John Smoltz started here at the Circle of Greats voting by appearing on exactly 50% of the ballots in his very first round (which was also just the second round of COG voting as a whole). Then, for the next 57 (!) rounds, John never appeared on nearly that high a percentage of the ballots again. Until, that is, he received a stunning level of very late support in the 1924 round of voting to tie Duke Snider, and closed things out with a 50.8% showing in a runoff against the Duke, making Smoltz the 58th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. More on John and the voting after the jump Continue reading →

Reds 3, @Dodgers 4 -Dodger left-hander Hyun-jin Ryu flirted with perfection for 7 innings, one day after teammate Josh Beckett had tossed a no-hitter in Philadelphia. Whether it was the 30 minute-plus Dodger ABs in the bottom of the 7th or something else, Ryu was off the mark in the 8th and barely escaped with the lead, much less a no-hit game. Brian Wilson got the second out of the inning but then allowed a two-run double and two walks, leaving the bases loaded for closer Kenley Jansen, who struck out Brandon Phillips to end the threat.

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Rangers 12, @Tigers 2, Rangers 12, @Tigers 4 – Texas took the four game set 3-1 with these two weekend shellackings of Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander. It was the just the 9th time since at least 1914 that Detroit has surrendered 12+ runs to the same opponent in consecutive games at home. For Verlander, it was only the second start of his career surrendering 9 runs in under 6 innings. His 14 game score is a career low.

More after the jump.

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With apologies to Samuel Beckett, and congratulations to Josh!

Dodger right-hander Josh Beckett has authored the first no-hit, no-run game of his career, and of this season, as the Dodgers took the rubber match of a weekend set in Philadelphia. Beckett walked three and struck out six, including Chase Utley for the game’s final out.

Backett threw 128 pitches, 80 of them for strikes. After going to a 3-0 count on the leadoff hitters in both the first and second innings, Beckett hit his stride and retired 23 Phillies in a row, throwing a first pitch strike to all but two of them. The Phillies helped out by putting 5 first pitches in play, four of them in the last 3 innings.

More after the jump.

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Looking at the NL slate today.

Rockies 2, @Braves 3 – Gerald Laird‘s two-out single in the 8th inning scored Ramiro Pena from second to break a 2-2 tie and Craig Kimbrel did the rest, striking out the side in the 9th for his 13th save. For Kimbrel, it was his 21st time facing 3 batters and striking out all of them, tying him with Armando Benitez for the second highest career total, trailing only Billy Wagner‘s record 32 games.

More after the jump.

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Quite an amazing comeback by John Smoltz to tie the 1924 round of the Circle of Greats voting. Smoltz appeared on all of the final six ballots of the round, while Duke Snider appeared on only one of those ballots. A five-vote lead with hours to go is generally an insurmountable lead, but is not, apparently, always so.

Smoltz and Snider played entirely different roles during widely separated eras. But they each played on the dominant National League team of their time, with several Hall of Fame quality teammates, while falling short of the number of World Series championships that playing on such dominant teams might have been expected to produce.

Let’s do a relatively short runoff vote, though I want to give a chance both to those who access the site on weekends and those who log on during the week. So let’s say all runoff votes are due in by 11PM EDT on Wednesday, May 28.

Runoff votes must show just one name, Smoltz’s or Snider’s. You also need to add some sort of additional verbiage though, because as I remember the comment function here at HHS won’t work with just one-word comments.

I’m out of town this weekend and don’t have easy access to the spreadsheets, so I’m not posting a counting spreadsheet right now. For the moment, volunteer commenters are welcome to periodically post a running tally of the votes within the comments themselves.

Indians 8, @Orioles 7 After sweeping the division-leading Tigers, the suddenly resurgent Indians outlasted the Orioles in 13 innings for a 4-game winning streak, tying their longest of the season. Baltimore suffered its 3rd loss when leading after 6 innings, and 2nd when leading after 7.

More after the jump.

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Chris Sale made a victorious return from the disabled list on Thursday evening and in the process he tore thorough a decent Yankee lineup as though it were tissue paper. Sale retired 18 of the 19 hitters he faced, while striking out 10 in just 6 innings of work. The lanky lefty tore through the first 17 hitters he faced before allowing a hit, which actually came as a relief to skipper Robin Ventura, because the manager was prepared to make the unpopular, but intelligent, decision to remove his ace during a perfect game. In short, Sale looked like he hadn’t skipped a beat. This was the dominance White Sox fans have come to recognize in their ace over the past couple of seasons, but the reality is this isn’t the same Chris Sale. This 2014 version has turned into something more.

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Game Notes is taking a few days off, for his godson’s wedding in New Orleans. See you again in a week or so.

Oakland scored 3 runs with just one hit, turning two Erik Bedard walks and two infield errors into a pair in the 2nd. As noted by contributor Daniel Longmire, it’s the first one-hit win in the franchise’s searchable history (since 1914); also the first in MLB since last July, another Bedard loss.

• The A’s are 8-10 when scoring 3 runs or less — the most such wins in MLB, and the fewest such losses.
• Grant Balfour kept it close in the 9th despite walking the first two A’s, giving him 16 walks in 17.1 IP.
• There are four active players named Fernando. All are relief pitchers, and two earned holds for the A’s in this game.

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The first list are pitchers who began their careers between 1893 and 1919. The second list are pitchers who played their entire careers between 1920 and 2000.

For both lists, only these pitchers had a particular career accomplishment. What is it?

Hint: while rare in the above periods, this feat has recently become more common, accomplished by 15 retired pitchers active since 2001.

I evidently stumped our readers with this one. The solution is that, among starting pitchers with 1000+ IP careers played entirely between 1893 and 2000, only the quiz players had a career FIP either below their SO/BB ratio, or no more than 20% higher than their SO/BB ratio. More after the jump:

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