The Futility Infielder

A few weeks back, I was in Minneapolis for the wedding of my wife's cousin, and at some point during the festivities, the wedding of the bride's father came up in conversation. It took place on June 25, 1977, which also happens to be my wife's birthday (the birthday girl was the flower girl for the wedding). My father-in-law told me a story about taking his two sons to see the White Sox play the Twins at Metropolitan Stadium the day before the wedding.

He said he remembered the Sox leadoff hitter Ralph Garr getting a single but being thrown out at second base by Twins left fielder (and future multimillion dollar Brewer bust) Larry Hisle, who had apparently been forewarned that the speedy Garr liked to stretch singles into doubles. He also remembered Oscar Gamble crushing a long home run for the White Sox, as did both of my brothers-in-law when the game came up for conversation elsewhere during the weekend.

Of course, I couldn't resist going back to find the box score for that game, and lo and behold, those details were just as they'd remembered. Garr was indeed thrown out by Hisle -- that actually happened on the game's first at-bat. Gamble homered off Twins starter Paul Thormodsgard in the sixth, the second homer of a back-to-back tandem following Lamar Johnson. In fact, the ball must have been jumping off the bat that day, because there were actually six homers hit, three by the White Sox (Jim Essian being the other), and three by the Twins (Hisle, Lyman Bostock and Craig Kusick).

As it turns out there would have been a seventh home run. According to Baseball Toaster's Bob Timmermann, who randomly exhumed the box score and wrote about the game a few years back, Garr came up in the third inning with two men on:

Third baseman Eric Soderholm led off with a single and catcher Jim Essian reached on an error by shortstop Roy Smalley. Garr then hit a deep fly to right that Ford made a leap for against the wire fence in Bloomington. Ford crashed to the ground and first base umpire Nestor Chylak ran out to make the call and seemed to take a while. While this was happening, Soderholm and Essian went back to their bases, thinking that Ford had caught the ball. But Ford hadn't, the ball had gone over the fence. However, as Essian went back to first, Garr passed him on the bases. So Garr was credited with a single, but was then called out for passing Essian. Soderholm and Essian did score to cut the lead to 5-2.

As it turns out, the Sox needed Garr's extra run, as they wound up falling to the Twins, 7-6.

Anyway, given how often memory proves faulty when it comes to recalling old games, I was pretty impressed that the details which were relayed to me did match the picture this time. Fun stuff.

Labels: baseball history, home runs

If all you watched was baseball pertaining to that Bronx team -- and let's face it, that describes a certain portion of this blog's readership -- you'd think that home run rates were off the charts this year given the major league-leading 1.81 homers per game that are being hit at Epic Fail Stadium. That's not the case, as I point out in today's Hit and Run:

When we last checked in on 2009 home-run rates, April was just about in the books, and was providing a strong indicator that this year's overall home-run rate would finish ahead of last year's. But while the performances of Adrian Gonzalez (22 homers) and Raul Ibañez (20), and the frequency with which balls continue to fly out of Yankee Stadium (1.81 homers per team per game) suggest a homer-happy season, the reality is that rates have slowed considerably.

Through April 25 -- the cutoff point for the data used in my previous piece -- batters were homering in 2.79 percent of their plate appearances and averaging 1.082 home runs per team per game. By the end of the month -- a period shortened by the World Baseball Classic having pushed Opening Day back a week -- those figures had dropped to 2.71 percent and 1.051 per game. Thanks to a May where the fences seemed to move outward (2.58 percent and 0.999 per game), the overall rates are now ringers for last year's numbers, and would be among the lowest of the post-strike era if the season had ended on June 9:

Year  HR/PA   HR/TmG
2009   2.61   1.009
2008   2.60   1.005
2007   2.63   1.020

The numbers are more revealing once they're broken down by league, with the two new New York parks excluded:

Lg    2009   2008-td   2008-f
AL   1.032    0.858     1.002
NL   0.946    0.989     1.003
ML   0.986    0.928     1.003

Eliminating the New York parks from both years, we find that per-game home-run rates are up 6.3 percent over last year at this time [2008-td, for "to date"], but that the current figures would still finish 1.6 percent below the full-season 2008 rate [2008-f] because of a June-July uptick (1.073 per game) that pushed things back toward normalcy.

Also noted in the article is the recent Accuweather report discounting the meteorologists' earlier theory about the new Yankee Stadium creating a wind tunnel in favor of, um, closer fences due to less gentles curves (a point my BP colleague Marc Normandin already hit. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Labels: Hit and Run, home runs, Yankee Stadium

Step right up and get your small-sample anomalies! That's the subject of today's BP/ESPN piece, which starts with a Yankee:

We're just past a third of the way through the season, and it's no secret that the new Yankee Stadium has played as a hitter's park thus far. After 29 games played in the Bronx, teams are averaging an AL-high 5.7 runs and an MLB-high 1.8 homers per game, with batters hitting a robust .271/.354/.476. Alas, Nick Swisher's invitation to the party must have been lost in the mail. Through Monday, he was hitting just .190/.390/.354 at home, and that after a long ball in each of his last two games there, just his second and third round-trippers at home. Meanwhile, he's thrashing at a .313/.400/.708 clip on the road, where he's hit nine home runs and 19 of his 26 extra-base hits.

