Baseball Is Hard
Monday, August 29 2011 @ 06:45 AM EDT
Contributed by: Magpie
Consider Brandon Morrow.
Here's a man with blessed with a tremendous right arm. That's just a start, of course. But Morrow is also a bright and dedicated young man, a player who wants to get better and is willing to work as hard as it takes.
And he's still 9-9, and his ERA is still well above the league average.
Pat Tabler actually got to the root of Morrow's problems during the broadcast. Morrow does nothing to mess with the hitter's timing. His two best pitches - fastball and slider - are both hard. Well, this is the major leagues and being able to throw hard will get you a tryout and not much else. Most major leaguers can hit hard stuff - that's why they're here, too. Hitters like to see fastballs, and they like trying to hit them. It's when the breaking balls come out that they start yelling from the dugout to "pitch like a man" and so forth. (They do. Really.)
Meanwhile, Morrow's been working on his changeup - he wants to get better, he really does - and some days it works for him and some days it doesn't. But until he can actually count on being able to change speeds effectively, until he's mastered what is, really, one of the basic fundamentals of pitching - well, this is what he is.
Before the Tampa series started, John Farrell was speaking, with what he admitted was extreme optimism, about possibly reaching 88 wins. After being whipped three days running by the Devil Fishies, that obviously looks extremely unlikely now. They'd have to go 22-7 the rest of the way, and the schedule looks like this:
ROAD 14 - @ BAL (3), @ NYY (3) @ BOS (2) @ TAM (3) @ CWS (3)
HOME 15 - TAM (1) BOS (4), BAL (3), NYY (3), LAA (4)
The Orioles are the only bad team there. Roughly half the games remaining are against the Yankees, Red Sox, or Angels - three teams with plenty at stake this month. I think they'll do well to finish at .500...
And yes. It matters.
Oh well. I was amusing myself with the lists of all-time leaders and I thought it would be fun to look at these things chronologically. For example: twenty-five men have hit 500 HRs in the major leagues. This means, of course, that a 500th career home run has been hit exactly twenty-five times. Here are those occasions:
1. Babe Ruth (34) August 11 1929 vs Willis Hudin (CLE)
2. Jimmie Foxx (32) September 24 1940 vs George Caster (PHA)
3. Mel Ott (36) August 1 1945 vs Johnny Hutchings (BOS)
4. Ted Williams (41) June 17 1960 vs Wynn Hawkins (CLE)
5. Willie Mays (34) September 13 1965 vs Don Nottebart (HST)
6. Mickey Mantle (35) May 14 1967 vs Stu Miller (BAL)
7. Ed Mathews (35) July 14 1967 vs Juan Marichal (SFG)
8. Henry Aaron (34) July 14 1968 vs Mike McCormick (SFG)
9. Ernie Banks (39) May 12 1970 vs Pat Jarvis (ATL)
10. Harmon Killebrew (35) August 10 1971 vs Mike Cuellar (BAL)
11. Frank Robinson (36) September 13 1971 vs Fred Scherman (DET)
12. Willie McCovey (40) June 30 1978 vs Jamie Easterly (ATL)
13. Reggie Jackson (38) September 17 1984 vs Bud Black (KCR)
14. Mike Schmidt (37) April 18 1987 vs Don Robinson (PGH)
15. Eddie Murray (40) September 6 1996 vs Felipe Lira (DET)
16. Mark McGwire (35) August 5 1999 vs Andy Ashby (LAD)
17. Barry Bonds (36) April 17 2001 vs Terry Adams (LAD)
18. Sammy Sosa (34) April 4 2003 vs Scott Sullivan (CIN)
19. Rafael Palmeiro (38) May 11 2003 vs Dave Elder (CLE)
20. Ken Griffey (34) June 20 2004 vs Matt Morris (STL)
21. Frank Thomas (39) June 28 2007 vs Carlos Silva (MIN)
22. Alex Rodriguez (32) August 4 2007 vs Kyle Davies (KCR)
23. Jim Thome (37) September 16 2007 vs Dustin Moseley
24. Manny Ramirez (36) May 31 2008 vs Chad Bradford (BAL)
25. Gary Sheffield (40) April 17 2009 vs Mitch Stetter (MIL)
And, sonovagun, I actually learned something from doing this! I remarked once that Henry Aaron was something of the stealth candidate to break Ruth's record - no one saw him coming for the record until he was practically there. The obvious reason, which I was always aware of, was the large shadow cast by Aaron's near contemporaries Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle - who were only the two greatest, most celebrated players in the game. They were the ones people wondered about, they were the obvious candidates to hit 715 homers. As both Mays and Mantle (born in 1931) were almost three years older than Aaron (born early in 1934), their counting numbers were always a few seasons better than the Hammer's. Which is partially why Aaron snuck up on everyone (that, and a timely late-career move to Fulton County Stadium.) But what I had completely forgotten was that Aaron's own teammate, Eddie Mathews (born late in 1931), actually made it to 500 homers before Aaron himself.
