Tag: stats

Walking the 8th place hitter

 

Among Chicago Cubs in the modern era, can you name the players with the most intentional walks in a season they hit less than 5 homers?

 

 Cnt Player            IBB HR  H  Year Age
+----+-----------------+---+--+---+----+---+
    1 Don Kessinger      18  0 151 1973  30 
    2 Hobie Landrith     15  4  69 1956  26 
    3 Joe Girardi        11  1 113 1990  25 
    4 Daryle Ward         8  3  36 2007  32 
    5 Dave Rosello        8  1  55 1976  26

 

With the exception of pinch hitter Darlye Ward, these were normally 8th place hitters.  Albeit, some of these hitters deserved the walk more than others. 

Which MLB teams do better on the road?

 

Right now, I’m fixated on how major league teams do on the road.  Mostly, I’m sure, because for the first half, the Cubs were having a hard time doing that.  I will give them credit though.  They’ve managed to play themselves up to four under .500 which ain’t great but is a helluva lot better than they were (thanks, Brew Crew!).

Right now, there are five teams who have a better record as visitors than they do in front of their friendly crowds at home.   The Angels actually have the best record in all of MLB as visitors with a pretty dang amazing .664 winning percentage.    

   

Away

Home

  

W

L

W

L

  

Diff
San Francisco Giants
26
30
0.464
20
34
0.370
  
0.094
Philadelphia Phillies
31
26
0.544
29
34
0.460
  
0.084
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
38
21
0.644
31
21
0.596
  
0.048
St Louis Cardinals
31
25
0.554
31
26
0.544
  
0.010
Kansas City Royals
26
30
0.464
26
30
0.464
  
0.000

 

But it’s the San Fran Giants who have the largest difference between the two.  Though their visitor record of .464 is really nothing to write home about, it’s a whole lot better than their home record of 20-34 (.370), a .094 difference best in the majors. 

Progressive Leaders

If you’re reading baseball blogs and baseball web sites in general, you most likely have visited Baseball Reference. It’s one of the best resources out there for baseball stats. There are stats for every player and every team since stats were kept. What some may know about is their Progressive Leaders feature in their Leaders … Continue reading “Progressive Leaders”

If you’re reading baseball blogs and baseball web sites in general, you most likely have visited Baseball Reference. It’s one of the best resources out there for baseball stats. There are stats for every player and every team since stats were kept.

What some may know about is their Progressive Leaders feature in their Leaders section. It’s quite cool.

For any given stat, Progressive Leaders displays for each year, the career leader, the single season leader, the active career leader, and the leader for that particular year.

Let’s take Homeruns, for example:

It shows (as we all know) that Roger Connor held the career HR record with 138 when he retired in 1897. Ned Williamson held the single season mark with 27. A quick look shows that when Ruth began hitting dingers, he quickly vanquished Williamson’s mark in 1919 with 29 and it wasn’t long before he broke the all-time career record. What’s great about the Progressive Leaders feature is we can quickly find out that it was 1921, when he hit 59, that Ruth passed Connor HR mark.

By the same token, we can tell that when Ruth retired, Lou Gehrig became the active career record.
On a side note, it’s interesting to note the progression of players who held the active career HR title. They include:

Foxx
Ott
DiMaggio
Mize
Williams
Musial
Mantle
Mays
Aaron
McCovey
Stargell
Jackson
Schmidt
Dw Evans
Murray
McGwire
Bonds

And that’s just a start… take a look at runs scored and hits and doubles an so on and so on… :-)

Followup: I read somewhere that Roger Connor died not knowing he was the all-time leader in homeruns for 25 years.