Rank baseball feats/records in order of impressiveness

I missed his presentation.

Warning: ****************counting stats alert****************

A round-up of some benchmarks reached this year:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/09/2013-milestone-musings-batters-edition/

Truly bizarre: "Albert is the youngest to hit his 500th double or, to be precise, tied for the youngest with Joe Medwick, each reaching that milestone aged exactly 32 years, 250 days (I kid you not)."

helton got his 2500th hit today

helton's gonna be another borderline case. don't know if i can see him getting in

He'll be a major point of contention for sure. You've got to figure out his career through the simultaneous distortion of Coors and the peak years of the offensive boom.

I'd be inclined to put him in based on this interpretation of his home/road stats: he's Dave Winfield on the road (.288/.387/.470), Jimmie Foxx at home (.346/.442/.607). But I know that's a very simplified way to look at it--I certainly understand the reasons for not wanting to put him in.

In a world where Jeff Bagwell sailed in on the first ballot, Helton would go in, but we seem to be living in a much stupider world.

Helton's case is weak. Short peak, extreme park effects, lowish career WAR, clearly not the best 1B or possibly even fifth best 1B at any point during his career. He's like the poor man's Palmiero minus the drugs.

Amazed at how shitty JAWs scores are for some HOF 1B people.

yeah i wouldn't vote for helton

1B wasn't a premium offensive position until the last 30 years or so, which explains the relatively low JAWS scores. Helton has a good HOF case if you compare him to the JAWS averages, but if you compare him to other 1B of his era, he's borderline at best.

Question: does players inducted for reasons non-related to their being players (Comiskey for example) do they count for the JAWS average?

clearly not the best 1B or possibly even fifth best 1B at any point during his career

I guess that depends on how wide your lens is for the concept of "point." Surely he's one of the Top 5 from 2000-2004. After Pujols, and arguably Delgado and Giambi (whose 2004 was a write-off because of injury), who was better? Maybe I'm forgetting someone. (Bagwell starts coming out of his prime in 2000.)

Pujols
Thomas
Thome
Bagwell
Palmiero

who were I was thinking. Admittedly at various points Helton was probably better than all but Pujols.

And around those guys though you have:

Olerud
Delgado
Giambi
Berkman
Teixeira
Gonzales
Votto

Just a ridiculous era for 1B dudes really.

I think Helton has a strong case as being the second-best first baseman in baseball for that specific 2000-2004 window. (I've only skimmed, but I suspect WAR agrees: 37.4 for those five seasons.) I'm not saying that's enough to warrant HOF induction. When you think of the huge seasons that came out of Coors, the range of players goes from Larry Walker to Jeffrey Hammonds. That's a qualifier that invites major skepticism, even after WAR supposedly makes the necessary adjustments.

How's that for timing?

http://mlb.si.com/2013/09/02/todd-helton-2500th-hit-rockies-hall-of-fame/?sct=hp_wr_a3&eref=sihp

(Since we were all sparked by the 2,500th hit, actually not especially coincidental.)

Jaffe's HOF verdict: "very reasonable but hardly air-tight."

Todd Helton retires as after playing his whole career in Colorado, he will get some of the same consideration given to other one club greats. It won't blot it out, but it will be in the mix along with the Mile High stat boost. Got to say though he looks a heck of a lot more like Mark Grace after the humidor kicked in.

Considering how insane Helton's hitting line was in 2000, it goes to show how crazy the hitting stats were overall that he didn't win an MVP. That 103 extra base hits and hitting .372 just looks like something out of a video game and he only struck out like 61 times. That is putting the wood on the baseball. It's a very good peak hitting season, one of the best.

i think i'd unfairly written him off because of the coors effect. the humidor showed up earlier in his career than i originally thought. his iso took a serious dip afterwards - but it was still very good for about 4 years before his power really started to vanish.
still, only a 55.8 fWAR for his career... but jesus was he ever good at getting on base. i'm really on the fence now.

even after WAR supposedly makes the necessary adjustments.

