my thanks in advance.

This article is not the long, detailed discussion you might expect. I've just noticed the incredibly low HR totals a few teams have:

The Mariners are on pace to hit 58 HR this season and the Astros are on pace for 64. Look at the season totals from, for example, 1998. The lowly Pirates hit 107 HR while the new and terrible Rays hit 111. The low teams in 2010 are way below those benchmarks. In 2009, the awful Mets had the lowest total but still managed 95 HR.

Of course, it's likely that the Mariners and Astros will both revert to the mean a little bit and hit HR at a faster pace for the rest of the season. (Not necessarily, though. After all, the Blue Jays are leading the league and on pace for 232 HR, similar to the Yankees' league-leading total of 244 last year and the Rangers' and Phillies' second-place totals of 224.)

Here's a little more info to put in perspective just how bad the HR hitting has been for Seattle and Houston so far:

• Paul Konerko has more HR himself than the Mariners or Astros have as a team, and 3 other guys have as many HR as the Mariners.
• Of the Astros' 11 home runs, 4 came with the bases empty and 7 were two-runs shots. They have no 3-runs homers or grand slams so far this season.