DeWayne Wise is 34 years old. He’s played for 6 teams over 10 years, has never had as many as 200 plate appearances in a season, and has an abysmal 62 OPS+.

And yet, for a guy whose baseball card tells a truly unremarkable story, the guy has been involved in quite a few memorable events:

• In 2009, he made an incredible catch in the top of the 9th inning to preserve Mark Buerhle’s eventual perfect game.
• A few days ago, an umpire made an incredible mistake by ruling that Wise had caught a foul ball that he clearly did not.
• Last night, he recorded the last two outs in the 9th pitching for the Yankees.

Taken separately, none of these 3 things is all that unusual. Put together, though, and Wise is going to be remembered far longer than most other players with similar numbers.

1988 Score #656 Steve Bedrosian HL / Saves Record

25 years ago today, on June 29th 1987, Steve Bedrosian recorded a save in a 6-5 Phillies win over the Pirates. It was the 19th save of his Cy Young-winning season, and it was the 12th straight appearance where he recorded a save.

Read the last part of that last sentence again…he got a save in 12 straight appearances. That doesn’t sound too unusual, right? Can you believe that at the time, he had just set the MLB record for most consecutive appearances with a save?

The card above actually celebrates that very streak. Read the back of the card, posted at the bottom here. At the time, Bedrosian’s record-breaking performance supplanted that of Sparky Lyle from 14 years prior.

In the 25 years that followed Bedrosian’s record, here are the longest streaks where a pitcher recorded a save in every appearance:

You can see Bedrock ran his streak to 13 games, but since setting his record, it’s been tied or broken 31 times. Insane.

The way that closers get used now is so exclusively in save situations, that any guy who doesn’t get a blown save for a couple of months will rack up a streak that ties Bedrosian’s 1987 record.

I don’t even really know where to begin with the stupidity of how closers are used today. The dumbest thing of all is a road team saving a closer for when they have a lead. If it’s the bottom of the 9th (or 10th or 11th, etc) and the score is tied, managers just about never use their closers. They “save” him (ironically enough) for the next inning in the hopes that their team scores in the top of the inning so they can then bring in the closer to protect the lead. That means that the manager puts in a lesser reliever to pitch that inning, and if he gives up a run, the game is over while your closer is still sitting on his ass, having never come into the game.

I do miss the days of Goose Gossage, who routinely came in during the 7th or 8th inning to pitch 2 to 3 innings to close out games. It seems to make a lot more sense. I understand, though, that limiting a closer to 1 inning (and usually fewer pitches) means he’ll throw harder, batters have less opportunity to see the pitcher, and generally he will be more effective. But I can’t help but feel that managers have swung too far in the other direction, limiting the user of closers far too much.

When Joe Torre started using Mariano Rivera in the playoffs in the 8th inning, I had hoped that this would carry over to the regular season and that Rivera would be the first of a new breed of closers who would come in for as many as 6 outs. But this hasn’t happened, presumably because on the rare occasions when a closer blows a game in such circumstances because he’s lost an MPH or two off his fastball, managers feel like they would have been better off saving him for the 9th. But the current prevailing strategy has been shown to be monumentally flawed…

It takes time I suppose. I feel pretty confident in saying that in another 10 years time, closers will not be used in such restricted circumstances. Joe Madden will probably be the first guy to figure it out.

If you’ve read this far, you get a prize. Take a look again at the picture of Bedrosian on the front of the card at the top of this post. Notice anything unusual?

There is a Montreal Expo in the background who is not a baserunner, but an infielder. This means that the photo can only be from the 1987 All-Star game, and that must be Hubie Brooks.

Please vote below.

On June 6th 2007, just over five years ago, I wrote a short blog entry titled “A-rod’s 9th inning performance“. That was my first contribution to the now-defunct Baseball-Reference.com blog.

More than 2,000 posts later (between the B-R blog, the temporary home of High  Heat Stats over at Blogspot, and its permanent home right here) I have decided to hang it up and retire from baseball writing. Even as I write that–it’s not a full retirement. See below for more information.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve gotten to do some really fun things. Aside from working with the great folks who run Sports Reference (Sean and Neil mainly) and the numerous fantastic writers I’ve rubbed shoulders with for each blog, I’ve had the opportunity to write pieces for the New York Times, USA Today’s baseball preview issue, and appear on a local ESPN radio affiliate. I got to visit MLB Network’s headquarters and studios.

