The Baseball Zealot

On this day in 1887, Tilly Walker was born.  Unless you’re a devoted baseball historian, Walker is pretty much an unknown as baseball players go. 

Coming to the bigs in 1911, he was a journeyman outfielder playing for the Senators, Browns and Red Sox before finding a more permanent home with the Philadelphia Athletics where he played for six years between the years of 1918-1923.  He was a solid hitter for his era, ranking up there among the leaders in extra-base hits, slugging and yes, even homeruns. 

His homerun numbers during his career weren’t Ruthian by any means.  He ranked 3rd in the American League in 1914 with a grand total of six.  As time went by, his total grew getting up into the double-digits even reaching as high as 37 in 1922.

But Tilly Walker has one major distinction, perhaps fodder for a trivia question.  In 1918 while playing for the Philadelphia Athletics, he tied Babe Ruth for the AL lead in homeruns with 11.  He was the last person to lead the league in that category before the Babe Ruth era.  Ruth then continued his dominance of baseball by leading the AL in homers 10 of the next 12 seasons (the exceptions?  In 1922 when Ken Williams had his career year for the Browns and 1925 when Ruth had his famous “Bellyache Heard ‘Round the World” aka gonorrhea).

If you look over Walker’s stats, you’ll note that those 11 homeruns he hit in 1918 is only time he ever led his league in any category. 

Walker ended his career with 118 career homeruns which probably doesn’t seem like a lot.  But considering that the career leader at the time of his retirement had 238 and that was Babe Ruth, he probably ranked pretty high. 

Tilly Walker has obviously passed on (in 1959) in his home state of Tennessee.  But he does have a place in baseball history.  Happy Birthday, Tilly Walker!

Posted in: Baseball History by The Baseball Zealot
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When Nate Colbert was a boy growing up in St. Louis his father took him to a doubleheader in which Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954.  Young Nate turned to his father and said, “Someday I’m going to do that”.

Now fast forward to August 1, 1972, the San Diego Padres were playing a doubleheader against the Braves in Atlanta.  Colbert, nursing a bad back, wasn’t going to play.  But when he took batting practice with an old bat, he hit five balls out, and a couple of more that were long gone, but just foul.  Nate’s manager decided his slugger would play, so Nate taped up the old bat, and used it in the first game.  He hit two out in the first game and three more in the nightcap, leading the Pads to a sweep, 9-0 & 11-7, driving in 13 runs on the day, two more than Stan the Man.  Nate finished the season with 38 homers (second only to Johnny Bench’s 40) and 111 RBI’s (highest percentage of runs driven in to a team’s total runs scored in MLB history).

I still remember this big day by this big slugger, even today, but don’t ask me what I ate for breakfast!

Posted in: history, Trivia by Teddy Ballgame
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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?

Posted in: Records, Statistics, Trivia by Teddy Ballgame
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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.

Posted in: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Last night when Andruw Jones popped up and struck out in his last two at-bats, Ranger skipper had some nice words to say about him (emphasis mine):

"I saw Kirby Puckett do some great stuff. I saw Dave Engle do some great stuff. Matter fact, I saw Mickey Hatcher get nine hits in a row — nine straight in three straight days,"

LOL, Whut??

Dave Engle?

I’m familiar with Engle, a backup catcher/utility man, who lasted nine years despite not really doing a whole lot.  He had a couple 400+ at bat years and actually made the All-Star team in 1984 (here’s an actual scan of Toledo Blade article proving it) but after he left Minnesota in ‘85, he bounced from team to team not even garnering 100 at-bats. 

But I wasn’t aware of Engle doing anything newsworthy (other than being the brother-in-law of then fellow Twin Tom Brunansky)… something that we would remember over 20 years later.  Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.

He did go on to become a hitting coach in the majors to once again prove that those cannot do, teach.  Except that he didn’t do that very well either and got fired.

So if anyone knows the answer to the mystery, speak up.  I’m dying to know. 

Posted in: Humor by The Baseball Zealot
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Jermaine Dye hit his 300th home run of his career against the Tigers in Detroit. Then the next batter for the White Sox, Paul Konerko stepped in against Zach Miner, and launched his 300th homer of his career. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen, back to back players hitting their 300th career home runs, currently Chicago has a 10-6 lead over Motown.

