When the 1911 season rolled into action, the remarkable Rube Waddell was no longer part of the big league firmament. Looking back, we can peer – with something beyond awe – at the southpaw’s knack for making batters trudge away from the plate having gone down on strikes. The numbers […]
Since Dave Roberts started steering the Dodgers in 2016, the club owns the Majors’ best overall winning percentage at .628. For all this says about the franchise’s sustained brilliance, the team has – in the aggregate – needed a little bit of runway to soar. Over this 10-season stretch, Los […]
Dissecting and inspecting any Mariners season through the easily compartmentalized segments of “monthly” splits, the usual suspects dominate the collection for the highest OPS. For the top 10, Álex Rodríguez claims three of the slots, including the very best, a 1.412 in May of 1999. Ken Griffey, Jr. owns two […]
Stan Musial is famous for a lot of things when it comes to feats on the diamond. Considering the abundance his 22-year saga provided, the very beginnings of that journey are perhaps a bit overshadowed by what followed. But like so much of his career symphony, the overture was pretty […]
In 1911, when he became the first player with at least 70 steals and 70 extra-base hits in a season, 24-year-old Ty Cobb had 14 of each through his team’s first 26 games of the year. When, in 1984, Juan Samuel joined Cobb as the only players to complete the […]
Over in the NL this season, Chicago’s Kyle Tucker and New York’s Pete Alonso share the league leads in both RBI (with 25) and extra-base hits (17). One of the two is also pacing the league in runs, hits, total bases, times on base (all Tucker), doubles and OPS+ (Alonso). […]
There are a lot of Major League games every season. There have been a lot of Major League seasons. The spring->summer->fall carnival ride of rises and dips, the sheer volume of numbers and storylines, the numerous ways to organize and contextualize: all of this makes it easy and natural to […]
In 1998, Texas cleanup hitter Juan González embodied that descriptive amazingly well and often, with eight different games featuring at least five RBI. No other player in the modern era has produced so many big-RBI games, although a few aren’t too far behind. In 1930, Lou Gehrig had seven such […]
Joe Carter is probably best remembered for a certain three-run home run to end the 1993 World Series and likely fosters many remembrances for his knack of assembling 100-RBI seasons and his significant disinterest in accepting four balls in a plate appearance (of the 162 players with at least 300 […]
There are 1,197 players who’ve accumulated at least 4,000 plate appearances through their first 10 big league seasons. Imagine this immense gathering, where the head table is reserved for the top 10 in OPS+. You’ll have heard of these guys. Ted Williams commands the table, with a 190 through his […]