Quiz – Baseball Alchemy (solved) |

These nine players are the only major leaguers to have a game since 1914 with one of two unusual offensive accomplishments (as indicated by the two columns). Those two accomplishments are quite similar. What are they?

Rk	Player	Player
1	Lance Berkman	Joe Lahoud
2	Barry Larkin	Phil Rizzuto
3	Steve Sax	Paul Richards
4	Bob Bailey
5	Nellie Fox
6	George Cutshaw

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/1/2014.

Congratulations to Relief Man and Richard Chester! They quickly (and correctly) deduced that this quiz was likely related to opening day exploits. Like the alchemist turning dross into gold, the first group of 6 players had an opening day game scoring 3 runs without a hit, while the second group scored twice without an official AB. Those games are after the jump.

These are the games scoring 3 times with no hits. Bailey got his 3 runs despite being removed after the Expos came from behind to take the lead with a 9th inning rally. Had Bailey stayed in the game, he may have had a chance for a 4th run without a hit as his spot in the order led off the 13th inning when Montreal scored 4 for the win.

Rk	Player	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	PA	AB	R	RBI	BB	SO	HBP	SH	ROE	GDP	SB	WPA	RE24	aLI	BOP	Pos Summary
1	Lance Berkman	2001-04-03	HOU	MIL	W 11-3	5	3	3	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0.022	0.235	.708	4	LF
2	Barry Larkin	1997-04-01	CIN	COL	W 11-4	5	1	3	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	2	0.049	1.432	.599	3	SS
3	Steve Sax	1983-04-05	LAD	HOU	W 16-7	6	3	3	0	2	1	0	1	1	0	1	0.028	-0.542	.854	1	2B
4	Bob Bailey	1974-04-10	MON	PIT	W 12-8	5	2	3	0	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	0.170	0.768	2.066	3	LF
5	Nellie Fox	1960-04-19	CHW	KCA	W 10-9	5	4	3	0	1	0	0	0	2	0	0	0.110	2.000	.678	2	2B
6	George Cutshaw	1920-04-14	PIT	STL	W 5-4	5	3	3	0	1	0	0	1			0	0.000	0.000		5	2B

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/1/2014.

And the games scoring twice without an AB. Rizzuto’s game came in the second of four consecutive seasons that the Yankees opened against Washington. The next year’s opener was featured in birtelcom’s recent post about RE24.

Rk	Player	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	PA	R	RBI	BB	HBP	SH	ROE	SB	WPA	RE24	aLI	BOP	Pos Summary
1	Joe Lahoud	1974-04-05	CAL	CHW	W 8-2	1	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0.027	1.000	.770	3	PR LF
2	Phil Rizzuto	1955-04-13	NYY	WSH	W 19-1	4	2	0	2	1	1	0	1	0.084	1.384	.632	8	SS
3	Paul Richards	1934-04-17	NYG	PHI	W 6-1	4	2	0	3	0	1		0	0.000	0.000		8	C

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/1/2014.

0 0 votes

Article Rating

17 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

ReliefMan

10 years ago

Column 2 is guys who had an Opening Day game with 2 runs off 0 at-bats; Lahoud did it coming in off the bench as a pinch runner so he only needed 1 walk for the requisite times on base.

I haven’t been able to post comments here with Firefox lately; it keeps telling me they look too spammy even though the same message goes through on other browsers.

Richard Chester

Reply to ReliefMan

The other guys scored 3 runs without the benefit of a hit on Opening Day.

Author

Doug

Relief Man and Richard Chester have it with the opening day angle. Well done.

Reply to Doug

ReliefMan gets 99% of the credit, he made it easy for me.

Matching Lahoud’s feat, last year was the first time in the post-season that a substitute had scored twice without an official AB. It actually happened twice … and on the same day. Rk Player Date Series Gm# Tm Opp Rslt PA AB R H RBI BB WPA RE24 aLI BOP Pos Summary 1 Andy Dirks 2013-10-08 ALDS 4 DET OAK W 8-6 1 0 2 0 0 1 0.012 0.209 .530 6 PR LF 2 Xander Bogaerts 2013-10-08 ALDS 4 BOS TBR W 3-1 2 0 2 0 0 2 0.273 1.650 1.547 8 PH SS Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play… Read more »

I don’t know the answer, but Paul Richards’ middle name is Rapier and that fact cannot go unremarked upon.

Apparently he also once pitched both left- and right-handed in a minor league game. Seems like an interesting guy:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1065155/1/index.htm

Reply to RJ

The “Wizard of Waxahachie” (Richards’ Texas hometown) is also unusual in that he played parts of 4 straight seasons aged 23-26 and again aged 34-37, but had no major league games in between, spending the 7 intervening years exclusively with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern League.

A nice SABR bio here.

Richards has nuthin’ on P Earl Caldwell. Caldwell pitched in the ML in 1928, came back from 1935-1937 and made a third appearance from 1945-1948.

Reply to Richard Chester

“Mr. Minoso, please report to the front desk…”

Looks like Caldwell is the only player from 1928 to have been active in 1948.

Hartvig

I have to wonder how many other players have gotten MVP votes in multiple seasons with a career WAR of 1.1.

Reply to Hartvig

Great question Hartvig! I ran some Play Index searches to find players with long-ish but replacement level careers, and came up the following selection of players. The conclusion I drew was that this was far more likely to happen in the pre-expansion days, probably due to the smaller pool of major league players and perhaps a less scientific approach to MVP voting. Here are the players I found, with their career WAR in brackets, followed by their years active (this is far from a complete list): Three MVP vote-getting seasons: – Chick Galloway (-2.8), 1919-1928 – Don Gutteridge (-0.8), 1936-1948… Read more »

donburgh

Wow, Montanez got traded a lot.

Reply to donburgh

Good observation donburgh. Some players involved in Montanez trades: Gaylord Perry, Bert Blyleven, Darrell Evans, Tony Phillips, Al Oliver, Garry Maddox. Not only that, but Montanez was one of the two players the Phillies received in lieu of Curt Flood after Flood’s momentous refusal to report.

David P

@10 Hartvig – I’ve got Mark Christman for you. MVP votes in three seasons, and a career -1.9 WAR.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/chrisma01.shtml

The 1944 votes I can kind of see, since he was the starting 3rd baseman on a pennant winning team. But the following year he received 5 points in the balloting, even though his team finished 3rd and he only played in 78 games.

And two years after that he received 4 points while playing 110 games at short for a 7th place team. His slash line was .222/.287/.281 with one home run, 33 RBI and 27 runs scored.

Oscar Melillo, 0.2 WAR, MVP votes in 3 seasons
Skeeter Newsome, 0.5 WAR, MVP votes in 2 seasons

Great stuff guys.

I haven’t had time to look them all over yet but there are a few seasons that are real head-scratchers that I’ve come across already.

They must have been really clutch or pitched to the score or something…