Perhaps the thing that has brought me the most joy is the gradual development of a loyal audience. My fellow writers each deserve as much credit for that as I do. If you go back and look at that A-rod post, it received zero user comments. Most of the posts from the first couple of years received fewer than 5 comments, and more often than not, it was Raphy or me commenting on each other’s posts. Flash forward, and now most posts on this blog get quite a few responses, with just about all of them containing some useful information or opinion. That’s an amazing and wonderful thing. And while I love sharing this space with so many like-minded people, it’s actually our differences that make this place so great. (After all, we can agree on how much Joe Carter sucks for only so long…)

Going forward:

• This blog will remain open and all the other authors will continue to publish on whatever schedule they choose. I will keep footing the bill to keep the blog open even though we don’t get nearly enough in the way of donations to cover costs or pay our writers.
• You can still reach me at my email addressed (posted in the right sidebar) for any issues–admin, contributions, etc.
• I will be keeping a Twitter presence (@HighHeatStats) although at a lower volume than before. You can still expect to see daily tweets there.
• I will finish off the Mount Rushmore post series, so those are still coming and will be published here.
• I will continue to write the occasional odd post, but I don’t expect that to be even as often as 1 post per week.
• I will also continue to do some outside work with other publications, as well as book reviews. I remain available to do guest spots in print and live media.

So this isn’t really goodbye. I’m just taking myself out of the lineup and moving to the end of the bench. I’ll be like Pete Rose as a player-manager, overseeing things and on rare occasions inserting myself into the action…only I have a much better haircut, and I don’t plan to bet on any of the action here.

“Pinstripe Empire” by Marty Appel chronicles the Yankees. And I mean the entire franchise from its start in 1901 (as the original Baltimore Orioles), to its rebranding in 1903 (as the New York Highlanders), to its eventual transformation into the New York Yankees.

Appel’s qualifications for writing such a book are without equal. He was the Yankees’ PR Director from 1973 to 1977, but started his association with the team as early as 1968, when he handled Mickey Mantle’s fan mail. Later he was the executive producer of WPIX Yankee telecasts, among numerous other high-ranking jobs within the sports industry.

“Pinstripe Empire” is a monumental achievement: a narrative history covering more than 100 years that makes mention of every significant event from the team’s past. This includes every manager hiring or firing (of which there have been, ahem, quite a few…), trade, free-agent signing or departure, individual or team achievement or blunder, memorable play, and anything else that contributed to the fascinating, complex story of the team.

Perhaps the greatest aspect of this book is not what Appel is, but rather what he is not. He’s not a booster. He’s not a fanboy. He didn’t write this book to hype the team. For example, when writing about Derek Jeter’s famous “flip” of Shane Spencer’s errant throw in the 2001 playoffs, you might expect him to describe those events for a couple of pages. Nope. The whole thing gets 6 sentences, appropriately describing the event as an “unfathomable defensive gem”, but also referencing the claim and subsequent skepticism that the team had practiced the play. Two pages later, Appel spends just as many words describing the Yankees’ losses in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series after all the mid-series heroics the team displayed.

Appel does not waste a single word in this book. Where he could have opted to spend half a page describing a positive or negative event with lots of overblown adjectives and pasted-on emotions, he instead uses one or two precisely-crafted sentences that perfectly capture the events. He manages to pack a tremendous amount of information into one book without it ever being boring or reading like spin.

If you’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Appel, as I have, you know he’s a warm, well-spoken man. When he became part of the Yankees’ organization in the 1960s, he had the opportunity to learn from folks with ties to the team as far back as the 1920s. In his acknowledgments, Appel lists nearly a full page of names of people he interviewed for this book, and the bibliography cites more than a dozen pages of books that served as sources. That’s a lot of research, folks, and it shows.

