Unusual Records

I’m going to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that I knew there were two different Alex Gonzalezes.

I don't know where to put this...

Posnanski was writing about Luis Tiant today. Where he and Gibson stood on July 4, 1968:

Gibson: 10-5, 1.13 ERA, 151 innings, 109 Ks, 31 walks, .180 batting average against
Tiant: 13-5, 1.11 ERA, 146 innings, 150 Ks, 43 walks, .161 batting average against

Tiant, at that point, was having a better season than what is generally considered the greatest season (or at least the equal of one of Pedro's big two) by a post-war starter.

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

Made me smile:

Today's news prompted me to look up Satchel Paige, wondering if he might be in line for any records. Not close. But I did find out that the active leader in complete games, Verlander with 26, is not in the Top 1,000 on the all-time list, but a whole bunch of guys with 1 are tied for 98th on the active list.

Can one game have any predictive value for the HOF? Found this reader e-mail to James today fascinating.

There are 13 pitchers who have had game scores of at least 100 in a 9 inning game. Of these, 9 are either in the Hall of Fame (Spahn, Koufax, Ryan, Randy Johnson, or have a very good chance to be selected (Schilling, Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander, Gerrit Cole). The other four were Nap Rucker, Kerry Wood, Brandon Morrow, and Matt Cain. Can you think of anything else a player can do in 3% of his season that comes close to being this predictive of his chances of making the Hall?

And Wood and Cain had potential HOF careers derailed by injury.

20K games have (what should be) an 75% HOF success rate:
clemens, randy johnson, kerry wood, max scherzer

Can't seem to conjure one up on the internet, but I think a list of 15-plus-Ks/no-walks games also yields a high percentage of HOF'ers.

was wondering if 4 HR games might also be predictive but then I remember that Scooter Gennett had one

lol, I did the very same!

mark whiten is in *my* hall of fame

a clear hall of famer, it skews the sample

anyway four-homer games have five of 18 in the hall (and gil hodges was pretty close)

A reader wrote into James yesterday pointing out that Juan Marichal's debut--a 1-hit shutout--was the highest 9-inning Game Score of his career.

As mentioned in the piece, this last happened in 1990 with Eddie Murray.

https://www.mlb.com/news/starling-marte-batting-average-stolen-base-history

this is unbelievably stupid:

Enter: Willie McGee. He hit .335 in 542 plate appearances for the Cardinals, through Aug. 29. That day, like Marte, he was traded to the A’s, with whom he finished up the season. He hit .274 in 123 plate appearances in Oakland, finishing with a .324 average overall.

But since he was traded across leagues, that .335 average in the NL froze the moment he put on an A’s uniform. And since he was traded in August and had accumulated enough plate appearances to be qualified at the end of the season, he led the NL in batting average and won the batting title -- despite finishing the season in an A’s uniform, and with an overall batting average below Murray’s .330.

in the modern era, analysts try to systematize the game. but willie mcgee knew how to game the system, which is why he is an icon

i’m told that seattle has won 12 straight against oakland, all while the latter was 10+ games over .500, and that such a thing has never happened before

Toronto and Boston are a mess, but if they can rouse themselves enough over the weekend to win two (Toronto) and one (Boston) games, the AL East will have four 90-win teams.

https://baseballcloud.blog/2021/09/24/divisional-diversity-4-90-win-teams-2-100-win-teams-0-90-win-teams/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=divisional-diversity-4-90-win-teams-2-100-win-teams-0-90-win-teams

This has happened only once before in the divisional era: 1978, also the AL East (the Bucky Dent year), but when there were seven teams. It's never happened since going to six divisions in 1993.

i’m stoked for the madness but as a Boston fan i have to say i think they’re least deserving of the four so should probably just forfeit on principle

They're more deserving than the Mariners, though, and that's who's probably going to take the wild card.

(Second wild-card, that is.)

For what it's worth, the '78 AL East has it all over the AL East this year. In '78 you had: peak '70s Yankees/Red Sox teams, producing probably the greatest divisional race ever and the eventual WS winner; a typically excellent Orioles-dynasty-era team; and a Brewers team on their way to becoming the great '82 team ("Harvey's Wallbangers"). There was even a fifth team, the Tigers, who didn't win 90 (86-76) but was the beginning of the run they had in the '80s (sophomore seasons for Trammell/Whitaker/Parrish). I count 13 HOF'ers from those five teams, minimum of two each.

This year? A (to me) weirdly overachieving Tampa team, okay Red Sox/Yankee teams, and a young and erratic Jays team. HOF...Stanton and Sale, maybe Bogarts or Cole or Chapman, and then you have to start looking at guys as young as Guerrero and Franco. I think the 90-win seasons have more to do with the rest of the league.

