Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

There have been 98 pitchers since 1901 to amass 1000 innings with an ERA+ of 92 or worse. To right away contradict the title of this post, most of these guys were not bad pitchers, but merely a little below average and good enough to stay in the league for a while.

Turning to the offensive side, though, some of them could really hit. Here are the top career OPS+ figures among these guys:

Krueger and Keough both deserve an asterisk since they had so few plate appearances, but there are some pretty impressive numbers on this list otherwise. How about Joe Bowman, who walked more than half as often as he struck out? or Blue Moon Odom, who hit 12 homers in the equivalent of about 2/3rds of a season?Or Patsy Flaherty, who has 36 extra-base hits in about a full season equivalent?

Nice stuff.

Al Alburquerque is currently on pace to break Eric Gagne's records for batting average and slugging average allowed in a season of 50+ innings.

Batters have gone 10 for 82 so far against Alburquerque, a .122 BA. Since 1919, six pitchers have held opponents to a batting average less than .140:

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There are two players so far in 2011 with a significant number of at-bats, a batting average under .300, but an on-base percentage over .400:

Both Abreu and Fukudome have walked a lot, to go along with above-average BAs. Both guys are getting on base at a really good clip.

The notion that guy needs to be a .300 hitter to be a really good offensive force is, of course, silly. Most readers of this blog figured that out a long time ago. In case you haven't, that's why I have given this example. Yes, walks are not quite as good as hits (since hits can sometimes advance baserunners more than 1 base, or advance a runner from second or third in a non-force situation) but the bottom line is that a guy who's piling up enough walks to add more than 100 points to his BA when figuring his OBP is doing quite well.

Incidentally, here are the guys who do it over their entire careers, minimum 1000 plate appearances since 1901:

Abreu, Giambi, and Berkman all have a chance to join this group permanently provided that they can keep their OBP over .400 for their career.

Pop quiz: Jon Lester allowed 2 runs in the 1st inning tonight on 2 HRs, but only 1 of the runs was earned. Why? How? Imaginary prizes for the first correct answer and the most creative one....

-- Lester allowed 3 HRs in a game for the 2nd time this year. He had not given up 3 HRs in any of his 129 previous starts, including the postseason. He has already allowed as many HRs (14) as he did all of last season.

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B-R reader Zuke posed the following question in a recent thread:

"The Padres' Anthony Rizzo has four career hits: a single, a double, a triple and a home run. Is he the first player to do that? Is that even searchable?"

Now, if the question means, "Has anyone ever gotten a single, double, triple and HR as his first 4 hits?", I cannot answer. But if it means, "Is Rizzo the only player with exactly 4 career hits, including one of each kind?", then it is searchable, and the answer (as first reported by reader Spindlebrook) is "no". Here are the two players who, as of this moment, have exactly one of each type of hit in their careers:

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Mike Morse has played in the big leagues every year since 2005. Granted, he's never appeared in 100 games in any one season.

That's likely to change, though, based on how he's swinging the bat in 2011. Before today's performance (2 RBI coming on a homer) he's already got 40 RBI in his first 61 games and a 147 OPS+.

In fact, for players who have debut since 2005, here are the top guys (ranked by plate appearances) with an RBI total at least 14% of their plate appearance total. Another way to look at it is that these are the guys to have averaged 1 RBI per 7 plate appearances:

There are a couple of other surprising names on there, but for the most part this is a list of the best young run-producers in the game. Morse is actually one of the oldest players on here, along with Hamilton, Cruz, Jacobs, and Garko.

It looks like Morse is a full-time player now, though, and deservedly so. He's another piece of a Nationals team that is looking like their best team since 2005.

-- There was an intriguing pitching matchup in tonight's D-backs/ChiSox game in Arizona: Daniel Hudson vs. Edwin Jackson. The game mimicked the overall results since the two were traded for each other at the 2010 deadline: Jackson was OK, allowing 4 runs on 8 hits in his 6.2 IP; but Hudson was excellent, allowing 1 run on 3 hits and a walk in his first career CG, even adding an RBI double.

• Hudson is now 15-6 with a 2.76 ERA since joining the Diamondbacks, averaging almost 7 IP in his 26 starts. Jackson is 8-8 with a 3.90 ERA in 25 starts with Chicago.
• Hudson's gem was the 2nd straight Game Score of 81 by a D-backs pitcher. On Thursday, Ian Kennedy fanned 10 and allowed one unearned run on 4 hits in 8 IP against the Giants, lowering his ERA to 2.98. It's the first time Arizona has had back-to-back Game Scores of 80+ since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling did it August 15-16, 2002.

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The Orioles matched a live-ball record for offensive inefficiency Friday night, scoring 4 runs on 18 hits in losing to the streaking Nationals in D.C.

It was the 3rd regulation game since 1919 in which a team had 18+ hits without topping 4 runs; all three teams had exactly 4 runs on exactly 18 hits:

More oddities from this game:

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Through June 16, there were 16 qualifying hitters [see note at end of post] with a .300+ BA and .500+ slugging average.

The Tigers have 3 of those 16, plus another regular at .298/.505:
[June 17 update: Jhonny Peralta made it 4 such players by going 2-4 tonight, with a HR and 4 RBI.]

Boston is the only other team with 2 such players.
Here's the complete 2011 list of qualifying batters with .300+ BA and .500+ SLG:

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Here's a quick rundown of players with the given first name of Adrian (sometimes properly spelled Adrián):

There are two active players in the majors with that first name--Adrian Beltre and Adrian Gonzalez. Both pretty good ball players. (Well, one pretty good and one who looks like the AL MVP.)

Some of you probably remember Adrian Hernandez, El Duquecito, who was supposed to be the next Orlando Hernandez.

But there are a couple more you might not know...

• Adrian Joss, better known as Addie Joss
• Adrian Constantine Anson, better known as Cap Anson

I bet some of you remember another Adrian---Adrian Devine. But his real first name is Paul!

See the full list of Adrians here.