Joe Niekro’s postseason ledger has a lot of zeroes: 20.0 innings, 0 runs allowed (0.00 ERA) and most remarkable, considering that ERA, 0 wins. Poor Joe Niekro. This incongruity got rolling in Game 3 of the 1980 NLCS, when the Astros’ right-hander stymied Phillies batters to the tune of 10 […]
There’s something extra special about a postseason home run: a big blast on the biggest of stages. Mazeroski and Carter won the World Series with one. Chambliss, Boone, Ordóñez, Ishikawa and Altuve sent their respective teams to the Fall Classic with one. Ruth (maybe) called one and Fisk desperately waved […]
On August 11 this year during a Sunday afternoon in the Bronx, Yankees outfielder Juan Soto clubbed his 29th and 30th dingers of the year. Since that multi-homer performance, I’ve been following New York’s box scores with an increased focus on Soto’s line, for I realized then that should Soto […]
Notes: This piece is only looking at position players – no pitchers are being considered for the various lists and ranks. All stats and ranks are through games played on September 10. Cast back to Wednesday, October 22, 2003: Game 4 of the World Series. It’s the bottom of […]
When the 2014 regular season shut down for the fall and winter, a comber through the game’s history books (or more relevantly, the magic of Baseball Reference) would have found that there were exactly 20 left-handed hurlers who had made at least one appearance in at least 20 campaigns. 10 […]
A few days ago, I felt a twinge of surprise upon learning that Rich Hill had just thrown 1.1 scoreless innings for the Red Sox to mark his entry into his 20th big league season.
Since the American League joined its older brother to present Major League ballgames in 1901, the two have combined to produce 33 Triple Crown winners from the mound – masters of their sphere and art to such a degree that at season’s end, each had painted a triptych proclaiming league […]
With another flurry of deadline deals having come and gone, I got to thinking – no, not about whether Jazz Chisholm would kick-start the sluggish Yankees offense, or which team “won” the deadline – but about how this particular junction of the baseball calendar came to be. After all, […]