Here’s a quick look at how much Albert Pujols’ performance has cost over his career. Continue reading →

Angels celebrate following Weaver's no-hitter / PRESSWIRE

Jered Weaver threw the 10th regular-season no-hitter since in the majors since 2010 last night, defined as team pitching performances of at least 9 innings with zero hits allowed. Are no-hitters becoming much more common? Is pitching becoming much more dominant? Click through for some analysis. Continue reading →

Brandon Inge / PRESSWIRE

Brandon Inge was released by the Tigers and is poised to join the Oakland Athletics. For a while, it looked as if Inge would spend his entire major-league career with the Tigers. At the moment, before he plays a game with another team, you might be surprised to find out where he ranks among players who played for only the Tigers. Continue reading →

To win 2 tickets to the game Tuesday 5/1 Athletics at Red Sox, all you need to do is post a comment below (not anonymously) with a guess of which player will be the first one to hit a home run in today’s MLB games. Keep in mind that the first game starts at 12:05 ET (less than 2 hours from now.)

You can make up to 3 guesses. The winner will be the first person with the correct guess, determine by either their post here or their tweet @HighHeatStats. If you are going to tweet guesses, your tweet must also include a link to this blog post. Guesses must be submitted by 12:00 (noon) today.

In the event a game is eventually rained out, I will still count the winner as the player who homered before the rain stoppage.

Derek Jeter has started of so hot that I wanted to look at the first 16 games of each of his seasons:

Year   BA/ OBP/ SLG   2B   3B   HR   RBI   BB   K
2012 .411/.436/.644    5    0    4    13    4   6
2011 .219/.282/.234    1    0    0     4    6   5
2010 .333/.368/.500    3    0    3    11    3   6
2009 .290/.388/.522    4    0    4    11    5   8
2008 .277/.309/.369    2    2    0    12    2   5
2007 .324/.392/.366    3    0    0     4    6   6
2006 .350/.473/.600    5    2    2    15   14   6
2005 .350/.473/.484    4    0    1     8   13   9
2004 .209/.284/.254    3    0    0     5    5   9
2003 .309/.347/.485    4    1    2     7    4  12
2002 .271/.329/.386    2    0    2    10    6  10
2001 .306/.370/.375    3    1    0    10    8   6
2000 .304/.360/.464    3    1    2     8    5  14
1999 .424/.541/.881    4    4    5    14   13   7
1998 .257/.303/.386    3    0    2     8    5  16
1997 .338/.456/.492    3    2    1     7   13  15
1996 .314/.435/.412    0    1    1     8    9  12

As you can see for yourself, other than a higher OBP in 2005 and 2006, Jeter’s off to his best start since 1999. It’s also noteworthy, though, that his walk rate is quite low–his excellent SLG so far could be a small-sample-size hiccup from Jeter being less patient, putting the ball in play more, and getting a few more extra-base hits.

There are a lot of awful things to say about Mark Melancon’s performance yesterday, but this might be the worst.

PRESSWIRE

Miguel Cabrera turns 29 years old today.

It’s hard to believe that he’s so young, given that he’s already had 8 seasons where he’s qualified for the batting title with an OPS+ of at least 129.

Check out who has the most such seasons through their Age 28 season:

These guys all started in the majors at a young age and not a single one of them flamed out early. In fact, as you probably noticed, every player on that list who is eligible for the Hall of Fame is in the Hall of Fame, and it would seem that Griffey, Pujols, and A-Rod are pretty much locks already.

I have no doubt that if we look at raw numbers, Cabrera will rank toward the top in homers and RBI thanks to the era in which he has played. It would be fun, though, to project how Cabrera will end up. Continue reading →

High Heat Stats contributor Graham Womack has published a wonderful piece on his blog, Baseball Past and Present, called the All-Time Dream Project. He logged more than 600 votes to come up with the top players at each position, and got an excellent team of writers to write something on each of the winners.

What’s that? You want more? Well he also commissioned artwork from Sarah Wiener for each of the winners, and you can even pick up a set of the trading cards.

Check out this wonderful post at the link above.

Since Derek Jeter reached 3,000 career hits on July 9th, 2011, he has played in 73 games. His numbers over those games are:

334 PAs, 43 RBI, 47 R, 5 HR, .331/.383/.450

Very impressive, especially considering how poorly he hit in 2011 before reaching 3,000 hits (66 games, 312 PAs, 22 RBI, 40 R, 2 HR, .257/.321/.329).

I thought I’d compare Jeter’s post-3000 performance with other recent players to surpass that same total, to see if they, too, hit well when the individual pressure was off.

Craig Biggio played in only 69 more career games after reaching 3,000 hits in 2007. Over those 69 games, his line was a dreadful 249 PAs, 23 RBI, 23 R, 5 HR, .253/.260/.362.

Rafael Palmeiro played in only 22 more career games after reaching 3,000 hits in 2005. Over those 22 games, his line was a fairly horrid 90 PAs, 9 RBI, 7 R, 3 HR, .241/.322/.380.

Rickey Henderson reached 3,000 hits on the final day of the 2001 season, coming on October 7th after the season had been delayed due to the events of 9/11/2001. He played 102 more games in his career, with a line of 306 plate appearances, 21 RBI, 47 R, 7 HR, .219/.356/.339. Rickey could take a walk right up until the end, but that’s about all he could manage.

Cal Ripken reached 3,000 early in the 2000 season and played in 201 additional career games. Over those games he had 811 PAs, 118 RBI, 79 R, 27 HR, .246/.289/.396 (not incredibly bad.)  To compare to Jeter, if we look at just the 85 games right after he reached 3000 hits, Ripken’s line was 337 PAs, 54 RBI, 38 R, 13 HR, .242/.291/.419. Good, but especially coming in a higher offensive environment than Jeter’s playing in right now, not nearly as good.

Wade Boggs appeared in just 10 more games after reaching 3,000 in August of 1999. Over those 10 games, he did quite well, with 33 PAs, 3 RBI, 2 R, 0 HR, .345/.394/.448. Those numbers are comparable to Jeter’s, but over many fewer plate appearances.

Tony Gwynn played in 156 more games after reaching 3,000 hits. Check out this line: 443 PAs, 63 RBI, 51 R, 7 HR, .337/.377/.476. Not too shabby.

Jeter seems intent on playing at least a couple more seasons. If he can stay reasonably healthy and play reasonably well, he has a shot at becoming just the 6th player to reach 3,500 career hits.

The blog was down most of the day today thanks to a major outage at the ISP. Oops.

I have installed a new chat widget. It appears in the right sidebar on all pages. Please give it a try so I can see how well it works. I’m sure I’ll be updating options, etc., but I need to see it in action to improve it, so please do use it.