Looking at the Game of Baseball from all ends of the Spectrum
The invaluable stat resource Baseball-Reference.com is conducting a survey now on how they can improve their site. If you use B-R, I encourage you to hop on over there and fill out their survey form.
I just took it myself. It took me just 5 minutes to fill out but it does ask some great questions especially in terms of what areas you would like for them to focus their energies on in the future.
So, if you can spare five minutes of your busy day, take Baseball Referenceās Survey.
Kudos to Baseball Reference again, this time for their āShareā feature that they just implemented in their stat pages.
The Share feature does what it impliesā¦ it allows people to share any stats on almost any Baseball Reference stat page in a variety of formats.
The formats available are html table, bbcode, a javascript widget, an html iframe, pre-formatted text, comma delimited file or just simply a hyperlink. Those baseball bloggers, forum posters and stat hounds who frequently cite baseball statistics will find this very useful.
Just browse to the stat page you want to quote and click the āShareā link. Since Clyde Vollmer was born today, Iāll use his batting stats as an example. The āSharing Toolboxā will then come up.
This is where the best feature comes up. Donāt want to display the CS stats? Not interested in the age of the player? Not to worry, BR has allowed for us to customize the display of the table by deleting columns or rows that you want.
Just click on the red X of any unwanted column or row and it wonāt appear in the final result. Thereās also a red X within an arrow on each row and column that will delete trailing ones.
In Vollmerās case, Iām going to make his table a simple one with just homeruns and rbis. Iāll click on the red arrow on the rbi column deleting everything to the right of it. I then deleted every other column except Tm, Lg, HR, and RBI. Not being interested in per team stats I deleted every row below his career stats, too.
Donāt forget, stat tables in Baseball Reference allow you to click on stat column headers to sort by stat categories. In my example with Vollmer though, Iāll keep it in chronological order.
Once you get the stat table the way you want it, click on the format type you want. A window will then pop up giving you the code or link you need.
In the Vollmer case, I clicked html table and was given html code for a table.
Here is the result for Clyde Vollmerās homerun and rbi totals for his career:
| Year | Tm | Lg | HR | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1942 | CIN | NL | 1 | 4 |
| 1946 | CIN | NL | 0 | 1 |
| 1947 | CIN | NL | 1 | 13 |
| 1948 | TOT | MLB | 0 | 0 |
| 1948 | CIN | NL | 0 | 0 |
| 1948 | WSH | AL | 0 | 0 |
| 1949 | WSH | AL | 14 | 59 |
| 1950 | TOT | AL | 7 | 38 |
| 1950 | WSH | AL | 0 | 1 |
| 1950 | BOS | AL | 7 | 37 |
| 1951 | BOS | AL | 22 | 85 |
| 1952 | BOS | AL | 11 | 50 |
| 1953 | TOT | AL | 11 | 74 |
| 1953 | BOS | AL | 0 | 0 |
| 1953 | WSH | AL | 11 | 74 |
| 1954 | WSH | AL | 2 | 15 |
| 10 Seasons | 69 | 339 | ||
There you go. A reasonably good looking table that was easy to generate (probably easier than I made it sound). Itās easy enough to go into the code and remove the link to B-R but why be a tool? Itās the least I could do.
It should be emphasized that this feature works from almost any stat page in Baseball Reference. Splits, Game logs, team stats, you name it.
Oh managers pages too. I just used it in a recent post about Bobby Cox.
In this day and age when MLB is trying their best to lay claim to baseball statistics as a commodity, it nice to see Baseball Reference making it easy to share them. Keep up the good work, B-R!
When comparing baseball stats between seasons, I sometimes catch myself when I come across a stat from maybe 1994 or perhaps 1981. Then one second before I realize āOh yeah, the strike-shortened yearā or whatever.
So for my own edification then anything, here are the list of baseball seasons that were shortened by labor strikes, lockouts, or whatever reason and the number of actual games played that season.
Disclaimer: The amount of games played indicated are approximate figures. Obviously in the cases of mid-season interruptions, some teams played more, some less.
1918 |
129 games played |
The season was shortened due to World War I.
1919 |
140 games played |
Team owners decided to shorten the season to 140 games in 1919 in anticipation of low attendance (because of WWI in the previous years). Attendance actually surprised them and was high and they turned a profit.
1972 |
156 games played |
Due to the 1972 Major League Baseball Strike.
1981 |
111 games played |
Due to the 1981 Major League Baseball Strike.
1994 |
117 games played |
Due to the 1994 Major League Baseball Strike.
1995 |
144 games played |
The 1995 season was abbreviated to 144 games because of the strike the previous year.
Also note that in the years 1901-1903 in both leagues, the seasons only consisted of 140 games.
Interesting piece on ESPN Chicago about Cubs OF Sam Fuld. Not only is he a decent outfielder but he is a stathead too.
"He was only 5 or 6 and he was already computing batting averages and ERAs," (father) Ken said. "He’d sit in the bathtub, and I’d say ‘If a guy goes 17-for-37, what’s his batting average?’ What struck me is that he’d perform these operations in very creative ways — not just that he got the right answer, but his methodology, adding in a factor and then dividing by 10, etc. I’d watch him and say ‘wow,’ just like I said ‘wow’ when he used to hit."
The love for stats apparently continued as he grew up. Fuld, an economics major at Stanford, even interned at Stats Inc.
