After winning the NL Central three straight years, the Houston Astros limped into the All-Star break with a 30-57 record, the worst in baseball by five games. Only three teams in history have gone from first to last in one season: Year Team Year 1 Year 2 1914 Philadelphia (AL) 99-53 43-109 1986 California 92-70…
It has now been more than two years since we created Pitcher Abuse Points to standardize the measurement of pitcher workloads. By and large, we have been more successful at that goal than we had any reason to expect. Some people in baseball now agree with the notion that limiting pitch counts in an attempt…
You hear a lot of talk today about how we are possibly entering the Era of the Third Basemen. Whereas at the beginning of the 1990s there were only a few truly great third basemen (Matt Williams, Robin Ventura, Jim Thome before he switched corners, Wade Boggs before he faded), today it seems that half…
As we chronicled in Baseball Prospectus 2000, the current thinking on how to build and run a major-league bullpen may be changing. For 20 years, teams have used their "closer"–a term originally used to designate a team’s best reliever–more and more exclusively in what we call "save situations:" the ninth inning with a lead of…
One of the most striking changes to the landscape of major-league baseball has been the disappearance of the left-handed starting pitcher. In the American League, left-handers made fewer than 20% of all starts last year, allowing teams like the A’s to take advantage by stacking their lineup with left-handed hitters. How dramatic is the decline?…
Luis Castillo is enjoying a breakout season. The Marlins’ second baseman, still just 24 years old, is hitting .351 with 39 walks in 50 games for a stellar .461 OBP. That’s sixth in the majors and the highest OBP by a leadoff hitter. In fact, no second baseman has had a higher OBP in a…
One of the arguments for the case that the quality of baseball is better now than ever before is that pitchers are hitting worse, relative to the league, than they ever have. Because pitchers reach the major leagues for reasons independent of their hitting ability, the assumption is that the quality of their hitting should…
Two years ago, when we first introduced Pitcher Abuse Points, pitch counts were still shrouded in a veil of mystery. They were available, mind you, but they were squirreled away at the bottom of box scores, and rarely ventured from their hiding place to appear in game summaries or in televised accounts of the game….
If major league baseball is shut down for the 2002 season as the owners wage their fiercest war ever to break the Players Association and turn back 30 years of advances, this Monday’s First-Year Player Draft will be regarded as one of the events that laid the foundation for the owners’ assault. Riding the wave…
Byung-Hyun Kim arrived on American soil last spring and brought a new pitch, the submarine slider, with him. This year, he’s proving that his cup of coffee last season–just 20 hits allowed in 28 innings while striking out 31–was no fluke. Though he lost the Diamondbacks’ game on Sunday, allowing his first home run of…
The Muser Extension The Kansas City Royals gave manager Tony Muser a two-year contract extension last week. Judging from the reaction of the many passionate Royals fans I’ve heard from, the team’s chances of reaching the postseason any time this decade officially expired with the move. That may be overstating the situation, but when a…
Of Hits and Misses Bobby Bonds set the all-time single-season record for strikeouts with 189 in 1970, and his mark has weathered repeated challenges since. Mike Schmidt, Pete Incaviglia, Rob Deer and Cecil Fielder all struck out at least 180 times in a season. Bonds’s record has survived despite rampant whiff inflation throughout baseball in…
One of the great things about baseball is that no matter how many games you’ve seen, there’s always the chance that you’ll see something you’ve never seen before. What’s true at the game level is equally true at the seasonal level: each season, there is that delicious possibility that some team will do something–or have…
Raves for Rafael (And the Braves) Barely a month ago, I wrote that the Braves were taking a needless risk in rushing Rafael Furcal straight from A ball to the major leagues. While the financial ramifications are still going to crop up down the road, it is fairly obvious that from a talent standpoint, Bobby…
Taking Their Chances with Lee Stevens Through May 14th, free-swinging superstar Vladimir Guerrero has drawn 16 walks–but 10 of them (62.5%) were intentional. The highest ratio of intentional walks to overall walks since statkeepers started differentiating between them in 1955 (minimum 400 AB): Name Year IBB BB Ratio Manny Sanguillen 1971 13 19 .684 Joe…
Come Back, Lance Johnson! All Is Forgiven! Through 33 games, the Chicago Cubs had yet to hit a triple. The teams with the fewest triples in history in seasons with at least 120 games played: Team Year 3B Baltimore 1998 11 New York (AL) 1988 12 Baltimore 1986 13 Oakland 1998 13 Los Angeles (NL)…