Rank baseball feats/records in order of impressiveness

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.