Playing around with Baseball Referenceās Play Index today, I decided to see which hitters were hitting the long ball but not driving in so many runs. Here are the five batters from the first half of 2009 with the lowest rbis totals with at least 15 homeruns.
Batter RBI HR1 Chris Davis 33 15 2 Troy Tulowitzki 37 16 3 Jay Bruce 41 18 4 Hank Blalock 42 19 5 Curtis Granderson 43 18
Here is the full list with all stats.
Granderson gets a bye here since he primarily leads off but the others need a better excuse.
No surprise here. We find batters with low batting averages (Bruce-.207) or worse a low batting average AND a high strikeout rate (Davis- 114 Ks and a .202 BA).
As for Tulowitzki, his .164 average probably accounts for his low rbi total.
Just for kicks, if I dial the homerun requirement down to 10, here are the results:
Batter RBI HR1 Josh Willingham 26 12 2 Ken Griffey 26 10 3 A.J. Pierzynski 27 10 4 Mike Jacobs 30 12 5 Scott Hairston 31 11
Some surprises here. I wouldnāt have expected to see Josh Williamham (.304) on this list though playing for the Nats could account for this. Griffey and Jacobs both are having sub-par years in their other stat categories (ok, maybe sub-par is the wrong term to useā¦ Jacobs is having about the year we would expect).
AJ is hitting .299 playing for relatively offensively-minded team. He is hitting .226 with RISP. Not good but at the same time but four of his 10 homers have come in this situation. Strange.
If youāre wondering, Alfonso Soriano comes up #8 on this list with 33 rbis on 14 homers.
And to add some historical perspective, I cranked up some all time Wasted Power numbers. This time I took the homerun requirement up to 30. So here is the top ten list of the lowest amount of rbis for any batter who hit 30 or more homeruns:
Batter RBI HR1 Rob Deer 64 32 1992 2 Felix Mantilla 64 30 1964 3 Hanley Ramirez 67 33 2008 4 Brad Wilkerson 67 32 2004 5 Chris Young 68 32 2007 6 Brook Jacoby 69 32 1987 7 Alfonso Soriano 70 33 2007 8 Jose Valentin 70 30 2004 9 Rocky Colavito 72 30 1966 10 Mark McGwire 73 32 2000
Like Granderson, last yearās Hanley Ramirez and 2007ās Alfonso Soriano can be excused because their managers deemed them fit to lead off instead of using their power in a more useful spot.
Otherwise, you find hitters I would expect. Rob Deer. Mark McGwire in his waning days. Jose Valentin who loved to swing. Bad Brad Wilkerson who struck out 152 times in 2004. Oh yeah, thereās Chris Young again.
Iāll probably revisit this topic at the end of season and see how the numbers how theyāve changed. By the way, if you havenāt tried out Baseball Referenceās Play Index and you like goofing around with baseball stats, give it a try. It does cost a little but itās worth a bit in my mind.
Sean Forman has implemented a new search modification to his Baseball Reference database.
For those searching on a common player name (or part thereof), you can put the word ātheā in front of the search term and the database will bring up the most popular searched player.
I just added a mod to the search box on the site. With the addition of all of the minor league pages, getting to someone like Alex Rodriguezās page via a search āA Rodā returns like 50 people. Now, if you type in āthe A Rodā it looks through our db and returns the most popular major league player who matches the search āA Rodā. Adding āthe ā to the front of any player search will send you to the most popular player matching that search.
I did my own test. I searched for āramon martinezā and got back three results including two minor leaguers. When I searched for āthe ramon martinezā, it took me directly to the page of Ramon Martinez who pitched for the LA Dodgers.
This trick works with initials too though your mileage may vary. āthe jason vā did return Jason Varitek as I intended it too. For that matter, so did āthe j vā.
Anyway, this mod might save a few mouse clicks for those of us who search Baseball Referenceās database on a frequent basis.
For those who havenāt noticed, Albert Pujols has done amazingly well with the bases loaded this year. Here are his stats with three runners on.
At this point in the season, Pujols is five for five with 3 homeruns and 16 rbis. Yikes!
If you believe in such stats, some of his other clutch stats are not as juicy, though. Interestingly, he is only 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position with two outs.
Washingtonās thirdbaseman Ryan Zimmerman just got a hit off the Giants tonight to extend his hitting streak to 29 games.
Heās hitting 45 for 122 (.369) during the streak.
I just ran across this page on Recondite Baseball which lists The āWorstā Hitting Streaks.
Juan Pierre tops the list. In 2000, his rookie year with Colorado, he went 18 for 66 for a .273 during his 15 game hitting streak. And in 1984, Cubbie catcher Jody Davis went 16 for 57 (.281) also for a 15 game streak.
Fortunately for Washington, Zimās hitting more than the bare minimum for his streak. Heās gotten his batting average up to .352 for the season.
This has been getting a lot of attention especially among Reds’ bloggers…
Brandon Phillips of the Reds:
āI donāt believe that on-base percentage stuff. Thatās overrated to me. If you get hits, youāll be on base. Thatās what itās about.ā
Some of Baker’s influence there??
Many have mentioned that while they don’t doubt Phillips is a talented player, he HAS led the Reds in outs in the past two seasons. And while he does have some tasty stats, his OBP is not one of them. Last year, it was an abysmal .312 and the year before it wasn’t much better at .331.
Can you name the only three players in baseball history to steal a base in four decades?