trivial occurrences 2018

to retire

dear Baltimore Orioles, I will CRUSH this record, hire me

Put it in the record books—the Mariners have hit a home run in 1️⃣5️⃣ straight games to start the season. 💥 pic.twitter.com/tIAHp1lZNC

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) April 11, 2019

if dee gordon hits a home run and nobody is in the stands to see it, does it count for runs

Mitch Garver is leading off tonight for the Twins. He's the first Twins catcher to bat leadoff in a game since Butch Wynegar in 1980.

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) April 15, 2019

I'm going to go by memory here and not check this first: in my mind, Wynegar and Wockenfuss were both considered fast for catchers?

15 career SB between them, so maybe not...(They did total 26 triples).

i had a memory of Carlton Fisk having had a season w/a lot of triples and he did, he led the AL in triples with 9 in his rookie season. weirdly he also stole 17(!) bases in 1985, tying a career high. this was the same season he hit a career high 37 home runs, all at age 37. I remember him being slow, but i may also be mixing it up with how long he took to take a single AB. considering the length of his career behind the dish i suspect he was just a more elite athlete than he appeared to be.

I think I was getting my '70s W-catchers mixed up: it was John Wathan who stole all the bases (seasonal high of 36, 105 in 860 career games).

i don't know where else to put these random bits of info regarding future 3,000 career hit possibilities:

there are currently four active players with over 2,000 hits:

Pujols - 3,093
Cabrera - 2,692
Cano - 2,484
Markakis - 2,256

Pujols and Cabrera look like toast, Cano is 36 and may very well be (that K rate is presently a bit worrisome for him), and the best player out of that group now appears to be Markakis. I'd be surprised if he's able to get enough playing time to reach 3k, he's in that "Mark Grace with the Arizona Diamondbacks" phase of his career.

the list of active players at least halfway there with 1,500+ career hits is this:

Ian Kinsler (14, 37) - 1,951
Melky Cabrera (15, 34) - 1,874
Yadier Molina (16, 36) - 1,865
Adam Jones (14, 33) - 1,836
Hanley Ramirez (15, 35) - 1,834
Ryan Braun (13, 35) - 1,814
Dustin Pedroia (14, 35) - 1,805
Matt Kemp (14, 34) - 1,778
Curtis Granderson (16, 38) - 1,749
Ryan Zimmerman (15, 34) - 1,749
Joey Votto (13, 35) - 1,742
Edwin Encarnacion (15, 36) - 1,723
Hunter Pence (13, 36) - 1,709
Andrew McCutchen (11, 32) - 1,625
Howie Kendrick (14, 35) - 1,617
Justin Upton (12, 31) - 1,604
Evan Longoria (12, 33) - 1,602
Nelson Cruz (15, 38) - 1,590
Elvis Andrus (11, 30) - 1,585
Asdrubal Cabrera (13, 33) - 1,543
Ben Zobrist (14, 38) - 1,540
Brian McCann (15, 35) - 1,526
Shin-Soo Choo (15, 36) - 1,515

Andrus seems like he'd have the best shot out of that group, which isn't to say it's likely.

Going down to guys with 1200+ career hits (Trout is at 1,202), it looks like only he and Altuve (1,441 hits at age 29) seem like good bets. But also Trout seems like a guy who will walk more and more as time goes on, I could see him getting Bonds'd when it comes to 3k.

Castro, Hosmer, and Freeman are all between 1200 and 1500 career hits at 29 years old but I don't know....

It's only of interest to me because of the relative frequency with which players have joined the club in recent decades.

going back there were a few major gaps:

- 17 years between Eddie Collins and Paul Waner

- 16 between Waner and Musial

- 12 between Musial and Aaron

since then the longest break was 7 years between Carew and Yount, but since Yount there have been 15 more players who have joined (in 26 years).

Miggy may suck now, but he'll make it to 3000 with ease. all he has to do is eke out 60 hits a year between now and the end of his contract

i guess it all depends on how much he wants the 3k and how long the Tigers will run him out there regularly...

i suppose, but then he only had 40 last year. i can see him rupturing more things than his biceps in the years to come

the tigers are 9-9 and shane greene has earned the save in all their wins

Cabrera would do well to retire, but if he gets another 100 hits this year, I'd say he makes it with relative ease.

Agree with Andrus on both counts: best bet from the middle group, but not a good one. There are so many relatively anonymous middle infielders who hit ~30 with ~1500 hits; if they haven't had star seasons by that point, they just don't last long enough. (I did mention Andrus on the underrated thread the other day, though.) I've been fooled many times.

I'd say yes to Trout and Altuve, then I think you drop down to Acuna, Albies, and Soto.

Check that, there's also another group nestled between Trout/Altuve and the three young guys: Betts, Lindor, Bogarts, etc. I'm sure at least one of those guys will make a run at 3,000.

Mets are the first NL team in more than 110 years to have three pitchers homer in the first 25 games of a season.

