My buddy John and I got talking the other day about players who double at two positions that require radically different skillsets.  Craig Biggio, for example, was a rarity in that he played catcher AND secondbase, two positions you rarely see paired together.  And played them well.  Not to mention that he played centerfield as well. 

What I wanted to see was how many players in modern day baseball had played at catcher AND shortstop within the same year.  My chosen limit was at least 10 games at both positions.  Between the the years 1901 and 2009, only seven players fit that description.

Using Baseball Reference’s Play Index, here is the list of players I came up with:

(The games played were Martinez SS-54 C-14, ‘42 Bragan SS-78 C-22, ‘44 Bragan SS-51 C-35, McAllister SS-46 C-18, Roberts SS-33 C-22, Sandlock SS-22 C-47, Slocum SS-17 C-19).

All seven (well six, as Bobby Bragan is listed twice) seem to be the uber-utility types playing at least four different positions in their particular season.  It’s no surprise that none were fantastic hitters (though Roberts did hit 10 HR) but I’m sure their managers found their versatility useful.

I guess the most unusual was Bragan himself who not only did it twice but managed to put in over 20 games at catcher each year in addition to his normal shortstop. 

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Kudos to Baseball Reference again, this time for their “Share” feature that they just implemented in their stat pages. 

The Share feature does what it implies… 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 “Share” link. Since Clyde Vollmer was born today, I’ll use his batting stats as an example.  The “Sharing Toolbox” will then come up. 

This is where the best feature comes up.  Don’t 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 won’t appear in the final result.  There’s also a red X within an arrow on each row and column that will delete trailing ones. 

In Vollmer’s case, I’m going to make his table a simple one with just homeruns and rbis.  I’ll 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.

Don’t 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, I’ll 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 Vollmer’s homerun and rbi totals for his career:

There you go.  A reasonably good looking table that was easy to generate (probably easier than I made it sound).  It’s easy enough to go into the code and remove the link to B-R but why be a tool?  It’s 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!

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Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day blog does the numbers work and determines who among active players has the most plate appearances with 0 homers.

Most are pitchers, of course, though #1 on the list is Angel OF Reggie Willits with 785 plate appearances. 

What struck me is the number of Cubs and former Cubs on the list.  Most notably, Ryan Dempster who ranks #6 with 491. 

That’s ok, that’s not his job.

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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 “Oh yeah, the strike-shortened year” 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.

The season was shortened due to World War I.

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.

Due to the 1972 Major League Baseball Strike.

Due to the 1981 Major League Baseball Strike.

Due to the 1994 Major League Baseball Strike.

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. 

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In honor of Kevin Gregg, I played around with Baseball Reference’s Play Index and came up with a list of closers with the highest ERA.  More specifically, these are the pitchers with the most saves in a season among those with an adjusted ERA of 70 or less. 

    Player            SV ERA+   ERA  Year Age
+----+-----------------+--+----+------+----+---+
    1 Shawn Chacon      35   69   7.11 2004  26
    2 Mike Williams     28   69   6.14 2003  33
    3 Derrick Turnbow   24   66   6.87 2006  28
    4 Jose Mesa         24   61   6.52 2003  37
    5 Brad Lidge        23   60   7.21 2009  32
    6 Matt Capps        21   64   6.41 2009  25
    7 Rob Dibble        19   62   6.48 1993  29
    8 Dave Smith        17   65   6.00 1991  36
    9 Willie Hernandez  15   67   5.74 1989  34
   10 Darold Knowles    15   66   5.81 1975  33

Full list here.

Only 2004 Shawn Chacon of (you guessed it) the Colorado Rockies, breaks the 30 save mark.  He had a 1-9 record to go with his 7.11 ERA. 

Five more over 20 and it pretty much dissolves after that. 