The 363-point OPS difference between Swisher's location splits constitutes the largest home-field disadvantage among hitters with at least 100 PA in both contexts, but it's hardly the only sizable split, even among those spending half of their time in hitter-friendly parks. Three Phillies -- Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, and Ryan Howard -- rank in the top 20 in that category. Werth's OPS is 308 points lower at home, "good" for fifth, while Victorino's 239-point deficit is eighth, and Howard's 149-point deficit is 18th. With the minimal sample sizes in play, such anomalies shouldn't be terribly surprising, nor should Werth's 2008 reverse split be (887 OPS on the road, 832 at home), since it takes years of regular at-bats before the sample sizes become large enough to yield reliably representative results.

Still, like bearded ladies and monkey boys, such early-season freak shows are fun to gawk at before the regression police shutter them for operating without a license.

From there, I go on to detail the biggest home/road extreme park reverse splits, the largest lefty-righty reverse platoon splits, the fattest Siamese pitching coaches of all time, and the two-headed cowwhom the Yankees just signed to help out in the bullpen. All in a day's work.

Labels: ESPN Insider, Hit and Run, home runs, Yankees

Last week's WWZN Young Guns radio hit, discussing Russ Ortiz's short-lived lead over namesake David in the 2009 home run rankings, the possibility of the Blue Jays remaining factors in the AL East, the sudden power outbursts of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, and other fun stuff. The segment was recorded via iPhone while I was out in front of the Jeollado sushi restaurant in the East Village, so apologies if the sound is less than studio quality.

Labels: Alex Rodriguez, home runs, radio, Red Sox, Yankees

Our long national nightmare is finally over. On Tuesday night, Barry Bonds finally hit his 756th home run, topping Hank Aaron's record, a record that stood for over 33 years as perhaps the most hallowed statistical accomplishment in the annals of sport.

Surprisingly, the world didn't end.

I missed the home run. Or rather, to borrow the take-home phrase from Office Space, I wouldn't say I missed it. I just didn't care enough to watch. Such was my disinterest that after viewing one replay of it on ESPN -- where its coverage pre-empted the Bronx Is Burning episode I'd TiVoed -- that I didn't even bother to find out who surrendered it until lunchtime today. The sight of the orgy of celebration in San Francisco was enough to drive me away.

I'd missed #755 too, though at the time I did hear my computer alert me via one of those annoying ESPN update chimes on a page I'd left open, and several minutes later, when my wife paused the movie we were watching, I flipped around to find a replay of that one. I even watched it twice before flipping away.

Were either of those home runs against the Dodgers, I might have sat still and enjoyed Vin Scully wrestling with the contrast between the accomplishment and its reception even as I gave Bonds the double-barreled middle finger from my private box seat. That the San Francisco fans uncritically embraced Bonds was no surprise. That the San Diego fans chose to stay classy felt weak; particularly given the two teams' rivalry and Bonds' stated loathing for PetCo Park, I thought they'd have more cojones than to smile brainlessly when prompted for their close-up, but I thought wrong.

The cheerful celebrations in San Diego and San Francisco belied a chase that was no fun at all for most of us, a group that likely includes Bonds. His pursuit brought out the worst in people, from Bud Selig to elected officials to the peers of Bonds and Aaron, from the media to the fans in 29 other ballparks. I'm not happy to concede that at times it's brought out the worst in me, but I'm not too ashamed to admit that watching the joy drain from the chase filled me with some small degree of satisfaction. As a nation of baseball fans, we deserved what we got, a cynical and likely chemically aided summit of a peak that was thought to be unconquerable.

I'm done gnashing my teeth. The record is what it is, something to be taken in context. Even absent a positive test, the mountain of evidence that Bonds used performance enhancing drugs is enough to convince me that his accomplishment is tainted. We'll never know the extent to which Bonds was aided, but the fact that his historically unprecedented late-career surge matches up with the well-documented timeline of his alleged usage is enough for me. However, Bonds certainly wasn't the only player using during this sordid era, and the extent to which the drugs helped him achieve his record will forever remain uncertain. Furthermore, Major League Baseball's failure to address in any meaningful way the pervasiveness of the steroid problem made them complicit in Bonds' use. There's also a growing body of evidence that MLB's decision to introduce a livelier baseball following the 1994 strike played a part in the astronomical home run totals that followed, but that's a story for another day.

This much we know: the three players who topped Roger Maris' long-standing season record of 61 homers have varying degrees of evidence suggesting they had help in the matter, and it's not unreasonable to eye their latter-day accomplishments with some degree of suspicion so long as that evidence remains. I'm not advocating an asterisk in the record books or the expungement of any stats; if the fabric of baseball history can withstand the variable impacts of the spitballers, scuffers, bat-corkers, sign-stealers, and greenie-poppers -- to say nothing of the Black Sox and Pete Rose, rats of an entirely different color -- it can withstand this. That doesn't mean we have to worship the record or the man with the prickly persona who achieved it, nor does it diminish the accomplishments of the men who preceded him in holding that record.

