Brilliant Reader Skinny Pete is incorrect, I'm afraid.
In 1935, Wally Berger hit 35 HR for the Boston Braves, who only won 38 games. That is the closest anyone has ever come to hitting the team's number of wins (at least since 1900).
The other 3 times someone has come within 10 HR of their team's win total that I've been able to find are:
I’ve always wondered when the score is 15-1 and it’s starting to rain, if umpires tend to call strikes when they’re not. Also, in Don Larsen’s final pitch in his perfect game, looks like batter Dale Mitchell’s half swing didn’t break the plane and the pitch seemed low. Ump wanted the no-no?
Watching the draft, I was able to nail quite a few of the picks by knowing the need and noting the available player who stood out at that position. It made it seem like the process of teams was a lot less impressive and sophisticated than I normally assume. And it is far from obvious that drafting for need, even to a small degree, is a smart thing to do, given the injury rate in football, and how fast players consequently fall off their game. Paying attention to talent is the one thing you can do as an executive, and the one thing you can control, I would argue. Your needs in one year's time will likely be completely different.
Whether Trout ends up on a high HR, low RBI list for his numbers at the end of this year is anybody's guess. The ratio right now is partly a product of his HR rate being so exceptional. (In general, the better your HR rate, the lower your ratio. Think about the RBI difference between someone who hits a given number of HR in a career, and someone who hits the same number in a season. The person who hits the HR over a career will have far more RBI.) But since you also turned up his 2022, when he had 40 HR and 80 RBI, I wondered if his career clutch hitting (or his hitting in RBI situations) has been subpar. The answer is no; he's a career .305 hitter with RISP, .300 overall.
What really leapt out at me is he's a .440 hitter in his career with runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs. That's in 182 AB. But I've recently learned about the trick that the free out from sacrifice flies inflates these statistics. The old thing about batting average going up with the bases loaded because pitchers have to come in to hitters turned out to be an old saw, caused by this statistical artifact. Granted, .440 is robust, but it comes all the way down to .338 if you take Trout's sacrifice flies out. Even if you just take them from his RISP at-bats, which of course includes cases where he hit with 2 outs or without a runner on 3rd, his batting average plummets to .290.
I am intrigued by the Tommy Tomlinson book. Oh, that I will have the time to read it! You had me at "lots of slobber." I will say that, for a book of just 256 pages, that is the longest Amazon summary I have ever read! So much is promised to be covered, it sounds like it will be three times that long.
I understand some of the argument but have to part company on a couple of notions. First, teams seem to be struggling more and more at scoring runners from third with fewer than two outs. From a hitter's perspective, a sacrifice fly in that situation is considered by most to be a win. Secondly, what is amazing about Trout (and our own Ken Griffey Jr. in Seattle) is that he is the one batter that managers tell their pitchers "don't let this guy beat us". In high leverage situations with RISP and a base open, they are routinely pitched around and get very little to hit unless the pitcher makes.a mistake. One approximation is the intentional base on balls. The current career leaders in IBB are Joey Votto 147 (in age 40 season), Freddie Freeman 127 (age 34 season), Bryce Harper 122 (age 31) and Mike Trout 120 (age 32)
But we can look at how these factors come out in the wash (or, at least, the nasty stuff pitchers deal batters in crucial situations, versus the statistical artifact of the sac flies). MLB Average with runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs last year was .318. With runners in scoring position, (including runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs), batting average was .256. When there were no runners in scoring position, the composite batting average was .246. So, RISP was seemingly worth a 10-point boost. Perhaps more centrally, if the 1230 sac flies were added to RISP AB, and if fly ball outs were scored as they normally are, RISP BA would have dropped to .248.
A couple of caveats. The most important is that the "runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs BA" is also helped by teams typically playing their infield in in that situation. However, it is simply a fact that 45 points of the "runner on 3rd, less than 2 outs" BA can be traced to the scoring of sacrifice files (see the method I used for RISP). Second, if Trout has specific obstacles with the way that he is pitched that depress hits and production for him with RISP, I can't answer to that. We could look at the performance of star players collectively to understand any such influences.