"supposedly"

nuthin like eternal "Coors, Coors" skepticism. Good thing Mike Trout didn't come up with Colorado.

Jesus, man--you may have noticed that I seem more receptive to Helton's case than everyone else posting here. I'll be sure to choose my words more carefully.

It just seems like you doubt that WAR adjusts for home park. Is it such a herculean task that it can't possibly be done?

i'm with Clems here - when you look at Helton or Walker's splits - it doesn't feel like WAR has been adjusted enough. Not saying it's wrong wrong wrong all the time – just that I don't think it's always bang on.

(xpost) I know WAR adjusts for home park! If you go back to my sentence --

"...a qualifier that invites major skepticism, even after WAR supposedly makes the necessary adjustments"

-- I'm just saying that when you've got guys like Jeffrey Hammonds and Vinny Castilla having HOF-type seasons, that there's still going to be skepticism after those adjustments. You're reading too much into the "supposedly." It's just the way I write.

Fernandez has an outside shot at the single-season K/9 record. He's about 0.35 K/9 behind Randy Johnson in 2001 (and 0.15 behind Pedro's 1999). But making up that gap over 12 more starts will be extremely difficult. If he gets 75 more innings in, he'd have to strike guys out at a rate of 13.8/9 IP.

RBIs were mentioned upthread a great many years ago… but if that single season record is so beatable, how come no one has come close in my lifetime? We now have 4 players in that time set an insane mark for home runs, we’ve gone through a decade of some of the most epic league-wide hitting ever - and yet no one approached the RBI record at all. And it’s not even close - the only modern players even on the leader board are Manny and Sosa at #14 & 21.

What is going on with modern baseball that is preventing guys from getting RBIs like they used to? Is it just that you don’t see dudes playing a full 162 game season anymore? All the top-10 season RBI guys did it in the 20s-30s. What gives?! Was it maybe the sudden and brutal end to the dead all era before pitchers could adjust?!

Surely it’s at least partly to do with pitching?

According to Sports Reference, batters have more strikeouts than hits for the fourth straight season

Based on runs scored I’m guessing Hack Wilson had Kiki Cuyler and Woody English batting ahead of him (155 and 152 runs scored, respectively) and each had 200+ hits, and Cuyler also had 72 walks and English had 100 (the rare 200/100 season!) Lots of good circumstances. You’ve gotta have one of those all time great power+hitting seasons like Wilson (who also had 200+ hits and 100+ walks) and have guys in front of you who do the same.

Recent examples that were up there: Ramirez with 165 and Sosa with 160. Ramirez had Lofton and Alomar ahead of him and they were at their usual HOF caliber. Sosa had no one nearly as good, no one else who scored even 100 runs. Eric Young had 98. Sammy really needed those HR to get that RBI total up.

the dodgers lead the league in scoring and they don't have a single player over 100 RBI, even with freeman and trea playing every single game. i'm not gonna say that record is untouchable, but it would take a massive boost in the run scoring environment for it to be possible. if manny couldn't get within 25 batting cleanup all year for the one of the best offenses of all time, we're gonna need juiced balls, a shrunken strike zone, bases bigger than the pitching mound and better steroids to get there

The NL (league average) slashed .303/.360/.448 in 1930. No other season even comes close. It's a perfect storm of high OBP's everywhere in the lineup, a great power hitter, low league strikeout rates, and a fair share of luck.

Hack Wilson drove in 164 runs in 427 PA with men on base in 1930. That works out to 0.38 RBI/PA.

Manny Ramirez drove in 147 runs in 351 PA with men on base in 1999 -- 0.42 RBI/PA, better than Wilson! He played in just 144 games and drove in 165 runs! It's definitely a breakable record, but the conditions for doing it are probably a once in a generation thing.

Probably even less than once a generation.

four guys in wilson's lineup w/ better than a .400 obp is nuts.

