For Yankees fans of a certain age, the name Edgar Martínez probably produces a host of emotions – none very good. The name might conjure teeth gnashing, it might inspire cold sweats, it very well could induce jagged breathing and even a few tears. To a baseball fan without any […]
In the very first postseason contest in Major League Baseball’s Modern Era – Game 1 of the 1903 World Series – Pittsburgh’s Deacon Phillippe baffled Boston’s batters and silenced the partisans at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds with a 10-strikeout, no-walk display. This established introduction – reach double-digits in K’s […]
In an easy-going, 20-4 rout of the St. Louis Browns on May 21, 1925, Philadelphia Athletics backstop Mickey Cochrane erupted for three home runs. The verb is useful here, as Cochrane entered the game with one four-base hit on his career ledger; then again, he had only played 27 games […]
Among the more robust RBI men in the game this year, there are four who belong to a family of sorts: let’s call it the Al Simmons Club (you’ll see why later on). Among other notables both hidden inside and blaring out of his Hall of Fame statistical record, Simmons […]
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 […]
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 […]
The very last games of a season being played to determine a champ, a series of games played within a tight window on the calendar. By its very formula, the World Series is an alchemist of drama, a stoker of tension and breathlessness. Sometimes, though, it really transmutes the ingredients […]