Baseball-Reference features a search tool where I looked to see who had the most PA with 0-1 HR from 1990-2019. The results were staggering. The first 3 names that I noticed were all the same. They all read Juan Pierre. And then I thought, " How many HR did this guy have in his career?" So I opened a new tab, and I searched it up on Baseball-Reference. As it turns out, in his 14 year career, he had 18. 18 HR! And that prompted me to another search attempt which I'll cover later. But back to the 0-1 HR. The 76th player, Michael Bourn, was the first player from 2015-2019. The first player from 2019 came in at number 161. Can you guess who it was? Billy Hamilton. That's right, speedster journey
A few days ago, I wondered who was the slowest player of all time. I was looking at Daniel Vogelbach's baseball-reference page, and I realized that in 4 years playing he had not stolen a base. He hadn't even attempted to steal. So I know that SB isn't the best measure of whether a player is fast, but Statcast/Fangraphs metrics didn't exist back before 2010. Therefore, there is no way to tell if a player was fast by foot/second back in the day. Since 2015, Albert Pujols has been the slowest player by sprint speed. In 2020, it was Brian McCann with 22.2 feet per second. Remember, this is sprint speed. According to the most PA without SB, Eric Hosmer was the slowest player in the game, although
Imagine this: World Series. Bottom of the ninth. Runners on first and second. Down by 3 runs. Mariano Rivera (or any other dominant closer) in the game for the other team. Who would you want up? For the White Sox it's Jose Abreu. For the Reds it's Joey Votto. For the Cubs it's Anthony Rizzo. But the Rangers? I would argue Joseph Gallo. You see, in this situation I would like a home run. And that is what Joey Gallo does best. Joey Gallo is the oddest player in the MLB to me, and it's not because of the HR. It's everything else, too. In 2017, in Gallo's first full year as a big leaguer, he hit .209. That's .209/.333/.537 with 41 HR. That and 196 SO. The dude hit a HR in 7.7% of his PA. But he
30. Mike Shildt, Cardinals Shildt never played in a minor league system. No other information could be obtained except he played college baseball at UNC Asheville. 29. Luis Rojas, Mets The newly introduced Mets manager who is related to baseball great Felipe Alou only played in 2 seasons in the GCL. He was an IF/OF during his time in the Expos system. 28. Derek Shelton, Pirates He only played in 2 seasons, reaching as high as A ball. In his playing career, he played catcher. He was good in his limited time, though. 27. Joe Maddon, Angels Another catcher, Maddon reached as high as A ball playing in the minors for 4 years. He was primarily in the California Angels organization. 26. Jayce Tingl
The shift is a modern day baseball "Moneyball" sort of concept. Essentially, a manager will move a fielder over to where the batter is more likely to hit it. There are 4 main types of shifts, each of which I have detailed below. Normal Defense Shift This is the basic form of defense, where a team will put every fielder in the "normal" position. There isn't much variety here, and this "shift" takes up about 90% of all at bats (rough estimate). Hulking Lefty Shift In baseball, there are some players who pull the ball so much, that teams will put 3 infielders on one side of the field, and only 1 on the other side. In this case, 3 players will go in between first and second base. The outfield al
The opener is the newest baseball strategy. Although there are some opener "spin-offs", nothing is quite like the opener. Basically, the opener is where you put a relief pitcher in the game to start for 1 or 2 innings, and then the starter comes in for the rest of the game. The thought process behind the opener is that a better pitcher can face better hitters so your starting pitcher doesn't have to. And while effective, teams haven't really adopted this strategy. As much as I would love to see an Oliver Perez start a game, I don't think that all teams will adopt the opener. Alright, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about why all teams just won't go ahead and adopt the opener. Th
RBI Baseball 20 is a mobile and console game that runs on platforms such as Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS4, iPad, and iPhone. When I am looking for a baseball video game for my iPhone or iPad, I will mostly just find pay to win Ultimate Team games. But when I scroll down further, I see another game that isn't a pay to win Ultimate Team. It's RBI Baseball 20. Straight out of the box, RBI Baseball 20 features 3 game modes which are Play Now, Postseason, and Franchise. Play Now doesn't do much for me, and I mainly just play postseason and franchise to play baseball. When I call it franchise mode, that is sort of an over statement. Because there's nothing to do except play games. All it really i
When I write about baseball, I often use a wide variety of stats. But, some people might not know what these stats are. So below I'll make a list defining every stat that I might use. AVG: Batting Average measures how often you get on base by a hit OBP: On Base Percentage measures how often you get on base SLG: Slugging measures your power OPS: On base plus slugging measures a player's net worth batting RBI: Runs batted in shows how many runs that the player has hit or walked home 1B: Singles 2B: Doubles 3B: Triples HR: Home run R: Runs Scored PA: How many times the player has gone up to hit that ended in a result OPS+: Adjusts OPS to a stat where 100 is league average. Ex: 115 OPS+ means 15
When I started this website/blog, I thought that I would be appealing to a bigger crowd. I've soon discovered that I'm not. So in attempt to get my website popular, I am going to do something big for the website. If you are reading this (only 3-5 people will) then you probably have seen some of my other articles. And for that I thank you, but it's hard to write when I know that 3-5 people will see it. Again, back to my point. I need to get my website more popular for me to have an incentive to actually write. I enjoy to write, but it's hard to write with my limited audience. I am going to make 3 changes to my website. The first, and biggest, will be the addition of social media. The second w
The Players Union and the Owners are likely to agree on a new plan to bring baseball back. Sources told Baseball News Now of the news yesterday. The plan would include: -82 game schedule -games played at home stadiums -no fans -salary reduction -DH in National League -start is July 4 weekend Once again, the Players Union is LIKELY to accept.