All true and good information. I think were are talking about a glass half full. You're looking at a sacrifice fly and thinking it is a loss because the batter makes an out. I'.m looking at it as a win because the batter converts the run scoring opportunity, which would not have happened if the out were a pop-up, ground ball right at a fielder playing in, a shallow fly ball or a strike out. Here are three more rabbit holes to consider and perhaps use to do further statistical analysis. Situation 1. batter successfully executes a sacrifice bunt or squeeze play. In either case no AB is charged which would also "inflate" batting averages whether done with a runner in scoring position or a runner on first. Situation 2. runner on second with no outs. Batter grounds out to the right side or hits a fly ball deep enough to advance the runner. Although it advances the runner to a position where he may score on a suitable out, the batter is always charged with an AB. Situation 3. Runner on third with fewer than two outs. Scores on a ground ball out. It may have been due to there being no play at the plate or because the runner beats the tag. In either case the batter is still charged with an AB - fielders choice. It hurts his BA but the play still generates a run. In fairness, shouldn't it be treated the same as a sacrifice fly or successful bunt play?
Joe, congratulations on your mock draft results. The most interesting news of the week was this. I believe it was either the night following your call for Ohtani to reach 60 doubles for the season or possibly the day after, he went out and hit three doubles in a game for the first time in his career.
Next week, how about most egregious strikes that were called balls? I think it was a pitcher on the Reds who threw a ball right down the pipe to the Phillies' most discerning hitter Nick Castellanos that was called a ball. Not even us Phillies fans could get behind that call.
That's not unexpected this early in the season. Statistically, the premise of WAR is that is the amount of additional wins a player provides to a team over a full season. We're about a sixth of the way through the season, so even a 10 WAR player on average would only affect a teams' wins total by a sixth of that (about a game and a half) for this number of games--and that's being compared to a 0 WAR below-average replacement player.
When it comes to bad calls, is it just me or do we only complain about pitches that were incorrectly called strikes? We should give equal complaining to pitches that are incorrectly called balls. It might also be interesting to see if there's a tendency to error more on one side than the other.
I also have to wonder if there might be an unspoken "agreement" between umpires, catchers, and batters. "OK, I muffed that one. I'll make up for it on the next borderline pitch...."
I think you're suggesting that the typical fan is only alert for umpire incompetence / malfeasance when his team is batting, and doesn't show the same vigilance when his team is pitching? Which is.. not the way it is.
As far as the makeup call, it's ridiculous for me to even provide an answer here. I am not a batsman, I do not play a batsman on tv, etc.
Nevertheless, I am sure that umpires from time to time *will* do the later instream correction thing, I would also imagine that they would never ever admit as much to a player on either side--or even to someone like Joe Torre in a supervisory capacity. Is that a word, supervisory?
My experience suggests that umpires call WAY more balls outside the zone as strikes than they call balls inside the zone as balls. No idea if that is actually true...
One thing that struck me on many of those horrible calls was how terrific the catcher was at setting up and framing the pitch, I mean, some of them are like having Ricky Jay behind the plate. And by the way, when did "pitch framing" become a thing and is it a good thing or bad thing when the robot umpires make it a lost art?
Pick framing is deceiving the umpire to call an event that didn't happen.
A check swing and a trapped ball can be checked by the other ump to see what actually happened on the field of play.
There is no recourse for the hitter and no play to make to stop it, unlike a stolen base which can be thrown out. Also the deception is behind the hitter after the ball has passed the strike zone. There is no other ump or replay available to make the correct call.
Pitch framing is a one sided deception behind the action of the game.
You could say it is cheating, but then you have to say the same when a batter contorts himself to try and turn a swing into a check swing or a fielder trying to pass off a trapped ball as not hitting the ground first, or a team stealing signs from visual observation without resorting to forbidden surveillance means, or.....the list goes on and on.
Seems to me it has to at least annoy umpires. I also wonder about the stats. For instance, how do they know when an umpire blows a call vs the catcher fooling him with his framing? Or how about when the catcher pulls a strike on the black into the middle and the umpire reacts by calling it a ball?
The HR/RBI thing reminds me of the hockey version of the Cy Young Award, an informal nod to those who have high goal/low assist totals. This is pretty hard to do in hockey since you can have two assists per goal.
Conveniently, I researched this for a story I wrote and so can quote you some of the greatest examples since the two-assist rule was created in 1946:
Danny Gare, 1975-76: 50 goals, 23 assists
Reggie Leach, same season: 61 goals, 30 assists. Getting to 60 goals and fewer than 100 total points is hard, but not quite impossible…
Lanny McDonald, 1982-83: 66 goals, 32 assists. I am almost positive this is the most goals with under 100 points ever.
Steven Stamkos, 2011-12: 60 goals, 37 assists
Alex Ovechkin, 2015-16: 50 goals, 21 assists - the fewest points in a 50-goal year, and he’d go 48-19 four years later, just missing.