No wonder no one saw him coming.
Babe Ruth - who else? - was the first of them all. He had become the all-time HR leader way back on July 18 1921. That was when he hit career homer 139 off Bert Cole of Detroit, moving him past Roger Connor who had been the career leader since 1895. Connor held the record for 26 years, which is a long time. Ruth would spend the next 14 years padding that total, would get past 500 homers at the end of 1929, and he would end up standing atop the HR leader board for the next 53 years. Which is a really long time.
It would be 11 years before Ruth would have company in the 500 HR club, as no one made it there in the 1930s. And then, after Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott cleared 500 in the first half of the 1940s, it would be another 15 years before another player made it to the 500 level. Those 15 years are the longest such stretch since Ruth originally broke the ground. It was the Kid himself, Ted Williams, who was the fourth man to clear 500 careers homers, although at age 41 Williams was also the oldest man to hit his 500th homer.
Alex Rodriguez was the youngest, just a week past his 32nd birthday when he hit #500 (Jimmie Foxx was about nine months older.) Nine men cleared 500 homers in the first decade of the new millennium. As is well known, six of those guys (as well as the last man from the preceding century, Mark McGwire) have been linked, one way or another, to PEDs. Leaving just Thome, Griffey, and Thomas untainted. I think Rodriguez and Bonds would certainly have made it without the help, and probably Ramirez as well. But for now anyway, the taint endures...
And who will be next? Seems pretty straightforward - it ought to be Albert Pujols, in May or June 2013.
Anyway - that was fun. And it was pretty easy, too - the mighty baseball-reference.com actually has HR logs for every one of these guys - they even have one for Roger Connor himself.
So I went looking for a challenge. I went looking for the 24 times a pitcher has won the 300th game of his career. These type of Game Logs, for the years before 1920, are not always available. And even the records we have are sometimes unreliable. And you know, I have first-hand experience that even today, the most basic record-keeping at the ball game sometimes goes awry. I personally saw Alfredo Griffin come in as a defensive replacement and finish a game. But the official scorer didn't notice, sp officially - it never happened. But it did. I assure you, there's no way I, or anyone casting even the most casual glance, could possibly look at Roberto Alomar and believe they were seeing Alfredo Griffin. Just no way at all...
Anyway, the records of these most ancient, ancient contests is often murky and unreliable. Consider the very first man to win 300 games. That, as you all know - don't you - would be the immortal Pud Galvin.
Galvin won his 300th game sometime in 1888, while pitching for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. BB-ref has their schedule and results, but doesn't provide any information on the winning and losing pitchers. Retrosheet doesn't either - but Retrosheet does list the starting pitchers for each game. Ah-ha! Seeing as how Galvin started 50 games, completed 49, and was involved in the decision every time he took the mound (he went 23-25 and two games ended in a tie) - we can assume, I think, that if we just find the 18th time Pittsburgh won a game that Galvin started... we'll have found the target.
He didn't get off to a great start - by mid June, he appears to have been 2-13 (with 2 ties!). But then he picked it up, and he appears to have won #300 on September 4, 1888 - a 5-4 victory over Indianapolis, which brought his season record to 18-19.
Four more men, who had spent most if not all of their careers pitching at a distance of 50 feet, won their 300th game in the final decade of the 19th century. The next of those, Tim Keefe, actually pitched one year at a distance of 45 feet, worked the bulk of his career pitching at 50 feet, and finished up at the new distance of 60 feet. Keefe and Galvin would hook up four times over the next three years in the first ever
games between two 300 game winners. They did this for the last time on
July 21, 1892. It wouldn't happen again for almost another 100 years -
the next such contest came when Don Sutton and Phil Niekro went against
each other in 1986. (This information comes courtesy of baseballlibrary.com,
which often provides fun details on the games themselves. And of
course it's very helpful to have another source to check this
information against.) Another of these pioneers was the immortal Old Hoss Radbourn, who may have been running on fumes (it was his final season and he'd twice pitched more than 600 innings in a season), but still became the first man to win his 300th by pitching a shutout.
By 1900, the new distance of 60 feet had significantly changed pitching. Two men who had started their careers at the old distance, but survived and thrived at the new one, would make it to 300 wins early in the new century. The first of them, the great Kid Nichols, is still the youngest man ever to reach 300 wins - he was just 30 years old when he got there in July 1900. A year later, the one and only Cy Young joined the club. And here is where things get a little odd. Here is how Baseballlibrary.com describes this achievement:
Jul 5 1901 - Cy Young notches his 300th win in the Boston Americans 5-3 win over the Philadelphia Athletics. Cy gets relief help from Bernhard in topping McPherson.