In 1998, Mark Wohlers of the Braves managed to get 8 saves in 27 games with an ERA in the double digits (10.18)

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Wilver Stargell was a menacing figure when he stepped into the batter’s box in the 70s, windmilling his bat around, as he waited for the pitcher to summon up the courage to send the sphere plateward.  Stargell played 21 seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he hit 7 of the 16 balls hit completely out of Forbes Field and several into the upper tier at Three Rivers Stadium.  Willie finished his career with 475 homers and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988.

He hit 296 home runs in the 70s, more than anyone else.  As the decade comes to an end, who will be the all-time home run hitter for this decade?

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Posted in: Records, Statistics, Trivia by Teddy Ballgame
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Let’s take a look at stolen bases and on base percentage. 

Here are the players with the lowest OBP with at least 50 stolen bases in a single season.

                         OBP   SB
    1 Bert Campaneris    .278  52 1972
    2 Vince Coleman      .285  50 1994
    3 Omar Moreno        .292  60 1982
    4 Miguel Dilone      .294  50 1978
    5 Omar Moreno        .295  53 1977
    6 Bert Campaneris    .297  55 1967
    7 Jose Reyes         .300  60 2005
    8 Mookie Wilson      .300  54 1983
    9 Vince Coleman      .301 107 1986
   10 Bert Campaneris    .302  62 1969

This list is rife of leadoff men (I’m going on memory but I’m pretty sure they all led off for their respective teams) but still couldn’t get the job done when came to getting on base.  

They say you can’t steal first base but from a stat point of view, what these guys was pretty amazing (if not self-serving, see #9).  These men got on base some 30% of the time (plus errors etc) yet still managed to steal an ungodly amount of bases. 

If you think Bert Campaneris is over-represented in this list, check out the full list.   Campy comes up #11, too. 

No, you can’t steal first base but when these guy DID get on, you could be pretty sure you had a man on second by the next batter. 

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Posted in: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Taking a look at the Intentional Base on Balls with a twist.  Here is an all-time top ten list of secondbaseman ranked by most intentional base on balls in a single season.

    1 Ted Sizemore       21 1977
    2 Jose Lind          19 1990
    3 Rod Carew          18 1975
    4 Glenn Hubbard      17 1987
    5 Ron Oester         17 1985
    6 Ron Oester         16 1986
    7 Ted Kubiak         16 1970
    8 Bill Mazeroski     16 1962
    9 Phil Garner        15 1979
   10 Bill Mazeroski     15 1960

Unlike the complete IBB single-season leaders list which is dominated by sluggers (read: Barry Bonds), those on the secondbaseman top ten list do not curry their intentional walks from fear.

Nay, with the exception of Rod Carew, these second sackers, earned their intentional ball-fours because they primarily hit eighth in the lineup on a National League team.  Hitting before the pitcher got them their IBBs.

Phil Garner is an interesting case.  While he played a full season (150 games, 549 AB), Only 60 of his games were dedicated to the 8th spot.  The other lineup spots (2nd, 6th, and 7th) were pretty evenly distributed.  I’m pretty familiar with the 79 Pirates lineup and can’t think of another hitter that a team would walk Garner to get to (SS Foli was a decent hitter).

My only guess was that Garner must have gotten most of his 15 IBB in his 60 games as the 8th place hitter.  Perhaps the Pirates pitchers’ hitting was that poor.

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Posted in: Baseball History, Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Playing around with Baseball Reference’s 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 HR               
    1 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 HR
    1 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

Again, the full list is here.

Some surprises here.  I wouldn’t 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 use… 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 you’re 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 HR 
    1 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

Full list here

Like Granderson, last year’s Hanley Ramirez and 2007’s 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, there’s Chris Young again. 

I’ll probably revisit this topic at the end of season and see how the numbers how they’ve changed.  By the way, if you haven’t tried out Baseball Reference’s Play Index and you like goofing around with baseball stats, give it a try. It does cost a little but it’s worth a bit in my mind.

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For those who haven’t 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.

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