Posted in: Baseball History, White Sox by Teddy Ballgame
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Recently, David Pinto wrote an article on Sporting News’ web site entitled Fewer HRs, what the trend means.

According to Pinto, the HR numbers in 2008 were the lowest since the expansion in 1993.  Taking that fact, he draws the maybe-not-so-obvious  conclusion of the value of the modern slugger:

As the supply of home runs drops, home run hitters become more valuable. As fewer long balls lead to lower scoring, the base stealing environment should change as well. A tight run environment leads managers to invest in one-run strategies like steals. As base stealers become more plentiful, they become less valuable to fantasy owners.

Are we headed to an era similar to the 70s when we had a balance of power and speed?

Posted in: 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

Posted in: Statistics by The Baseball Zealot
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Jim Thome’s dad was sitting right in front of us, next to Al’s wife Diane, when he jumped to his feet as his son launched a three run blast deep over the rightfield wall. Papa Thome slapped me on the shoulder so hard, I thought I’d have to go on the DL. His sixth inning home run turned a 3-2 game into a 6-2 game, ah some breathing room. Paulie Konerko followed it up with a solo monster drive to left to make it 7-2. Konerko had three hits on the day, plus his career best 2nd stolen base of the year. In the olden days Alexei Ramirez would’ve dusted himself off after getting knocked on his butt, today Joel Peralta put another one on a tee, which Alexei promptly deposited over the leftfield fence. After Peralta was pulled from the ballgame, Juan Uribe made it 9-2, knocking another ball out to left.

I neglected a couple of key defensive plays yesterday which helped Buehrle win, one by Juan Uribe and one by Ken Griffey, Jr. The shutout streak ended in the very first inning, thanks in large part to Konerko’s lack of range at 1B. Mitch Maier roped a fastball to right for a leadoff single off Lance Broadway. Then Michael Aviles hit a groundball to first, which Paulie turned into a double. Broadway got Mark Teahen to pop to short. The dumbest player in baseball (I’ll explain in a moment) lined a two RBI single up the middle. KC had the rookie Broadway on the ropes when Lance walked Billy Butler. Alex Gordon stepped in with two on, two in, and only one out. That’s when the brain surgeon Jose Guillen tried to catch Chicago sleeping, he began sprinting toward 3rd, Broadway stepped off the rubber, double pumped to allow Uribe to get to third, nailed Guillen for the 2nd out of the inning, effectively killing the inning, Gordon grounded out for out number three. KC’s manager came out to pick up the argument that Guillen was safe, keeping Jose in the ballgame, he should’ve come out and kicked Jose Guillen in the butt.

Kyle Davies struckout OC & A.J. in the bottom of the 1st before loading the bases, Konerko popped out leaving the sacks drunk, for his only out on the day. With one out in the bottom of the second, the Palehose strung together four singles, Uribe scoring from 2nd on Cabrera’s base knock. After Carlos Quinten struckout, the Sox had the bases loaded with two outs, but this time Jermaine Dye socked a solid double off the leftfield wall, giving Chicago the lead, which they would never relinquish.

Lance Broadway settled down after Jose Guillen’s first inning dummy play, going 5 1/3 innings to pickup the win. Horacio Ramirez, D.J. Carrasco, & Adam Russell worked the final four innings, scoreless, to preserve the victory, and the sweep.

I argued with a Kansas City scout in the preseason about the merits of signing Jose Guillen. He was telling me the Royals needed his power, I was telling him they didn’t need Guillen’s bad attitude. Certainly Jose has accounted for his share of RBI’s, doubles, and homers. But after watching this goofball the past three games, I’d have to say, I was right. This guy watched & subsequently argued about close calls on many called third strikes, let more balls than I can count drop in for basehits, and then he hotdogged it when he tried to force a runner at third on a ball he might have caught that was dropped into short left. This goofball is what is wrong with baseball today, a me first, Prima Donna, getting millions. I shouldn’t talk bad about this clown as he’s on my APBA team, hopefully I’ll be able to dump him in an offseason trade to a manager that doesn’t read the Baseball Zealot.

Posted in: White Sox by Teddy Ballgame
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