Teddy Ballgame pointed out to me over the phone the importance of Cliff Lee’s 2008 season.  Here we are just entering September and the Tribe hurler has already hit the 20 win mark with only 2 losses.  Teddy asked me if I knew who the last Cleveland pitcher to get 20 wins was.  I admitted ignorance. 

According to Tedd, it was the ol’ spitballer himself, Gaylord Perry.  I looked it up and Tedd was right (he always is).  The last Indian pitcher with 20+ wins before this year was Perry in 1974 when he had 21. 

As of today, Lee has the highest Win % of all pitchers with 20+ wins.  Here are the Top Five:

  1 Cliff Lee            .909   20-2 2008  CLE*
  2 Ron Guidry           .893   25-3 1978  NYY
  3 Lefty Grove          .886   31-4 1931  PHA
  4 Preacher Roe         .880   22-3 1951  BRO
  5 Joe Wood             .872   34-5 1912  BOS

*as of Sept 3, 2008

Tedd noted that Cleveland acquired Lee as a prospect which sent Bartolo Colon to the Expos. Oh, the Tribe got one other prospect in the deal.  Who would that be? 

Grady Sizemore. 

As Tedd said, "The Indians did their homework".

Tags: Records, Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Mark DeRosa and Alfonso Soriano had corresponding run-scoring streaks last week, both starting on the same day.  On games,between August 21 and August 26, both scored at least one run in each game.  DeRosa went on to extend his streak one more game. 

Both Soriano and DeRosa have had longer streaks earlier in the season.  Soriano had a 7-game streak in May.  DeRosa, however, has the longest run-scoring game streak on the team when he went 10 games crossing the plate pretty much at the same time. 

Here are the top five run scoring streaks by Cubs in 2008:

                   StreakStart  Streak End Games
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+---
 Mark DeRosa        2008-05-09  2008-05-19    10
 Derrek Lee         2008-05-18  2008-05-26     8
 Mark DeRosa        2008-08-21  2008-08-27     7
 Alfonso Soriano    2008-05-10  2008-05-17     7
 Alfonso Soriano    2008-08-21  2008-08-26     6                                          

Success breeds success, I guess.  

(thanks B-R Play Index!)

Tags: Cubs, Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Baseball Reference notes that we are getting very close to the 250,000 mark in home runs in regular season play.  Quite a milestone. 

According to their records, we are now at 249,745.  Give or take a few blown calls.

B-R’s official HR counter and list of past milestone Home Runs

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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The pressure is off the M’s.  As of yesterday, the Seattle Mariners became the first team to be mathematically eliminated from post-season play.

The Nats aren’t far behind.

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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As of 8/27/08, here are the majors’ top hitting pitchers (min 25 PA):

Carlos Zambrano, Chi   .365

Brandon Backe, Hou   . 302

Micah Owings, Ari   .288

Braden Looper, Stl   .275

Adam Wainwright, Stl   .267

You can see the full list I saved over at Baseball Reference’s Play Index.

Not only is Zambrano at the top of the list of hitting but his 14 rbis dwarfs second place Brandon Webb’s 7 (which ironically he got with a .138 BA and no HR). 

Zambrano needs a little lovin’ after his rough August. 

Go Cubs!

Tags: Cubs, Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Interestingly, the Florida Marlins have struck out 8 or more times in the last 13 games.  That’s the longest streak at least since 1956.

Thanks to Whiz from Stat of the Day for crunching the numbers.

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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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.    

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. 

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Andy from Stat of the Day is probably stating the obvious but claims that Corey Patterson is an “awful” player at least when it comes to offense.  Among players with 200+ at-bats, He ranks last in batting average (.183 to second place Eric Byrnes’ .209) and ranks last in OBP (a paltry .216 to Kenji Johjima’s .252, a .32 difference).

The Cubs traded him in January ‘06 after a miserable 2005 campaign not much better than this year’s (.215/.254/.348).  In the two years in Baltimore, Patterson picked it up slightly, hitting .276 and .269 and even managing to steal a combined 83 bases.  Of course, knowing us Cub fans, we wondered if it was a management issue then.

Looks like Corey is back to his old ways again.

Tags: Cubs, Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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I was chatting with my friend Joy the Sox fan over lunch today and she passed on an interesting tidbit about the Twins (a team, by the way, she despises). 

Minnesota is currently a half game out of first place with a 59-47.   Yet, their pitching staff show a wide gap in their performance on the road and at home.  Their ERA at home is third in the majors at a nifty 3.19.  When they travel, however, it slides all the way down to 28th in the MLB at a miserable 5.52 ERA. 

You can see the splits here.

That results in a 36-19 home, 23-28 away record for the year.

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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University of Illinois Physics professor Alan Nathan was interviewed by MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz on the topic of the Pitch F/X tool.  We interviewed Nathan for Baseball Zealot Radio last year and I’m happily surprised to say that some of stuff sunk in and I recognize some of his talking points. 

You can see Schwartz’ interview with Alan Nathan at MLB.com’s web site.  

Tags: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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