I remember checking the back of Mattingly’s card and seeing that 145 RBI season and thinking that was just astronomical. But since then, 43 different times a player has had 140+ rbi, all from 1996 - 2009.

Griffey, Juan Gone, Sosa, Howard, and Manny each did it three times.

It was actually the Cardinals who led the NL in runs in 1930 with 1,004 (six more than the Cubs), even though Frankie Frisch's 114 was enough to lead the team, and only one other guy had 100.

Forgot that Manny had 165 RBI despite missing some time (actually looks like it was 147 games) I mean that’s just absurd.

probably easy enough to do, but i'd like to see the record for the % of a team's regular season RBIs a player drove in. hack wilson's 191 RBIs were 19.1% of the 1930 cub's 998 runs. last year, salvador perez's MLB-leading 121 RBIs were 17.6% of the royal's 686 runs.

(manny's 165 RBIs in 1999 were 16.3% of cleveland's 1009 runs)

one reason that baseball writing is a lucrative and recommend profession is that you could spin "what is the record for highest % of a team's runs driven in" into a 36-part, 100,000 word content factory that could be updated every 5 years

Sign me up...in 1972, Nate Colbert's 111 RBI accounted for 22.7% of the Padres' 488 runs.

Thought Andre Dawson’s 1987 season might come close, and it wasn’t too far off. 137 RBIs, 19% of the runs scored for the Cubs.

four guys in wilson's lineup w/ better than a .400 obp is nuts.

― j.q higgins, Sunday, October 2, 2022 11:56 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

cleveland in '99 had 5! 6 if you want to round up vizquel's .397, which i do

looking into hack wilson's 1930, it's interesting. he spent the entire year batting cleanup. he probably would've had even more RBI if mccarthy hadn't spent the first ~1/3 of the season batting cliff heathcote and footsie blair in the 2 hole. it took heathcote BABIPing himself out of a job and hornsby getting injured to create the english-cuyler-wilson 2-3-4 which that lasted the rest of the season. it especially helps that cuyler had 50 doubles and 17 triples and only 13 home runs.

hornsby was also a factor though... wilson batted directly behind him 23 times that year. and he still had a .385 OBP in those games but for some reason he only managed 2 HR after hitting 39 the year before. and this was (mostly) before he broke his ankle. if hornsby had stayed healthy and had a fairly normal season power-wise, wilson might not have come close to 191. though if he'd also had a fairly normal season OBP-wise wilson and cuyler (pushed to the 5 hole) might have both broken 200. if hornsby were healthy and mccarthy committed to an english-cuyler-hornsby-wilson 1-2-3-4 instead of insisting on the dreaded footsie as a leadoff hitter for some reason, then hack wilson would've had approximately 500 RBIs. and they might have won the pennant.

So basically. If someone were to ever beat this record, they would need to be a great power/contact hitter, who doesn’t strikeout a lot (I guess for productive outs?), who has three high OBP, speedy, no-power hitters in front of him. (Aka this will never happen)

All of this has given me a reason to look at the 1999 Cleveland batting stats and Jesus if those guys had even remotely decent pitching beyond the merely pretty good season Bartolo Colon had (he went 18-5 w/an ERA just under 4) they would’ve won 110 games. As it was, the rotation was otherwise poor.

Charles Nagy, 17-11 with a 4.95 era!

In their everyday nine, they had 1) three HOF'ers (even though Baines shouldn't be); 2) Manny, who'd be in except-except; 3) Lofton, who should be; and 4) Vizquel, who probably would have eventually made it except-except. That'd be six HOF'ers. (I don't know why Baseball Reference has Baines as their everyday DH--he had 96 PA with Cleveland. Baseball Reference still lists Zack Collins as the Jays' everyday DH this year, and he hasn't been with the team for months.)

And Travis Fryman and David Justice on the downsides of their careers.

Plus Richie Sexson, whose stats that year were pretty impressive.