Extra-Base Hit Stoppers

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On Sunday, in their most recent appearances, Craig Kimbrel and Fernando Rodney again avoided surrendering any extra-base hits. Rodney and Kimbrel have each allowed only four extra-base hits all season. For Rodney, that means he’s allowed an extra base hit on average about one every 17.6 innings he’s pitched this year. For Kimbrel it’s about one in every 14.6 IP. Where those numbers fit historically is described after the jump.

Here’s a list of the the highest IP per “extra-base hit surrendered” seasons in MLB history, minimum 55 IP. The 2012 seasons by Rodney and Kimbrel are in brackets to reflect that their seasons are not yet complete.

1. Jerry Bell (1972) 17.67 IP per extra-base hit surrendered
[2. Fernando Rodney (2012) 17.58]
3. Jim Johnson (2008) 17.17
4. Nolan Ryan (1981) 14.90
[5. Craig Kimbrel (2012) 14.58]
6. B.J. Ryan (2006) 14.47
7. Dale Murray (1974) 13.93
8. Heathcliff Slocumb (1996) 13.89
9. Bryan Harvey (1993) 13.80
10. Frank Linzy (1967) 13.67

The only season by a starting pitcher on this list is Nolan Ryan’s 1981. That strike-shortened season was by far Ryan’s best ERA season. He wasn’t higher in K rate than normal for him, but he kept the ball in the ballpark more effectively than in any other season of his career. Had the 1981 season run full-length, regression to the mean might have pulled him back toward his normal performance level in terms of extra-base hit prevention, but for the two-thirds of a full season that were played, he was about as effective a pitcher as he ever was in a single year.

Who the heck was Jerry Bell? I don’t remember him at all, and googling him doesn’t seem to produce much about his career beyond his stats. He is currently a coach in the amateur ranks in Tennessee, but the arc of his major league career is something of a mystery to me. His b-ref stats show that the 1972 season that tops the list above was indeed a fine one overall for the young Brewers pitcher. He began that season as a starter for the Brewers’ AAA club, but when called up to stay in June, he worked out of the bullpen quite successfully. Successful enough that in 1973 the Brewers added him to the starting rotation, and he wasn’t bad, a bit over replacement level. Then suddenly in 1974 he was back in the bullpen, and after just a few games, despite the absence of any obvious sustained failure, was sent down to AAA. And then after just one more year he was gone from organized baseball, at age 27. It’s hard to imagine a guy with his type of record today not being given more of a chance. Maybe he had some career-ending arm problem, but I haven’t found any record of it. If there are any readers out there who know any more detail on what ended Bell’s career, I’d be curious to hear.

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Dan McCloskey

12 years ago

Who the heck was Jerry Bell?

My thoughts exactly. Quite the interesting 1972 season he had: 183 ERA+, 50 hits and only one homer allowed in 70 IP, but 33 BB and only 20 SO. In fact, Fangraphs has him at -0.1 WAR for the season, I guess because of a 3.54 FIP.

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Bryan O'Connor

12 years ago

Tangentially related question: does Rodney’s excellence this year diminish Kimbrel’s season at all? We’ve come to expect greatness from Kimbrel, who has a 1.29 *career* FIP and basically dominates in every way: strikeouts, limiting walks and homers, stranding runners, inducing groundballs… But Rodney had walked 4.5 batters per nine for his career until walking 1.79 this year. He’d always stranded 70% of baserunners; this year it’s almost 90. He’d always given up homers on 9% of fly balls; this year it’s 4.7. His great season seems to be a factor of (1)improved control, (2)hitters striking out more in general, without… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

I don’t think it’s the Year of the Relief Pitcher. If we are to use ERA+ as the threshold (I don’t know if I would use that metric as the be-all-end-all for relievers), 2012 really doesn’t stand out among recent seasons as all. The year with the most 200+ ERA+, 50+ IP seasons was 2003 with 16 different players reaching that mark; 2012 ranks 12th all-time with 8 players currently at 200 ERA+. Really, I think this year is just a continuation of the Decade of the Relief Pitcher, if you look at 2003-2012 as a decade. All of these… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

Sorry, I hit reply accidentally. Let me re-post: I don’t think it’s the Year of the Relief Pitcher. If we are to use ERA+ as the threshold (I don’t know if I would use that metric as the be-all-end-all for relievers), 2012 really doesn’t stand out among recent seasons as all. The year with the most 200+ ERA+, 50+ IP seasons was 2003 with 16 different players reaching that mark; 2012 ranks 12th all-time with 8 players currently at 200 ERA+. Really, I think this year is just a continuation of the Decade of the Relief Pitcher, if you look… Read more »

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John Autin

12 years ago

Al Alburquerque, career: 1 XBH in 52.2 IP.

The sample’s too small to draw strong conclusions, but so far it seems that Alburquerque is that rarest of birds — combining a high K rate (13.5 SO/9) and a high GB/FB ratio (1.53, almost twice the MLB average and higher than all but 1 qualifier this year). His line-drive rate is 11%, well below the MLB average (19%) as well as both Rodney (14%) and Kimbrel (18%).

