Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

-- Red Sox 8, Orioles 7 /  Rays 5, Yankees 3

-- Phillies 7, Braves 1 / Cardinals 13, Astros 6

In the woolliest of wild-card seasons, after a night of 15 HRs in the 4 big games and one triple play, both races will go down to the last day ... or beyond.

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Here are the 26 guys since 1901 who homered in their first career big-league game and then never homered again in the rest of their careers:

A few of the more recent guys may, of course, homer again yet and get off this list.

-- Orioles 6, Red Sox 3: It's a 2-game season for Boston and Tampa. (Unless....) Chris Davis drove in the tying run in the 5th and the go-ahead with 2 out in the 6th, after which the #9 hitter Robert Andino -- a hero in 2 of Baltimore's 3 wins in Fenway last weekend -- hit a 3-run, inside-the-park HR. His straightaway drive sent Jacoby Ellsbury on a fly pattern all the way to the wall, where he briefly gloved it with an over-the-shoulder grab, but lost control on contact. Ellsbury lay dazed for a split second, but he flipped the ball to the nearby J.D. Drew, who made a strong relay to Dustin Pedroia. Andino steamed around 3rd and would have been out at the plate, but Pedroia's laser arrived on a short hop and skipped by Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

• Josh Beckett allowed 6 runs in his 2nd straight start against Baltimore, this time with 11 baserunners in 6 IP; he's won once in 4 starts this month. BoSox SPs in September are 4-13, allowing 8.24 runs per 9 IP. Tuesday's starters are Erik Bedard (who did not seem fully recovered from injury in his last start) vs. Zach Britton, who's won 5 of his last 7 outings. Read the rest of this entry »

Loyal reader Andy P. writes in to ask which players hit the most homers in their final season in the majors. He noticed that Jermaine Dye hit 27 bombs in his final season and guessed that perhaps Dave Kingman had the most in 1986 with 35.

He's right:

Two seasons really stick out here--Ted Williams and Barry Bonds. They both played at a very high level. A few other guys here retired early for one reason or another.

-- Red Sox 7, Yankees 4 (2nd game): The ominous words from Michael Kay -- "Scott Proctor has not pitched well for the Yankees" -- were still hanging in the air when Jacoby Ellsbury cranked his 3rd HR of the doubleheader, a 3-run shot in the 14th inning that redeemed his own bad game to that point (1 for 6 with a GDP, 0-2 with RISP) and sent the Sox to what may prove a season-saving victory, snapping a 4-game skid. Boston holds a 1-game lead over the Rays with 3 to play. Read the rest of this entry »

The other night Brandon Morrow finally registered his first ground-ball double play of the season. It came against Desmond Jennings of all people, in a game against Tampa Bay.

Provided he doesn't get another GIDP this season, Morrow will finish way out in first place for the most innings pitched in a season since 1919 (as far back as we have GIDP data) recording 1 or none ground-ball double plays.

This is quite a list huh? Aside from everything else, I love seeing Clete Boyer's less-well-known brother Cloyd on there, not to mention the other Jose Bautista.

There's a ton of variation on this list. Some guys had great seasons. Others did not. Some made it here because they just didn't allow all that many baserunners, cutting down on the number of GIDP opportunities. Nearly every pitcher on here has a good strikeout rate, and obviously strikeouts prevent GIDPs too.

The thing about Morrow is that he's an extreme fly-ball pitcher. Check out his ground ball to fly ball ratios:

For his career, he's got nearly 2 fly balls allowed for every 1 ground ball, where as the league average is more like 1.3 fly balls per ground ball. I would presume the same is true for most of the guys on this list.

Thanks to reader Dave H. for emailing in about Morrow.

Every time we think they're out, the leaders pull them back in....

Both wild-card races tightened up, as the quarry went down meekly and the pursuers got gift-wrapped victories. Atlanta leads St. Louis by 2 games, while Boston is 1.5 up on Tampa; the BoSox have 5 games left (including a Sunday doubleheader in New York), the rest have 4 remaining.

-- Cardinals 2, Cubs 1: One strike from closing out a 1-0 win that would have further weakened the Cards' wild-card odds, Carlos Marmol lost control as only he can. With a man on 3rd and 2 out, Marmol walked the unlikely trio of Yadier Molina, Skip Schumacher and Ryan Theriot to force in the tying run, then threw a wild pitch to let in the winner. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Niedenfuer was sweating it. Every day, he'd get up, go get the newspaper from his driveway, and search out the box score for yesterday's Marlins game.

He had to see if Leo Nunez got another save.

Nunez was hot on Niedenfuer's tracks for the third most saves by a player whose last name starts with "N".

And then, earlier this week, it was Christmas in September for Tom Niedenfuer. Leo Nunez was no more. Nunez didn't die nor was he banned from baseball. It just turns out that Nunez wasn't his real name, and now all those achievements recorded under the letter "N" counted for another "N"--nothing.

But for every miracle there is a tragedy. It would appear that the real name of the man formerly known as Leo Nunez is Juan Oviedo. With 92 career saves, where does Oviedo rank on the all-time saves list for "O" players?

Before this week, there were just two "O" guys with at least 50 career saves. Now there are three.

Marty Noble: MLB carries on strong, 200,000 games later | MLB.com: News.

200,000th game will be tomorrow.  Glad to see MLB pick up on this momentous event.  A nice rundown of the first National League game is in this article.

It appears than only two players--Jose Bautista and Curtis Granderson--will hit 40 home runs this season. Two other players--Albert Pujols and Mark Teixeira--are currently at 37 homers with a handful of games to play.

If you're old enough to have been an MLB fan in the 1980s or earlier, you remember how impressive it used to be to get to 40 homers in a season.

Once we were knee-deep in the Steroids Era, 40-HR hitters became commonplace. In 1996, MLB had 17 different guys hit at least 40 homers, including Todd Hundley, Vinny Castilla, Ken Caminiti, and (in case you hadn't heard) Brady Anderson.

Now, it's back to the future time. For the 3rd time in the last 4 years, we're going to have only 2 guys break the 40-homer barrier. Here's a look back at 40-homer players since 1980:

This sort of table really speaks to how offense has changed dramatically (and then changed back) over the last 30 years. There are some pages on this site, though, that really show it in even plainer black-and-white, and those are the League Index pages. For example, the MLB Batting Encyclopedia shows that run scoring in 2011 (4.28 runs per game) is the lowest since 1992 and the homers per game (0.93) is the lowest since 1993. This is also looking to be the first year since 1992 that the overall slugging percentage finishes below .400. On the MLB Pitching Encyclopedia page, we see that WHIP is its lowest since 1992, as are the number of batters faced per game.

Also, although attendance is going to finish down for the 4th straight year, it'll still be higher than it was in 1992-2003 (even corrected for number of teams before the last 2 rounds of expansion.)

The bottom line? Home runs are more exciting when they are hit less frequently.