The Jays are actually pretty comparable to the '78 Tigers.

weirdly overachieving Tampa team

will likely be historically notable for having rookie Wander Franco on the team

oops, saw you noted that just after. but yeah, the "young guys" are not an afterthought. in the same way you remember the Tigers for having Trammell and Whitaker on there, the blue jays alone have Vlad and Bo Bichette

no respect for MLB’s all-time K/9 starter, i see

xp sorry clemenza, i posted before reading everything you wrote - i see you already directly compared the jays and the '78 tigers too!

i just wanted to talk about baseball and got excited <3

This qualifies as unusual these days: as i write this, Juan Soto has struck out only 10 times in his last 150 plate appearances. The last one happened just seconds ago.

note: this was published late last week; mullins and zunino did in fact complete this feat while gallo just missed

The Future of Baseball Is Chris Hoiles
By Jordan Ellenberg

CEDRIC MULLINS, THE center fielder for the Baltimore Orioles, is on the verge of making history. No, not because he last week he became the first Orioles player ever to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season. It’s because, with only 59 runs batted in to go with those 30 HR, he is on the verge of finishing below the Hoiles Line -— the condition of having exactly twice as many RBI as home runs.

The Hoiles Line is named after Chris Hoiles, the stalwart slugging catcher of the '90s Orioles teams, who is probably best known for having achieved the ultimate in baseball heroism on May 17, 1996, when he hit a grand slam with two outs and a full count in the bottom of the ninth inning, with his team trailing by three runs. Four years before that, though, Hoiles distinguished himself another way: by playing a full season while hitting 20 home runs and driving in only 40 runs.

Ever since then, we've been keeping an eye on the stats to see which players manage to match or exceed that performance. A season below the Hoiles Line is one in which you drive yourself in more than you do everybody else on the team put together.

It’s not an easy thing to do. Traditionally, sluggers who hit a lot of home runs also collect a lot of RBIs. In the whole history of baseball, only ten times has a player with at least 350 plate appearances finished at or below the Hoiles Line. But we are entering the age of Hoiles. Of those ten seasons, five have come since 2016. (And of the remaining five, two came from Barry Bonds in 2001 and 2003, when he broke the Hoiles Line along with all the normal parameters of baseball; Bonds couldn't drive in his teammates because in any remotely threatening situation, pitchers would just intentionally walk him.)

Twenty-first century baseball has been relentlessly optimizing itself toward having pitchers strike out as many batters as possible, while hitters swing for the fences and don't mind if they whiff while trying to hit one out. Or else, like the ever-patient Chris Hoiles used to, those hitters settle for a walk, letting someone else try to collect the RBI. In this all-or-nothing environment, as batting averages drop to their lowest level in generations, there aren't many people trying to drive in runners from second base with a sharp single—or getting themselves to second base for someone else to knock in, either.

Now, heading into the final weekend of 2021, we have the chance to see something really unprecedented: three Hoiles Line seasons in a single year. Besides Mullins, there’s Joey Gallo of the Yankees, who already Hoiles-ed in 2017 and currently sits at 38 HR and 76 RBI; and Mike Zunino of the Tampa Bay Rays, a full 3 RBI under the line at 32 HR and 61 RBI.

Gallo is hitting .199 and leading the majors in strikeouts, and Zunino has nearly as many strikeouts as Gallo per at-bat. They’re classic Hoiles Line sluggers. Mullins isn’t. Baltimore's speedy young outfielder is batting .297, and his 37 doubles and 5 triples would be the most a Hoiles Line hitter has ever had in the live-ball era.

The usual way to land under the Hoiles Line is simply to strike out whenever you don't homer. Cedric Mullins has discovered another way: to play on a team like the 2021 Orioles, where the batters ahead of you never get on base. Mullins is Baltimore's leadoff man. The first time he steps up to the plate in any game, the bases are automatically empty. For the rest of his plate appearances, the bases are almost automatically empty—the Orioles' seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-place hitters have combined to bat .210 with an on-base percentage of .271. There will be more hitters posting Hoiles Line seasons, the way baseball is played now. But there may not be many of those seasons as good, or as wasted, as the one Cedric Mullins is about to wind down.

that is super interesting.

Don't know if it's a record, but one of Thermo's FB posts prompted me to look up Tony Gwynn's career splits, and Gwynn hit .302 for his career with two strikes (2053 plate appearances). I find that other-worldly. Checked Ichiro as a point of comparison: .253 over 4456 PA. (So Gwynn's splits are incomplete--and sure enough, nothing for Carew.)

According to this piece, it is indeed Gwynn. followed by bonds, then Helton!

but ya. probably not a lot of info on that going back a little.

That’s extraordinary.

I would have thought Boggs was up there. Whenever he got to two strikes my dad would go “now he’s got him right where he wants him.”

Looks like he was .262. Respectable but not even close.

http://baseballspast.com/samplepage_files/11094_master_%202_strike_hitting.pdf

Never thought to check Boggs--should have. I really wonder about Carew; wouldn't be shocked if he was .275+, he had amazing bat control.

gwynn's 1997, especially - .358 even with 2-strikes!

oh – and the post that got clem and i talking about two-strike hitting, was a video i shared of every two-strike foul ball Bo Bichette hit last season (there was well over 200, easily leading the league). he also led baseball, by a wide margin in total foul balls at 664.

haha, being awesome at hitting foul balls is very bad for watching baseball, but very good for Bo Bichette! stick control