My list left off the 70+ goal seasons because there’s so few of them that “fewest assists” is hardly competitive. (For the record it’s Brett Hull at the 70 AND 80 goal levels, even including the WHA.)
I like Delgado—underrate for sure—but I’m fine with him not being considered a strong HOF candidate. He didn’t have Papi’s vibes nor his huge postseason moments nor his longevity, so saying his peak stats are comparable to Papi’s is kinda a moot point.
He just wasn’t in the elite of the elite (save a truly magnificent 2000 season) even in his prime. As a 1B/DH of mid 90s—mid 00s, I’d take Big Hurt, Big Mac, Bagwell, Edgar, Helton, Thome, and probably Olerud, Giambi, and Palmeiro over him.
As, like, the 8th best guy of your generation at your position, probably don’t have a compelling HOF case.
Are we sure number nine was a strike? The count on TV moved from 0-1 to 1-1. I mean that pitch was so high, if that was truly called a strike, that should be grounds for immediate termination.
As a Dolphins fan I’m happy with Chop Robinson. But I thought Nick Saban was the star of draft night. His analysis is fantastic. Like, I want the dolphins to take the video of him explaining that Chop Robinson needs to work harder on translating speed to power and give it to him and say go work on this.
Joe, I think I have the answer for your fantasy team. Just move them to Vegas, and rename them Fisher’s A’ss.
If you watch number 9 closely, you see the count go from 0-1 to 1-1 after the pitch. Not called a strike.
The game record at https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR202008110.shtml says it was called a strike, so that call must have changed after the video ended.
Brilliant Reader Skinny Pete is incorrect, I'm afraid.
In 1935, Wally Berger hit 35 HR for the Boston Braves, who only won 38 games. That is the closest anyone has ever come to hitting the team's number of wins (at least since 1900).
The other 3 times someone has come within 10 HR of their team's win total that I've been able to find are:
- Sosa in 1999 (63/67)
- Ralph Kiner in 1952 (37/42)
- (The original) Frank Thomas in 1962 (34/40)
I’ve always wondered when the score is 15-1 and it’s starting to rain, if umpires tend to call strikes when they’re not. Also, in Don Larsen’s final pitch in his perfect game, looks like batter Dale Mitchell’s half swing didn’t break the plane and the pitch seemed low. Ump wanted the no-no?
A post where you link to 10 videos is not that great.
Elly de la Cruz is tied for 18th in MLB in steals.
Among teams.
We need to talk about how fun this is.
Watching the draft, I was able to nail quite a few of the picks by knowing the need and noting the available player who stood out at that position. It made it seem like the process of teams was a lot less impressive and sophisticated than I normally assume. And it is far from obvious that drafting for need, even to a small degree, is a smart thing to do, given the injury rate in football, and how fast players consequently fall off their game. Paying attention to talent is the one thing you can do as an executive, and the one thing you can control, I would argue. Your needs in one year's time will likely be completely different.
Whether Trout ends up on a high HR, low RBI list for his numbers at the end of this year is anybody's guess. The ratio right now is partly a product of his HR rate being so exceptional. (In general, the better your HR rate, the lower your ratio. Think about the RBI difference between someone who hits a given number of HR in a career, and someone who hits the same number in a season. The person who hits the HR over a career will have far more RBI.) But since you also turned up his 2022, when he had 40 HR and 80 RBI, I wondered if his career clutch hitting (or his hitting in RBI situations) has been subpar. The answer is no; he's a career .305 hitter with RISP, .300 overall.
What really leapt out at me is he's a .440 hitter in his career with runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs. That's in 182 AB. But I've recently learned about the trick that the free out from sacrifice flies inflates these statistics. The old thing about batting average going up with the bases loaded because pitchers have to come in to hitters turned out to be an old saw, caused by this statistical artifact. Granted, .440 is robust, but it comes all the way down to .338 if you take Trout's sacrifice flies out. Even if you just take them from his RISP at-bats, which of course includes cases where he hit with 2 outs or without a runner on 3rd, his batting average plummets to .290.
I am intrigued by the Tommy Tomlinson book. Oh, that I will have the time to read it! You had me at "lots of slobber." I will say that, for a book of just 256 pages, that is the longest Amazon summary I have ever read! So much is promised to be covered, it sounds like it will be three times that long.
