not-at-all-trivial trivia 2013

According to @EliasSports, Jaime García is the 1st pitcher to make 3 straight app. as a starter for 3 diff. teams since Gus Weyhing in 1895.

— Yankees PR Dept. (@YankeesPR) August 4, 2017

martin perez is the first rangers pitcher to fan four times in a game

Rich Hill's loss was only 40th time since 1920 a pitcher had a 90+ gamescore and lost. Warren Spahn did it 3 times: https://t.co/xqxGaLQjKa

— Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) August 24, 2017

Chad Green is the first pitcher in @MLB history to have seven strikeouts while facing no more than eight batters in a game.

— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) August 30, 2017

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2017/9/6/16265112/will-middlebrooks-rangers-triple-doubleheaders-first-player-in-history

Gary Sanchez second-fastest to 50 HR in his career, tied with Mark McGwire (161 G), behind Rudy York (153 G).

jacoby ellsbury now holds the record for most times reaching base due to catcher's interference, with 30

more info: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/baseball-has-a-new-all-time-record/

I was down at the Jays-Orioles game last night, and I saw Mark Trumbo lose a routine fly ball in the lights and overrun it by a factor of 2.715--I believe that's a record.

http://www.mlb.com/gameday/orioles-vs-blue-jays/2017/09/11/492246#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=videos,game=492246

Maybe you can't link directly to MLB videos...It's in last night's video clips for the Jays-Orioles game.

New @SABRbioproject: Jamie Moyer, ageless wonder who faced nearly 9% of all batters in @MLB history https://t.co/3ZvfR0ADO0 @moyerfoundation pic.twitter.com/Bg3p81hX4n

— SABR (@sabr) September 15, 2017

I haven't verified this yet, if anyone would care to:

Travis d'Arnaud hit his 13th homer of the season last night.

The most hitters on one team with at least 13 home runs, in NL history:

9 by the 2017 Mets and the 2005 Reds
8 by the 1957 and 2006 Reds, 2016 and 2017 Cards, 2004 Phillies, 2009 Rockies, 2016 Nats and 2017 Brewers

i guess that can happen when half the team is hurt and the other half traded away

the brewers need two more from jonathan villar to join the mets with nine. the astros have 10. both of their contingents are all still with the team tho

Clayton Kershaw, Career:
IP: 1923.0
H: 1416
BB: 507
WHIP: *exactly* 1.000000000000000000000

— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) September 25, 2017

Matt Olson stuff from Jonah Keri:

-- Olson has now hit 46 home runs this season in 135 games -- 23 with Triple-A Nashville, 23 with the A's.
-- Olson is the first rookie in major league history to swat 15 homers over a 21-game span.
-- Olson has hit 12 homers in his past 17 games, eight in his past 11, and five in his past six.
-- Stats Inc. recently offered up a terrific comparison of all-time sluggers. Here are the all-time leaders in fewest at-bats per home run, minimum 150 plate appearances:

Babe Ruth 11.8
Cody Bellinger 11.5
Mark McGwire 10.7
Matt Olson 7.78
Rhys Hoskins 7.77

this is the third season since WW2 with no in-season managerial changes.

Guest:
I wonder what the most career hits is for a player to have > 50% XBHs? Right now, Stanton has 955 career hits, 477 singles, 478 XBH, which seems insane to me. Instagraph?

Jeff Sullivan:
Stanton is in second place all-time! From 2 through 5, it goes Giancarlo Stanton, Russell Branyan, Chris Carter, and Khris Davis

But while Stanton is second at 955, Mark McGwire is first, all the way up at 1,626

McGwire finished with 52% extra-base hits, mostly because, by the end, he could hardly leg out a single

For the first time ever, the four most-populated U.S. cities — New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston — are represented in the American League and National League Championship Series.

Unprompted, non-topical fun fact: Yankees center fielders have averaged 5.2 fWAR per season since 1925. That's a baseline of Carlos Correa's 2017 WAR, over a span of 93 seasons.

— Ben Lindbergh (@BenLindbergh) December 4, 2017

insane

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/allow-me-to-present-an-incredible-baseball-coincidence

for some reason earlier today i was wondering about how often the ball is hit to each position over the course of a season. i figured the stat would be pretty easy to find, but my googling failed. so i tried to do it myself using fangraphs defensive data, specifically their "BIZ" stat (Ballz in Zone, which is supposed to measure how often a ball is hit into the "zone" that a player fields, which is different from the number of plays actually made.)

