Yes, I did say Opening Day. As New Year approaches, we can also celebrate that winter’s end is in sight; the days are getting longer and Opening Day is now less than 100 days away.

Meanwhile, the folks over at Retrosheet.org continue their painstaking labor of poring through images of old newspapers and recording the published boxscores in the Retrosheet database. The database is available to all and the people at Baseball-Reference.com do the programming work so people like me can pull up boxscores online and run searches of these games.  This little preamble is by way of mentioning that, just in time for the holidays, B-R recently updated their games database to include all boxscores back to the 1916 season.

So, hold those thoughts, 1916 and opening day, and I’ll tell you more after the jump of an unusual opening day matchup that year and in some others as well.

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Despite a frustrating, injury-plagued season in 2012, Roy Halladay still managed to add some luster to his distinguished career. Last season, Halladay joined this elite group of pitchers who are the only hurlers in the live-ball era with a particular career accomplishment. What is that accomplishment?

Congratulations to Brooklyn Mick! With the help of other posters (particularly Josh, JA and Ed), Brooklyn identified that Roy Halladay made his 10th opening day start in 2012 to join an elite group of pitchers. For Halladay, it was his 10th straight opening day start, with his teams going 7-3 (including 7-1 for the last 8 years). Watch for both CC Sabathia and Mark Buehrle to join this group in 2013. Opening Day (or Opening Night, rather) is just 101 days away – countdown starts tomorrow.

And, sorry for not having the full list of names to start the quiz.

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Jim McKay famously uttered this catchphrase at the opening of the weekly TV sports anthology program, Wide World of Sports. In the opening film sequence, the “agony of defeat” was portrayed as a ski jumper losing his balance and falling off the ski jumping tower (ouch). But, what does agony of defeat look like in baseball?

In fact, there have been players to play their entire careers without ever appearing in a game for the winning side. Not surprisingly, all of those players are relief pitchers. None had a long career, of course, but probably longer than what you might guess.

After the jump, more on these most unlucky of ballplayers.

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This is a different sort of quiz, to recognize unusual accomplishments in  2012, many of which have probably not been remarked upon. Until now.

After the jump, you’ll see a table of batters and a table of pitchers. For both the batters and the pitchers, the table contains two lists, one of active players and one of players retired for at least 25 years. Your job is to match the active batters to the retired batters, and the active pitchers to the retired pitchers.

So, how do you match up the players? Pretty simple, really. All you need to know is that each active player accomplished a season or career feat in 2012 that had not been accomplished since one of the retired players did the same thing.

Thanks to everyone for playing the game. I admit this was pretty tough. The solution is after the jump.

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No, not that kind of streaking. But, now that I have your attention, here are the 2012 gold, silver and bronze medal awards for streaks for various batting categories.

For each category, I’ve indicated both the hottest and coldest streaks. I’ll leave it for you to decide whether these streaks indicate that a player is prone to streaky play, or is just consistently good … or bad.
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This post is about prodigal baserunners, those players who just don’t make it home very often. Even if they get on base fairly frequently.

After the jump, I’ll take a look at who these players are, and how infrequently they actually do score.

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Here is a list of pitchers representing 3 distinct eras: before 1920; the 1960s; and the past 20 years.

What is it that pitchers have achieved only in these periods, and that only these pitchers have accomplished in a qualifying season (min. 162 IP) since 1901?

Hint: Three of these pitchers accomplished this feat in multiple seasons, including one who did so in consecutive seasons.

Congratulations to Artie Z! He correctly identified (in just 59 minutes) that these are the only pitchers since 1901 with a season (min. 162 IP) of double-digit wild pitches and hit batters, combined with a K/BB ratio of 3.0 or better (in fact, nobody has done that in fewer than 162 IP, either). Here are those seasons.

Which teams have had the most (or least) to be thankful for at holiday time?

Just for fun, here are a list of significant Thanksgiving Day transactions. Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been a lot of activity on this holiday, but there have been a few transactions of note.

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Here is a list of mainly better hitters, including batting champions and several current and future HOFers.

Since 1920, what is the seasonal feat that only these hitters have accomplished before the age of 30?

Congratulations to John Autin and Richard Chester! They teamed up to identify these players as the only under 30 hitters since 1920 with a season scoring less than 100 runs despite a .400+ OBP and 25 or more steals. Here is the list.

One of the less well-noted happenings prior to the 2012 season was a change in one of the career pitching leaderboards. With the retirement of Tim Wakefield, there was a new active leader in career wild pitches, one Allan James Burnett.

A.J.’s ascension to the top rung was well-deserved, coming on the heels of 3 seasons with the spectacular aggregate total of 58 wild pitches. To put that number in perspective, at least five pitchers, at the time they became active leaders in this category, had compiled career wild pitch totals not exceeding A.J.’s three-year mark. For the curious, those players were Freddie Fitzsimmons (1935, 1942), Bill Hallahan (1935), Bump Hadley (1939), Johnny Allen (1942), and Warren Spahn (1959).

After the jump, a look at where A.J. fits into the pantheon of the game’s wildest hurlers.

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