Archive for the 'Leaders' Category

The Chicago White Sox currently lead the majors with 4  pitchers who have thrown 150 innings or more.  The team is continuing a run of getting the most out of their starters that began 3 years ago.  In 2007 they led the majors with 3 pitchers who pitched at least 200 innings. They also led in 2006 and 2005 with 4 in each of those years.

Here are the teams with the most 150 IP pitchers this season:

 Year Lg Team                              Number Players Matching
 ----+--+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------
 2008 AL Chicago White Sox                      4 Mark Buehrle / Javier Vazquez / John Danks / Gavin Floyd
 2008 AL Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim          3 Ervin Santana / Jon Garland / Joe Saunders
 2008 NL Chicago Cubs                           3 Ryan Dempster / Ted Lilly / Carlos Zambrano
 2008 NL Cincinnati Reds                        3 Johnny Cueto / Edinson Volquez / Bronson Arroyo
 2008 AL Detroit Tigers                         3 Kenny Rogers / Justin Verlander / Nate Robertson
 2008 NL Los Angeles Dodgers                    3 Chad Billingsley / Derek Lowe / Hiroki Kuroda
 2008 NL New York Mets                          3 Oliver Perez / Johan Santana / Mike Pelfrey
 2008 AL Tampa Bay Rays                         3 Andy Sonnanstine / James Shields / Matt Garza
 2008 NL Arizona Diamondbacks                   2 Brandon Webb / Danny Haren
 2008 AL Baltimore Orioles                      2 Jeremy Guthrie / Daniel Cabrera
 2008 NL Colorado Rockies                       2 Ubaldo Jimenez / Aaron Cook
 2008 NL Florida Marlins                        2 Ricky Nolasco / Scott Olsen
 2008 NL Houston Astros                         2 Brandon Backe / Roy Oswalt
 2008 AL Kansas City Royals                     2 Gil Meche / Zack Greinke
 2008 AL New York Yankees                       2 Mike Mussina / Andy Pettitte
 2008 NL Philadelphia Phillies                  2 Cole Hamels / Jamie Moyer
 2008 NL Pittsburgh Pirates                     2 Zach Duke / Paul Maholm
 2008 NL San Francisco Giants                   2 Matt Cain / Tim Lincecum
 2008 NL St. Louis Cardinals                    2 Kyle Lohse / Braden Looper
 2008 AL Toronto Blue Jays                      2 A.J. Burnett / Roy Halladay
 2008 NL Atlanta Braves                         1 Jair Jurrjens
 2008 AL Boston Red Sox                         1 Jon Lester
 2008 AL Cleveland Indians                      1 Cliff Lee
 2008 NL Milwaukee Brewers                      1 Ben Sheets
 2008 AL Minnesota Twins                        1 Nick Blackburn
 2008 NL San Diego Padres                       1 Greg Maddux
 2008 AL Seattle Mariners                       1 Felix Hernandez
 2008 NL Washington Nationals                   1 Tim Redding

Mariner second baseman Jose Lopez is tied for  the American League lead in sacrifice flies with 9.  He is also one off the league lead in sacrifice bunts with 6.  I thought that these two statistics  combined were an interesting mix, so I wondered if Lopez's season is common. The answer is not usually, but this year may be different.

Since 1954 when baseball started keeping separate SH and SF records there have been 11 players to have 10 or more sacrifice flies and bunts in the same season. Here is the list.