If you’re a Yankees fan, this book is an absolute must-have (and it would make an awesome gift!). If you’re a baseball fan but not a fan of the Yankees in particular, the book is still a wonderful piece of baseball history that provides a fair account of the franchise, warts and all.

“Pinstripe Empire” is available from Amazon.com here.

Paul Konerko / US PRESSWIRE

The White Sox are an  original American League team dating back to 1901. The had a good amount of success early on, winning the World Series in both 1906 and 1917. Then came the infamous 1919 World Series, which they lost ostensibly because several players were paid to tank. The team then entered a long dry spell, without a 1st-place finish from 1920 to 1958. In 1959, they lost another World Series (presumably played on fair terms). The team experienced another long drought until a first-place finish in 1983, when they lost the ALCS to the eventually-champ Baltimore Orioles. From 1990 to 2006, the team never finished lower than 3rd, including a World Series win in 2005. Since then, they’ve been about a .500 team.

Let’s take a look at the best personnel this team has had. Continue reading →

Pedro Alvarez, in photos from the last two days, approaching home plate after homering. Photos are courtesy of US Presswire.

Pedro Alvarez of the Pirates has hit 2 homers in each of the Pirates’ last two games.

Here are the last 10 times a guy has gone for 2 homers over each of 2 games:

The last time a Pirates player hit 2 homers in 2 straight games was in 2010, When Pedro Alvarez himself did it on July 20th and 21st. Before that? You have to go all the way back to Jason Thompson in 1984.

The last guy to hit 2 homers in 3 straight games was Jeff DeVanon in June of 2003.

1952 Bowman #115 Larry Doby

The Indians joined the American League in 1901 but were known as the Blues that year. In 1902 they were called the Broncos, and in 1902 they were called the Naps. They stuck with that name until 1915, when they were finally branded as the Indians.

From 1901 to 1947, the Indians finished first just once, in 1920, when the won the World Series. They won it again in 1948, and made it but lost in 1954. They then went through a terrible stretch in the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s when they were routinely one of the worst teams in the league (hence why they were the subject of the movie Major League). Come 1994, though, they had a core of good young players. The Indians were the first team to lock up young players prior to free agency, giving them above-market contracts for arbitration-eligible players, and it paid off. After a 2nd-place finish that year, they rung off 5 straight 1st-place finishes (although they made the World Series twice, they lost both times.) Since then, it’s been up-and-down, with additional playoff appearances in 2001 and 2007, but no titles since 1948.

Let’s take a look at who belongs on their monument. Continue reading →

1970 Topps #62: AL Batting Leaders / Rod Carew, Reggie Smith, & Tony Oliva

The Twins began life in MLB as the Washington Senators, joining the AL in 1901 along with a bunch of other teams. It took until their 24th season in 1924 to make the playoffs, but they won the World Series that year. They made the World Series, losing both times, twice in following 9 years.

In 1961, the franchise moved to Minnesota and renamed itself the Twins.  The team was a force in the late 1960s, finishing first or second 5 times between 1965 and 1970, but losing in the playoffs each year. The Twins won it all in 1987 and again in 1991, and then went into a period of suffering as a small market team. That changed in 2002 when the team posted a 1st place finish (one of 6 between ’02 and ’10) but again the team has lost all 6 times in the playoffs.

In 2011, the Twins turned suddenly dreadful, losing 99 games, and they have been only a bit better so far in 2012.

Let’s take a look at this team’s long list of great players.

Continue reading →

Responding to a reader question, here are the 10 worst seasonal ERAs for pitchers who qualified for the ERA title:

That’s an interesting set, considering that all 10 seasons are from either 1930-1940 or 1994-present.

Let’s look, instead, at the 10 worst ERA+ values, which corrects for overall scoring and ballpark:

So now these guys are all from 1918 or earlier, with the exception of Jose Lima in 2005, who made both lists. This tells you that a lot of bad pitchers were allowed to keep on pitching early in baseball history. (I should mention that both of these lists are 1901-present.)

I think that the first list above basically tells you when the two high-scoring eras of baseball were, and the second list basically tells you that pitchers were used differently (i.e. not allowed to finish out the year if they were horrible) come the 1920s.