With just two weeks left in the season, Mike Trout will repeat as AL WAR champion and Andrew McCutchen, last year’s NL WAR runner-up, looks like the senior circuit’s champ. In second place are Josh Donaldson in the AL and Carlos Gomez in the NL.
Come again, you say? You’re forgiven if those two runners-up weren’t the names you were expecting to hear. Both of these players are new to baseball’s leader boards. After the jump, more on the new kids on the WAR block.
Padres 2, @Pirates 0 — Andrew Cashner went the route and faced the minimum 27 batters, a franchise first, and his one-hitter briefly knocked the Pirates off their perch.
Last season, Omar Vizquel retired after a 24-year major league career and many notable achievements. But, probably one you weren’t aware of is this – Vizquel is the only player to bat against both Jerry Reuss and Yu Darvish.
The search for such morsels of obscurity can be aided by consulting the Oracle of Baseball, one of the tools available on B-R in its “Frivolities” section. The tool lets you find linkages across baseball history from one player to another, based on common teammates. Thus, if you were to ask the Oracle to link Deacon White with Buster Posey, you could get an answer like:
Deacon White played with Frank Scheibeck for the 1888 Detroit Wolverines Frank Scheibeck played with Charley O'Leary for the 1906 Detroit Tigers Charley O'Leary played with Bruce Campbell for the 1934 St. Louis Browns Bruce Campbell played with Lou Boudreau for the 1938 Cleveland Indians Lou Boudreau played with Minnie Minoso for the 1949 Cleveland Indians Minnie Minoso played with Rich Gossage for the 1976 Chicago White Sox Rich Gossage played with Randy Johnson for the 1994 Seattle Mariners Randy Johnson played with Buster Posey for the 2009 San Francisco Giants
This quiz is something like playing the Baseball Oracle. With a few wrinkles. Audience participation is required. Lots of answers (at least twenty-one) for you to shout out as you find them.
Thanks to our readers for identifying twenty-four correct answers to the quiz, and congratulations to RJ for finding the most correct answers. Answers are after the jump.
@Twins 6, Rays 4 — Josmil Pinto planted a 3-run bomb on Joel Peralta in the 8th, capping Minnesota’s 4-run rally (all after 2 were out), as well as a general bullpen failure that brought Tampa closer to the pack.
This post is for voting and discussion in the thirtieth round of balloting for the Circle of Greats. This round adds those players born in 1944. Rules and lists are after the jump. Continue reading
Much debate and discussion this round, but the top choice was clear from early on — Rod Carew is the 29th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. More on Carew and the voting after this message from our sponsors the jump. Continue reading
Athletics 1, @Rangers 0 — Brandon Moss doubled home Josh Donaldson with 2 outs in the 1st, and Bartolo Colon nursed it for 8 innings, handing both Texas and Yu Darvish their third 1-0 loss at home this year — their only such games since 2004. Oakland’s division lead reached 5 in the loss column, and Sunday they’ll try to win the season series and stick Texas with their second 6-game skid at home this year.
Some of our regular readers were commenting recently on the uniqueness of Alphonso Soriano. Their view was that it is difficult to really describe the type of player that he is since there are so few similar players to compare him to.
That got me thinking about how that uniqueness might best be described. As our commenters knew so well, it’s not easy. Soriano’s like a lot of players, in certain ways, but quite unlike them in others.
After the jump, some thoughts on the enigma that is Alfonso.
Dalton joined me for lunch a few weeks ago in the land of lobster and oversized novelty boots. We got to talking about Barry Bonds, offensive environments, and asterisks. Both of us are irked by fans willing to completely ignore individual accomplishments based on single factors like PEDs or Coors Field.
Rather than removing these numbers from history with asterisks, official or personal, the thinking fan, we agreed, has an obligation to adjust certain individual accomplishments for context. Roger Maris had eight more games in which to hit his 61 homers than Babe Ruth got to hit his 60. Mark McGwire took 3,500 CCs more androstenedione than Maris in hitting his 70. Barry Bonds got to play six more games in Coors Field than McGwire when he hit his 70 (but also played 78 more in San Francisco). While some of these factors are more difficult to control for, we should be able to determine who hit the most home runs relative to his peers.
A debate has been underway in the comments here at HHS today — would Ichiro Suzuki have made it to 4,000 major league hits had he played a full career in MLB? Keeping in mind that Ichiro’s first season in MLB was his age 27 season and he is currently in his age 39 season, let’s look at some numbers, after the jump. Continue reading