The Cubs are the first team since the Blue Jays in 2010 to hit multiple 2 out, 3 run homers (or better) in the same inning.

nationals are the first team to have three players under 22yo (soto, robles, kieboom) homer in the same game

Congrats on your first @MLB win, Elvis Luciano!

His milestones:
- FIRST player born in the 2000s to get a win
- Youngest pitcher in #BlueJays HISTORY to get a win pic.twitter.com/i9vukirSGg

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 28, 2019

alex bregman has drawn a walk in 10 straight games; the last astro to do that was noted moneyball-hater joe morgan in 1970

Cloggin' up the basepaths!

Noah Syndergaard is the 1st pitcher to throw a shutout and win 1-0 on his own solo HR since Bob Welch for the Dodgers on June 17, 1983...also vs the Reds.

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) May 2, 2019

would never have thought it's been that long

p sure Seaver did it at least once, maybe Koosman too

Noah Syndergaard is the eighth pitcher since 1908 to throw a shutout and hit a HR in a 1-0 win (seventh, if you don't include that 1915 Federal League game) pic.twitter.com/N1HudLpPrN

— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) May 2, 2019

i was wrong obv

bet i listened to or watched that Pizarro game

not a bad list of pitchers

though Juan Pizarro having thrown 17 career shutouts is another eye-opener on how how baseball has changed over the past several decades. Pizarro World.

getting *more* trivial: thor, wynn and ruffing were the only ones with 10+ K

tbf syndergaard got some help on the last couple

is throwing a shutout and hitting the only run for your team literally worth one (1.0) WAR or is the whole system dumb and bad

not unless thor played all of the defensive positions too!

even then, i don't think it would add up to 1.0 WAR. WAR doesn't know that the solo HR ended up being the difference in the game. it would just know how much a HR, on average, contributes to a win (i think)

the stat you might be looking for here is WPA (win probability added): https://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2019-05-02&team=Mets&dh=0&season=2019

by that measure, syndergaard had .686 WPA through his pitching, and added another .062 through his solo HR, for a total of .748 WPA. not too shabby

Yeah WAR just measures performance against a league average player, you're probably thinking more along the lines of Win Shares (a James-ian concept that has fallen out of vogue).

or WPA I guess (I'm less familiar with that).

haha yeah i am just being a goof over here :) pretty damn cool tho winning on yr own (w/ defense's help ofc)

Would be interesting to see a list of pitchers with a combination of the most strikeouts complete games AND offensive production (esp. HRs) if it were easy to filter...

i decided to take the plunge and pay $2 to use the baseball-reference Play Index for 24 hours.

i desperately needed to know if there were any pitchers with shutouts and 2 or more home runs. turns out there were four!

https://i.imgur.com/UhZz1BL.png

of those, sonny siebert's game in sept. '71 was the only one where he plated all of the runs, with all 3 RBIs via his 2 HRs

I didn't quite do that right (some of the pitchers on that list didn't get a complete game because other pitchers were used). but the four on top all threw a CG

i have much to learn during my remaining 23 hours

Jesse Winker has 23 career home runs. He has at least one in all nine spots of the batting order.

— David Laurila (@DavidLaurilaQA) May 6, 2019

Pablo Sandoval on Monday became the first major league player since 1905 to hit a home run, steal a base and post a scoreless outing in the same game.

Sandoval achieved the feat in the San Francisco Giants' 12-4 loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Monday.

The only other time the feat was achieved, it was also accomplished by a Giants player in a game against the Reds. Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson threw nine shutout innings, hit a homer and stole a base in a victory on May 23, 1905, according to the Elias Sports Bureau's data.

I'm not sure which is more mind-blowing: Sandoval somehow pulling this off, or the fact that the same teams were involved the only other time it happened.

it's the stealing a base i'm finding hard to believe

The first five guys in the Rays batting order today have four-letter last names.

Whit and Mondesi are both on pace for 20 homers, 20 doubles, 20 triples and 20 steals. There are four members of the 20-20-20-20 club. Ever.

— David Lesky (@DBLesky) May 8, 2019

This sounds like a club Ricky Henderson would be in

I think either Yount or Brett did that in the late '70s.

Nope. Brett came real close in '79: 42/20/23/17--three SB short. Yount was 49/10/23/20 in 1980--he covered three of them but was 10 triples short, which isn't exactly close.

.@JoeyGallo24 is the first player in @MLB history to hit his 100th HR before his 100th single. 👀

h/t: @EliasSports pic.twitter.com/FnwZ44vJBC

— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) May 8, 2019

Holy shit, that’s kind of amazing

not even close

This is my new favorite stat.

Fewest career singles at time of 100th HR
1) Joey Gallo: 93
2) Russell Branyan: 172
3) Ken Phelps: 174
4) Ryan Howard: 176
5) Chris Carter: 179
6) Dave Kingman: 180

Great breakdown from @SlangsOnSports https://t.co/TzebRczUmf

— Matt Meyers (@mtmeyers) May 8, 2019