Since records have been kept (from 1939) just 7 players have qualified for the batting title but never grounded into a double play:

It’s less impressive for the 3 guys who did it in 1994 since that was a shorter season.

Weird to see slowpoke Rob Deer on here, but that’s because he so often struck out or hit a fly ball.

Presswire

Despite what the back of his jersey says, Jamie Moyer’s not going to turn 50 until November of this year. Now that he’s been named to the Rockies’ starting rotation, however, he has the chance to set a lot of age-related records. Continue reading →

I have a specific idea for a cool feature I want to add to this blog but I lack the expertise in coding it. It involves pulling some data (with permission) from another website and displaying it here. If you (or someone you know) can help, please drop me an email. I will pay.

Dave Gallagher played 9 years in the major leagues, including as the starting center fielder for the 1989 White Sox. He also played with the Indians, Orioles, Angels, Mets, Braves, and Phillies. He had great bat control in the minors and found the same skill in the majors, walking more than he struck out in the second half of his career.

We were lucky enough to (virtually) sit down with Gallagher and ask him some questions about his career and his stats.

Andy at High Heat Stats: First of all–growing up in central NJ: were you a fan of the Mets, Yankees, or Phillies?

Dave Gallagher: As a kid my favorite team was The Giants. My father told me stories of Willie Mays playing at the Polo Grounds. I imitated the Mays catch over and over and learned the line up for wiffle ball. McCovey, Mays, Dietz, Lanier, Hart, Brown, Fuentes, Marichal, Alou.

Continue reading →

We thank Richard Chester, who wrote and sent in this post.

The Yankees have a long string of players who are well-known to the baseball world. There are the superstars such as Ruth, Gehrig, et al., and lots of lesser stars such as Rolfe, Selkirk, Bauer, McDougald et al. But there is a small group of players who have contributed significantly to the Yankees success, however brief, but are utterly forgotten. Continue reading →

Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan is a new book by Robert. K. Fitts released earlier this month. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy for review from the publisher.

This book was tough to put down, mainly because of the subtitle: unlike most other baseball books, this one is a narrative that provides a detailed account of the complex political situation in the years before and after the tour of a major-league All-Star team in Japan in 1934. As tensions between Japan and western powers had grown in the 1920s and 30s, many hoped this series of exhibition games would serve to lower the barrier between Japan and the U.S. While many felt after the fact this goal had been achieved, by the 1940s it was clear that peace had not been achieved. We now know that the bombing of Pearl Harbor nevertheless occurred in 1941, leading to a prolonged world war and the devastation of Japan.

Continue reading →

Inspire by reader Kenny, I ask if anybody can recall multiple instances of any of the following events happening in the same game:

(a) a no-hitter
(b) a triple-play
(c) A squeeze bunt that scores a run
(d) a successful steal of home plate
(e) an inside-the-park home run
(f) hitting for the cycle

Maybe we can start with lists of each specific event and then see if any of the games match up?

JRoll, in all likelihood making an out / Icon SMI

Jimmy Rollins makes a ton of outs.

For starters, here are the NL leaders for outs over the last 11 seasons:

Rollins has led in 4 of those 11 years. To be fair, he also led in AB all of those years so he had the most opportunity to make outs. (Although, to play devil’s advocate, if he had walked more, he wouldn’t have had so many ABs…)

But this isn’t the whole story–click through for more. Continue reading →

We appear to be having some site issues with intermittent slow loading and/or downtime. I am investigating.

UPDATE: I have made some modifications to the site, specifically adding a cache plugin. This should ultimately speed up your loading time of the blog and also reduce our overall bandwidth use. The popularity of the blog has gotten so high that it was starting to use too much bandwidth and my ISP was restricting access!

Every fantasy league has different rules, and here’s how FanDuel.com scores it for hitters:

1B = 1pt
2B = 2pts
3B = 3pts
HR = 4pts
RBI = 1pt
R = 1pt
BB = 1pt
SB = 2pts
HBP = 1pt
Out (calculated as at bats - hits) = -.25pt

Since each contest on FanDuel is just 1 game, all we really care about is what each player on your chosen team does on game day. You’ll be required to draft 1 player at each position, so let’s break down 2011 by position to see how each player would rate on a per-game basis. Continue reading →