What were the most notable baseball trades to happen on this day?
With the luxury of hindsight, it’s fun to look back and see what transactions worked out or didn’t, or maybe even changed baseball history.
A new baseball season is upon us (at least here in North America).
To get into the swing of things, since 1918, what do these players (and only these players) have in common?
Congratulations to John Autin, who solved the quiz in (gulp!) 7 hours, 53 minutes. The quiz answer is that these 7 players are the only non-pitchers who, since 1918, have appeared in 5 or more opening day games, but never as a starter.
Opening day in North America is tomorrow, April 4th. As with last week’s opener in Japan, doesn’t seem to be a lot of build-up by MLB. To wit, tomorrow’s debut of the Marlins’ new digs will share attention with 12 pre-season games, including at least one that will likely still be in progress when the first pitch is thrown in Miami.
One of the great rites of the start of the baseball season is the naming of opening day starting pitchers. This year’s roster includes several making their first opening day start, including Brandon McCarthy, Stephen Strasburg, Tommy Hanson, Justin Masterson, Johnny Cueto, John Danks, Colby Lewis, Wandy Rodriguez, Jake Arrieta and Bruce Chen.
You got the last quiz in less than 10 comments, so this one is tougher.
The pitchers in this quiz have done something that has happened in the AL only 13 times since 1930. That something is an event within a game.
The common thread connecting these pitchers is related to a career milestone most recently achieved in the 2011 season.
The list of pitchers is after the jump. What did these pitchers do?
The quiz has been solved in 82 minutes. The listed pitchers are those who, in an AL game since 1930, have surrendered the final career hit to a member of the 3000 hit club.
Congratulations to Topper009! And, honorable mention to stealofhome who was right on Topper’s heels.
This past week, Jack Cust was released and later picked up by the Yankees on a minor-league contract. Cust, at 53.0%, is the active career leader in TTO% (three true outcomes – % of PAs resulting in BBs, Ks or HRs). Generally, those high on the TTO list (usually around 50% of PAs) need to be high up on each of the component lists, if not among the league leaders. If they are, they stand a decent chance of being positive contributors.
Strikeouts are customarily seen as unproductive outs and therefore something to be minimized. Of course, those with high strikeouts can mitigate their negative impact by providing power. I was interested, though, to find out if any players had made positive offensive contributions even when their power did not seem adequate to compensate for their strikeouts.
Actually, one of these guys wasn’t an All-Star, but that’s only because there weren’t such things in his time.
Regardless, the list after the jump is an impressive assortment of top baseball talent. And, it’s a very exclusive group because these are the only players since 1901 to accomplish a particular feat. What is that feat?
The quiz has been solved in just 63 minutes. Congratulations to bstar!
I’m going to have to go back to the difficult quizzes.
In a Grapefruit League game today, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Anthony Gose stole 2nd, 3rd and home in top of the 8th inning, scoring the eventual winning run as Toronto beat Boston to continue its torrid spring training winning spree.
This, of course, is a pretty unusual feat. I’ve found references to these previous times that this has been done.
What is special about Gose today was that he was the only baserunner of the inning. The two games above both involved a double steal in one of the 3 stolen bases.
Does anyone know of other games where this has happened?
How often have Juan Pierre and Jimmy Rollins had outs in a season totalling 75% of their PAs? You might be surprised to know that neither of them has ever done this, though a number of other players have, some more than once. As PAs are, aside from pinch-running, a prerequisite to making an out, let’s see who the players are who do this most frequently.
The last player to appear in a major league game before his 19th birthday was Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod debuted for the Mariners on July 8, 1994, 19 days before turning 19. Since then, just a handful of 19 year-olds have appeared, including such notables as Andruw Jones, Edgar Renteria, Adrian Beltre and Felix Hernandez. The Upton brothers, Justin and B.J., also both debuted just prior to turning 20 (does anyone know if any other brothers have debuted as teenagers?)
But, teenagers weren’t always so scarce. During World War II, and in the bonus baby days of the 1950s and 1960s, there was a relative abundance of teenagers in the majors, with some teams sporting several on their rosters. And, it wasn’t just 19 year-olds – Joe Nuxhall famously debuted as a 15 year-old and a number of 16, 17 and 18 year-old players have also had major league playing time.
With that preamble, I’m following up an earlier post on the oldest batter vs. pitcher matchups with this post, highlighting the youngest such matchups.
In the final installment of WAR leaders by position since 1961, we look at pitchers and catchers. As with the earlier posts, the methodology is to identify the leader in cumulative bWAR over 5-year periods for players appearing in a designated position for at least 75% of their games. For pitchers, this means that a pitcher must appear in either a starting or relieving role for 75% of their games to be included on the leader board.