I understand some of the argument but have to part company on a couple of notions. First, teams seem to be struggling more and more at scoring runners from third with fewer than two outs. From a hitter's perspective, a sacrifice fly in that situation is considered by most to be a win. Secondly, what is amazing about Trout (and our own Ken Griffey Jr. in Seattle) is that he is the one batter that managers tell their pitchers "don't let this guy beat us". In high leverage situations with RISP and a base open, they are routinely pitched around and get very little to hit unless the pitcher makes.a mistake. One approximation is the intentional base on balls. The current career leaders in IBB are Joey Votto 147 (in age 40 season), Freddie Freeman 127 (age 34 season), Bryce Harper 122 (age 31) and Mike Trout 120 (age 32)
But we can look at how these factors come out in the wash (or, at least, the nasty stuff pitchers deal batters in crucial situations, versus the statistical artifact of the sac flies). MLB Average with runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs last year was .318. With runners in scoring position, (including runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs), batting average was .256. When there were no runners in scoring position, the composite batting average was .246. So, RISP was seemingly worth a 10-point boost. Perhaps more centrally, if the 1230 sac flies were added to RISP AB, and if fly ball outs were scored as they normally are, RISP BA would have dropped to .248.
A couple of caveats. The most important is that the "runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs BA" is also helped by teams typically playing their infield in in that situation. However, it is simply a fact that 45 points of the "runner on 3rd, less than 2 outs" BA can be traced to the scoring of sacrifice files (see the method I used for RISP). Second, if Trout has specific obstacles with the way that he is pitched that depress hits and production for him with RISP, I can't answer to that. We could look at the performance of star players collectively to understand any such influences.
All true and good information. I think were are talking about a glass half full. You're looking at a sacrifice fly and thinking it is a loss because the batter makes an out. I'.m looking at it as a win because the batter converts the run scoring opportunity, which would not have happened if the out were a pop-up, ground ball right at a fielder playing in, a shallow fly ball or a strike out. Here are three more rabbit holes to consider and perhaps use to do further statistical analysis. Situation 1. batter successfully executes a sacrifice bunt or squeeze play. In either case no AB is charged which would also "inflate" batting averages whether done with a runner in scoring position or a runner on first. Situation 2. runner on second with no outs. Batter grounds out to the right side or hits a fly ball deep enough to advance the runner. Although it advances the runner to a position where he may score on a suitable out, the batter is always charged with an AB. Situation 3. Runner on third with fewer than two outs. Scores on a ground ball out. It may have been due to there being no play at the plate or because the runner beats the tag. In either case the batter is still charged with an AB - fielders choice. It hurts his BA but the play still generates a run. In fairness, shouldn't it be treated the same as a sacrifice fly or successful bunt play?
Joe, congratulations on your mock draft results. The most interesting news of the week was this. I believe it was either the night following your call for Ohtani to reach 60 doubles for the season or possibly the day after, he went out and hit three doubles in a game for the first time in his career.
Next week, how about most egregious strikes that were called balls? I think it was a pitcher on the Reds who threw a ball right down the pipe to the Phillies' most discerning hitter Nick Castellanos that was called a ball. Not even us Phillies fans could get behind that call.
Too bad we can't look at the strike zone from the 1995 World Series.
The Shohei Update
(I didn't look anything up so this is the Shohei Update of the Mind)
The team he used to be on is doing about the same without him as they did with him in 2023.
The team he now is on is doing about the same with him as they did without him in 2023.
That's not unexpected this early in the season. Statistically, the premise of WAR is that is the amount of additional wins a player provides to a team over a full season. We're about a sixth of the way through the season, so even a 10 WAR player on average would only affect a teams' wins total by a sixth of that (about a game and a half) for this number of games--and that's being compared to a 0 WAR below-average replacement player.
When it comes to bad calls, is it just me or do we only complain about pitches that were incorrectly called strikes? We should give equal complaining to pitches that are incorrectly called balls. It might also be interesting to see if there's a tendency to error more on one side than the other.
I also have to wonder if there might be an unspoken "agreement" between umpires, catchers, and batters. "OK, I muffed that one. I'll make up for it on the next borderline pitch...."
I think you're suggesting that the typical fan is only alert for umpire incompetence / malfeasance when his team is batting, and doesn't show the same vigilance when his team is pitching? Which is.. not the way it is.
As far as the makeup call, it's ridiculous for me to even provide an answer here. I am not a batsman, I do not play a batsman on tv, etc.
Nevertheless, I am sure that umpires from time to time *will* do the later instream correction thing, I would also imagine that they would never ever admit as much to a player on either side--or even to someone like Joe Torre in a supervisory capacity. Is that a word, supervisory?