The GB and LD rates obviously would be a factor in preventing extra-base hits.

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Dan McCloskey

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Interesting. He’s never allowed a home run in the regular season, but he allowed one in last year’s ALDS.

Jim Bouldin

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

“…it seems that Alburquerque is that rarest of birds…”

Would it be fair then to call Alburquerque a Phoenix?

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

When I grow up I want to be Al Alburquerque.

However since I’m more than 30 years older than he is the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

And birtelcom, the 3 paragraphs you ended your article with are the first 2 things that came to mind when I was going over the list.

That Ryan was able to do this as a starter during a relatively normal offensive context year is pretty amazing.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Is that name for real? It can’t be.

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John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

FWIW, “Alburquerque” is the historical spelling. The city in New Mexico dropped its first “r” somewhere:

“It is generally believed that the growing village was named by the provincial governor Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdes in honor of Don Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, viceroy of New Spain from 1653 to 1660. One of de la Cueva’s aristocratic titles was Duke of Alburquerque, referring to the Spanish town of Alburquerque.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque,_New_Mexico#Etymology

I am officially crowning him the Duque of Alburquerque.

mosc

12 years ago

It just seems like a good closer was a real differentiator in years past and now everybody’s got one. Maybe Kimbrel is even better than the rest but the story to me is how many late inning relievers are dominating. It seems to grow every year. I’d love to see a graph of how many 125 ERA+ relief pitchers with 50IP and <3 starts there were per year. It seems to go up and up and up. I just ran through the AL East for example: Orioles: 5 (johnson, ayala, strop, o'day, patton). Ayala's 153 is the LOWEST Rays: 5… Read more »

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John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to mosc

mosc — The difficulty in learning anything from such a graph would be picking the IP standard. Using a 50-IP threshold, we find that 2012 is of course the pinnacle of pitchers meeting the standards of 125 ERA+ and <3 GS. There are 75 such pitchers this year, 2.5 per team. In 1992 there were 1.5 per team, and in '82 1.3 per team. However, top relievers of 20-30 years ago pitched far more innings. If we use a 75-IP threshold, the numbers come out far different -- only 5 so far this year, 9 last year, compared to a… Read more »

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to mosc

I would also argue that an ERA+ of 125 from a reliever is not that impressive. Take a look at the 1970 Minnesota Twins. Four starters with ERA+’s between 125 & 107. Two spot starters/relievers with 306 innings between them and ERA+’s of 118 & 149. Two relievers only with 224 innings between them and ERA+’s of 156 & 192. The only guy with more than 30 innings pitched and an ERA+ below 100 was Dave Boswell with 69 IP’s. And that was only because he was injured. The year before he pitched over 250 innings with an ERA+ of… Read more »

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John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

And then they coughed up 9 runs per game in the ALCS. Go figure!

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Dan McCloskey

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

I would kind of agree with Hartvig here. I mean 125 from a reliever is still very good, but it’s not crazy impressive. I’d be looking for something around 150 to say the guy’s truly a shutdown reliever, although even that pales in comparison to Mariano Rivera’s career ERA.

mosc

12 years ago

Reply to mosc

Pick your IP threshold and your ERA+ threshold, I bet almost invariably this is one of the best years on record for late inning relievers.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to mosc

Mosc, see my comment 17 above.

mosc

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

200 ERA+ is a pretty high threshold but thanks for the numbers. Not sure what it means that this year we have more better than average relievers but the same number of Cy Young consideration caliber relievers.

200 ERA+ is like Mariano Rivera good.

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Doug

12 years ago

Not on the list, but in Tom Murphy’s rookie season as a starter for the 1968 Angels, he allowed only 10 XBH in 99.1 IP, including a stretch of 50.1 consecutive innings (Jul 2 to Aug 6) allowing no XBH at all. In comparison, Jerry Bell had a streak of 41.1 consecutive IP without an XBH from Aug 12, 1972 to Apr 7, 1973.

Probably the longest non-XBH streak to start a career is 42.1 IP by Cisco Carlos, his entire 1967 season (41.2 IP) plus the first two batters of 1968.

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birtelcom

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

To put Tom Murphy’s 1968 streak in context, there were on average about two extra-base hits per team per game (2.05 to be more precise) in 1968, compared to about three extra-base hits per team per game (2.95 to be more precise) in 2012.

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Doug

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

To your point, birtelcom, the longest recent streaks are by Kimbrel and Al Alburquerque.

Kimbrel: 2011-06-11 to 2011-09-18, 43.0 IP
Alburquerque: 2011-05-18 to 2012-09-26, 42.0 IP

Alburquerque remains active, so he could surpass Murphy, but not until next year. Also, such streaks by relievers are, to me, not the same thing as doing it as a starter and have to face the same batters 3+ times in many games.

The last 40+ IP streak by a starter appears to be by Pat Hentgen, Apr 16 to May 19, 1997, 41.1 IP.