Position	BIZ		%
1B		6239		10.1%
2B		10662		17.3%
3B		10021		16.3%
SS		11293		18.4%
LF		6742		11.0%
CF		9367		15.2%
RF		7157		11.6%
TOTAL	61481		100.0%

big caveat: BIZ doesn't seem to include the zone of the pitcher or catcher ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(^that's for 2017)

Please direct all Zone-related questions to these three guys.

http://www.shorescripts.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/stalker-7.jpg

(Sorry--that word has been permanently hijacked for me.)

clemenza for some reason i think you'll be especially excited about this:

earlier today alfred posted a link to oyez.org, which is a database of all sorts of useful supreme court information written concisely and using plain-language. there are biographies of each SC Justice (https://www.oyez.org/justices). bizarrely, each one includes a baseball quiz(?????) at the end, in this style:

https://i.imgur.com/4aJatTn.png
https://i.imgur.com/eqnbsOw.png

the baseball quiz is included for EVERY SINGLE JUSTICE.
https://i.imgur.com/P0gF4uy.png

i can't imagine the amount of work that went into comparing every single SC Justice to a baseball figure, but it might be appreciated here at least.

That's hilarious, thanks. Just got Clarence Thomas wrong. Correct answer: Lou Pinella, because they both "provided some punch to their respective franchises" (uh, okay), and because controversy has followed them. I intuitively guessed Joe Pepitone, because in Ball Four he put a piece of popcorn under his foreskin.

My own question: the two HOF pitchers who each won a Cy Young but never got a single Cy Young vote in any other season.

Eckersley and Drysdale?

Drysdale's one of them (half of his prime coinciding with a teammate's...). With the other guy, it's not really a meaningful measure--a lot of his career is pre-CYA.

Think I found it - Dean Chance

Chance is one of a number of pitchers who won a Cy but never got Cy votes in any other season--think I spotted at least 10. I was looking for the two HOF'ers, though.

Early Wynn

Speaking of whom, some awesome home movie footage of him warming up in his last year (starts at 1:17):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHafsz-p-k

Yes--Early, part of the original Jays' broadcast crew. (He probably would have received Cy Young votes in '52 and '54 if the award had been around...Hard to say; there was only one award for both leagues, and he didn't receive any votes in '56 for a season that was better than either of those.)

i have a bit of baseball trivia in my own neighborhood, maybe mentioned here before: the owner of a pizza joint we sometimes grabs a couple pies from (and who's usually still behind the counter most nights) is one of a dozen or so people in MLB history whose sole career hit was a home run. I believe he went 1-4 total across a few games during his cup of coffee.

https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/st-louis-cardinals-san-francisco-giants-doug-clarey-one-done-092215

Keith McDonald had 3 hits, all homers, in his 8 game career: http://www.baseballroundtable.com/keith-mcdonald-2018-paciorek-award-winner-made-a-career-out-of-going-yard/

yeah but how is his pizza

six players in (known) history have played with more than 700 different teammates. edwin jackson is now second, with 763. name any of the other five and guess the leader:

A few guesses: Bartolo, Julio Franco, Ted Lyons, Phil Neikro.

for longevity and multiple teams, Rickey Henderson comes to mind

rickey is indeed one of them. (and also one of edwin jackson's teammates). none of clemenza's are.

i would never have gotten the number one guy, but the others are known guys who played fairly recently. one of them is canadian

is octavio dotel one of them?

Orosco?

steve pearce maybe as of today?

i rmeember thinking "i hope pearce plays for the red sox one day so he can be a trivia question about players who have played for the entire AL east" and sure enough! dunno how to look it up but i wonder if any other players have played for every team in a division...

steve pearce *is* about to complete his AL East collection in just six years, which is sort of impressive

eric hinske was close, but never got to baltimore

not orosco either, although two of them (besides rickey) did play for the mets

was dotel one of them tho? i feel REAL good abt that one

(also i have no other guesses if colon isn't in there)

dotel is a good try; he's in the high 600s