My experience suggests that umpires call WAY more balls outside the zone as strikes than they call balls inside the zone as balls. No idea if that is actually true...
One thing that struck me on many of those horrible calls was how terrific the catcher was at setting up and framing the pitch, I mean, some of them are like having Ricky Jay behind the plate. And by the way, when did "pitch framing" become a thing and is it a good thing or bad thing when the robot umpires make it a lost art?
Sad. If it's O.K. to steal a base it should be O.K. to steal a strike.
I maintain that "pitch framing" is actually cheating, since you are trying to deceive the umpire.
I don't think it's cheating, but I will be more than happy to see it go away if we ever get to robot umpires.
Cheating requires a law or rule which is being broken. There is no rule forbidding pitch framing, ergo, it ain’t cheating.
Pick framing is deceiving the umpire to call an event that didn't happen.
A check swing and a trapped ball can be checked by the other ump to see what actually happened on the field of play.
There is no recourse for the hitter and no play to make to stop it, unlike a stolen base which can be thrown out. Also the deception is behind the hitter after the ball has passed the strike zone. There is no other ump or replay available to make the correct call.
Pitch framing is a one sided deception behind the action of the game.
Bring on the robo umps!
You could say it is cheating, but then you have to say the same when a batter contorts himself to try and turn a swing into a check swing or a fielder trying to pass off a trapped ball as not hitting the ground first, or a team stealing signs from visual observation without resorting to forbidden surveillance means, or.....the list goes on and on.
Seems to me it has to at least annoy umpires. I also wonder about the stats. For instance, how do they know when an umpire blows a call vs the catcher fooling him with his framing? Or how about when the catcher pulls a strike on the black into the middle and the umpire reacts by calling it a ball?
The HR/RBI thing reminds me of the hockey version of the Cy Young Award, an informal nod to those who have high goal/low assist totals. This is pretty hard to do in hockey since you can have two assists per goal.
Conveniently, I researched this for a story I wrote and so can quote you some of the greatest examples since the two-assist rule was created in 1946:
Danny Gare, 1975-76: 50 goals, 23 assists
Reggie Leach, same season: 61 goals, 30 assists. Getting to 60 goals and fewer than 100 total points is hard, but not quite impossible…
Lanny McDonald, 1982-83: 66 goals, 32 assists. I am almost positive this is the most goals with under 100 points ever.
Steven Stamkos, 2011-12: 60 goals, 37 assists
Alex Ovechkin, 2015-16: 50 goals, 21 assists - the fewest points in a 50-goal year, and he’d go 48-19 four years later, just missing.
My list left off the 70+ goal seasons because there’s so few of them that “fewest assists” is hardly competitive. (For the record it’s Brett Hull at the 70 AND 80 goal levels, even including the WHA.)
I like Delgado—underrate for sure—but I’m fine with him not being considered a strong HOF candidate. He didn’t have Papi’s vibes nor his huge postseason moments nor his longevity, so saying his peak stats are comparable to Papi’s is kinda a moot point.
He just wasn’t in the elite of the elite (save a truly magnificent 2000 season) even in his prime. As a 1B/DH of mid 90s—mid 00s, I’d take Big Hurt, Big Mac, Bagwell, Edgar, Helton, Thome, and probably Olerud, Giambi, and Palmeiro over him.
As, like, the 8th best guy of your generation at your position, probably don’t have a compelling HOF case.
No.9 - in the broadcast, the display says 0-1 before the pitch and 1-1 after the pitch. Think the pitch is labeled wrong.
The video might be wrong. The game record at https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR202008110.shtml says it was a 1-0 count after the first pitch and the second pitch was called a strike, so that call must have changed after the video ended.
May be! I was just trying to make sense of the human reactions in the clip. Everything there says “ball” to me.
Are we sure number nine was a strike? The count on TV moved from 0-1 to 1-1. I mean that pitch was so high, if that was truly called a strike, that should be grounds for immediate termination.
As a Dolphins fan I’m happy with Chop Robinson. But I thought Nick Saban was the star of draft night. His analysis is fantastic. Like, I want the dolphins to take the video of him explaining that Chop Robinson needs to work harder on translating speed to power and give it to him and say go work on this.
Joe, I think I have the answer for your fantasy team. Just move them to Vegas, and rename them Fisher’s A’ss.
The video might be wrong. The game record at https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR202008110.shtml says it was a 1-0 count after the first pitch and the second pitch was called a strike, so that call must have changed after the video ended.