  Cnt Player            Year  SH  SF Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+----+---+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
    1 Juan Uribe        2005  11  10  25 CHW AL 146 540 481  58 121 23  3 16  71  34   0  77   4   7   4  6  .252  .301  .412  .713 *6
    2 Ricky Gutierrez   2001  17  11  31 CHC NL 147 606 528  76 153 23  3 10  66  40   0  56  10  13   4  3  .290  .345  .402  .747 *6
    3 Roberto Alomar    1999  12  13  31 CLE AL 159 694 563 138 182 40  3 24 120  99   3  96   7  13  37  6  .323  .422  .533  .955 *4/D
    4 Kevin Elster      1996  16  11  31 TEX AL 157 596 515  79 130 32  2 24  99  52   1 138   2   8   4  1  .252  .317  .462  .779 *6
    5 Omar Vizquel      1995  10  10  28 CLE AL 136 622 542  87 144 28  0  6  56  59   0  59   1   4  29 11  .266  .333  .351  .684 *6
    6 Jerry Browne      1990  12  11  24 CLE AL 140 610 513  92 137 26  5  6  50  72   1  46   2  12  12  7  .267  .353  .372  .725 *4
    7 Wally Joyner      1986  10  12  24 CAL AL 154 674 593  82 172 27  3 22 100  57   8  58   2  11   5  2  .290  .348  .457  .805 *3
    8 Rob Wilfong       1979  25  10  25 MIN AL 140 485 419  71 131 22  6  9  59  29   3  54   2   2  11  4  .313  .352  .458  .810 *4/879
    9 Bert Campaneris   1976  18  11  34 OAK AL 149 631 536  67 137 14  1  1  52  63   0  80   3   4  54 12  .256  .331  .291  .622 *6
   10 Brooks Robinson   1962  10  10  25 BAL AL 162 697 634  77 192 29  9 23  86  42   3  70   1  18   3  1  .303  .342  .486  .828 *5/64
   11 Johnny Temple     1959  11  13  31 CIN NL 149 696 598 102 186 35  6  8  67  72   2  40   2  11  14  3  .311  .380  .430  .810 *4

As rare as this seems, Lopez is not alone yet. Here are the players who have amassed 6 of each so far  this season.

  Cnt                        SH  SF Year Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+---+---+---+----+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
    1 Freddy Sanchez          6   6 2008  30 PIT NL  92 403 376  42  88 14  0  6  39  12   0  48   3   9   0  1  .234  .259  .319  .578 *4/D
    2 Jose Lopez              6   9 2008  24 SEA AL  96 425 394  49 117 26  1  6  51  15   2  36   1  11   4  1  .297  .317  .414  .731 *4/D
    3 Ian Kinsler             6   6 2008  26 TEX AL  97 469 413  84 134 34  4 14  59  38   1  56   6   7  24  1  .324  .384  .528  .912 *4

This past season, Carlos Marmol turned in the 4th best ERA+ season (min. 50 innings) for anyone as young as he. Marmol, who started his professional career as an outfielder, was the only middle reliever to receive an MVP vote in 2007. Interestingly enough, Marmol's age 24 season was extremely similar to another age 24 season that had been turned in almost a decade before.

Read the rest of this entry »

After playing for five teams in the last four years, Steve Finley is looking to sign with another team. If he does, he could move up on a few speed related "older" player lists.

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Ever since Omar Minaya rebuilt the Mets, there have been many heated discussions about his stockpiling of Latin American players. I thought that it might be interesting to see what the PI can tell us about this subject. I am not presenting them to you as a judgment, just as a presentation of facts. Read the rest of this entry »

Yovani Gallardo came up on top of 2 of my PI searches today, so I thought that he was worth a mention.

Gallardo is a 21 year old kid who pitches for the Brewers. In fact, among all pitchers who made their major league debut last year and pitched significant innings as a starter, Gallardo had the best ERA+. Included in that ERA+ is an August 8th game when the kid met the Colorado air. The result was the lowest game score of the season and the 6th lowest since 1957. In fact, the game was so detrimental to Gallardo’s numbers, his ERA without it would have been 2.84 instead of 3.67. Had Gallardo missed that game, he would have been second in the majors in ERA
(among pitchers with 100 IP) instead of 25th!

In 2007 87 position players made their major league debut. Their ages ranged from 19 (Justin Upton) to 29 (Guillermo Rodriguez). For those players hoping to embark on a Hall-of-Fame career, how old is too old? Read the rest of this entry »

Single-season outs leaders

Certainly he was helped by setting the all-time Plate Appearance record, but Jimmy Rollins also cracked the top twenty all-time for outs made in a season, coming in at #20, with a whopping 527 outs used. Rollins has finished in the league's top ten in outs made every year of his career and returned to the top spot after a couple year hiatus.

Sure, he was helped by all those PA, but Dykstra only produced 468 outs in his historic season. The Phillies could have scored a lot of runs with 59 more outs to play with. Might have won another game or two.

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 »

Quick--who is the Philadelphia Phillies' all-time franchise leader in Saves?

I don't blame you if you guessed Steve Bedrosian, Mitch Williams, or the late Tug McGraw, who have 103, 102, and 94 saves respectively, but the answer is their once-and-future closer, Jose Mesa, with 111.

Wow.