I don't see eye-to-eye with my BP colleague Joe Sheehan on very much in the Bonds sphere, but a few weeks back, he wrote something that stuck with me, something I resolved to file away for this occasion:

Should Bonds get to 756 home runs, it will mean only that he hit more home runs than anyone else in the game’s history. Doing so doesn’t make him a better person than Hank Aaron—it is irrelevant to that question entirely—nor does his superiority in one statistic necessarily make him a better baseball player. Hank Aaron’s legacy as a player is not diminished one whit by the fact that his name is no longer atop a list of names and numbers. His greatness isn’t defined by a number, and his accomplishments remain just as impressive—overcoming racism in the South in he 1950s, being a player who could do everything on a baseball field, his amazing consistency stretching across two decades of play, and his grace under pressure, surrounded by hatred, as he set the all-time home run record.

Statistics are a record of what happened in baseball games. We make lists, but those lists don’t rank men, they rank their doings. All statistics, however, need to be put into context. That applies when comparing two pitchers who work in disparate run environments, two prospects who play three levels apart, or two Hall of Fame outfielders who find themselves next to each other on a list. Beyond statistical context, however, there’s historical context. The narratives of Ruth and Maris, of Aaron and Bonds, will be written and rewritten, and their places in the history of baseball will be determined not by any statistic, but by the body of their work and their impact on the game.

I've yet to read anything in the coverage of the entire home run chase that I agree with the way I agree with that, and so I'll quit while I'm behind, hopeful that the all-time home run list finds a new man atop it -- Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Jason Tyner -- by the time I need to explain this record to my children.

If we can agree on one thing, let us agree that the next time around should be more fun.

• • •

My latest Prospectus Hit and Run went up at BP yesterday. With milestone home runs the obvious leading topic, I began with a look back at some old research I did:

I come neither to bury Bonds nor to praise him, but given that the all-time home run list has seen enough shakeups since I wrote about it over three years ago, updating that older work will surely keep me down with OBC (Obligatory Barry Content). Along with Bonds tying Hank Aaron at 755, Sammy Sosa has become the fifth player to top 600, Ken Griffey Jr. and Rafael Palmeiro have cracked the top 10, and Frank Thomas and A-Rod have joined the 500 club.

...Among the top 27 home run hitters of all time — the 22 men in the 500 Club, plus the three active players likely to reach that plateau within the next year, and the two men who came up just shy — Bonds' ratio of home to road homers is the ninth-lowest. That's pretty ho-hum stuff. What's much more interesting is how the chart's latest interlopers have profited from their home parks. While nobody will ever catch Mel Ott when it comes to home field advantage, Thomas, [Jim] Thome, and Palmeiro have all hit at least 20 percent more homers at home than on the road, with Sosa and Griffey enjoying about a 10 percent advantage, while A-Rod checks in at five percent.

From there, I went on to rerun one of that old piece's most popular items:

The "Home Doubled" list shows what the leaderboard might have looked like if each of these sluggers had enjoyed the perks of home in every park; we've simply doubled the home HR totals (2xHHR). The "Road Doubled" list (or 2xRHRR) puts things on more neutral ground. It ain't rocket science, but it's revealing nonetheless:

Player     2xHHR   Player     2xRHR
Aaron       770    Bonds       760
Bonds       750    Aaron       740
Ruth        694    Ruth        734
Mays        670    Mays        650
Ott         646    McGwire     596
Robinson    642    Sosa        574
Sosa        634    Jackson     566
Palmeiro    622    Schmidt     566
Griffey     616    Killebrew   564
Foxx        598    Griffey     562
Thomas      596    Mathews     550
Killebrew   582    Williams    546
Banks       580    Mantle      540
McGwire     570    Robinson    530
Jackson     560    Palmeiro    516
Thome       546    McCovey     514
Mantle      532    Murray      512
Schmidt     530    McGriff     504
McCovey     528    Rodriguez   488
Rodriguez   512    Gehrig      484
Gehrig      502    Ramirez     478
Ramirez     500    Sheffield   472
Williams    496    Foxx        470
Murray      496    Banks       444
Sheffield   484    Thome       436
McGriff     482    Thomas      414
Mathews     474    Ott         376

What stands out most about the Home Doubled list is how much bigger the 600 level might have been if all these sluggers had feasted on home cooking all of the time; a couple more Skydome shots by Thomas and we'd have 10, with Double X Jimmie Foxx just outside the ranks. The second thing to note is that at every rank but one, the Home Doubled total is higher than the Road Doubled one, by an average of 38 homers. The Road Doubled list shows Bonds as having left Aaron in the rearview mirror already, while maintaining a much more exclusive 600-homer level. It's just further confirmation that the reputations of these sluggers were considerably helped along by favorable conditions at home.

Elsewhere in the piece, I took a look at the best bullpens according to BP's suite of statistics, and the best and worst pitching staffs as a unit according to our win-expectancy based measures. That kind of stuff isn't as timely or as controversial as talking about the longball, but I relish the fact that we can now turn our attention to such matters with fewer distractions.

Labels: Barry Bonds, Hit and Run, home runs, steroids