Alas, no one else seems to believe that Boston was even playing Philadelphia on this day. Young would beat the A's by a 5-3 score about a week later, but that was probably win #301. He had already pitched a 7-0 shutout against Washington on July 6, and that appears to have been his 14th win of the season (and hence the 300th of his career.)
Only one man since Young - and if Young's 300th was the Philadelphia game, only one man since Old Hoss Radbourn - has collected his 300th win by tossing a shutout. And maybe you were there. It happened at Exhibition Stadium on the last day of the 1985 season. Phil Niekro, you may recall, tossed a four-hitter against a bunch of hungover Jays scrubs (they'd clinched the division the day before.) Radbourn, Niekro, and - probably - Young are the only men to pitch shutouts for their 300th win.
However, almost every 300th victory before 1990 was at least a Complete Game. Pete Alexander actually had to pitch 12 innings to win his 300th. It's the exceptions that stand out. Until 1990, there just three. Or maybe four.
- Walter Johnson, oddly enough, came out of the bullpen to win his 300th. He's the only man to win his 300th as a reliever.
- I can't be sure about Eddie Plank's 300th - he completed just 23 of his 31 starts, and it was a 12-5 game. He probably went the distance, but who knows? Anything can happen when the St Louis Terriers meet the Newark Peppers. We really consider the Federal League to be a major league? Oh, why not...
- Early Wynn, desperately hanging on to try to get that one last W, is probably the first guy who didn't go the distance in his 300th win - given a 5-1 lead, he staggered through the fifth inning against the hapless A's but made it out with a 5-4 lead and his bullpen hung on for him. He hung around for the rest of the season, working mostly mop-up relief, and never won another game.
- Steve Carlton, late in a pennant race and holding a 6-2 lead, turned the ninth inning over to his bullpen.
But Don Sutton, with a complete game three hitter in 1986, was the last of his kind. None of the five men who have cleared that hurdle in the 25 years since Sutton - Ryan, Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, and Johnson - have finished their game.
Kid Nichols was the youngest man to win his 300th, and Phil Niekro was the oldest. Randy Johnson was almost the oldest; he was certainly, I am well convinced, by far the ugliest. This list, now that I think of it, includes two of the game's All-Time Famous Nice Guys (Mathewson and Johnson), which helps cancel out some of the Notoriously Surly competitors (Clemens, Perry, Wynn) we find roaming free. Steve Carlton wasn't exactly a day at the beach either, but I have to think that Lefty Grove would take the prize as the most intense and ill-tempered of them all.
I suppose either Greg Maddux or Warren Spahn was probably the... least intense? Most relaxed? Goofiest? Those guys were both class clowns. So was Seaver, now that I think of it...
Anyway, here's your chronology of 300th Wins
1. Pud Galvin (32) September 4, 1888 5-4 vs Indianapolis
2. Tim Keefe (33) June 4 1890 9-4 vs Boston
3. Mickey Welch (31) July 28 1890 4-2 vs PGH
4. Old Hoss Radbourn (36) May 14 1891 4-0 vs BRO
5. John Clarkson (31) September 21 1892 3-2 vs PGH
6. Kid Nichols (30) July 7 1900 11-4 vs CHI
7. Cy Young (34) July 6 1901 vs 7-0 vs PHA
8. Christy Mathewson (31) June 13 1912 3-2 vs CHI
9. Eddie Plank (40) September 11 1915 12-5 vs Newark
10. Walter Johnson (32) May 14 1920 9-8 vs DET
11. Pete Alexander (37) September 20 1924 7-3 vs NYG
12. Lefty Grove (41) July 25 1941 10-6 vs CLE
13. Warren Spahn (40) August 11 1961 2-1 vs CHI
14. Early Wynn (43) July 13 1963 7-4 vs KC
15. Gaylord Perry (43) May 6 1982
16. Steve Carlton (38) September 23 1983 6-2 vs StL
17. Tom Seaver (40) August 4 1985 vs NYY
18. Phil Niekro (46) October 6 1985 8-0 vs TOR
19. Don Sutton (39) June 18 1986 5-1 vs TEX
20. Nolan Ryan (43) July 31 1990 11-3 vs MIL
21. Roger Clemens (40) June 13 2003 5-2 vs STL
22. Greg Maddux (38) August 7 2004 8-4 vs SFG
23. Tom Glavine (41) August 5 2007 8-3 vs CHC
24. Randy Johnson (45) June 4 2009 5-1 vs WAS
And who's next? This is much trickier. No active pitcher has even managed to amass 200 wins, although Tim Wakefield keeps trying. Unless Roy Halladay gets there around 2019, no one is making it to 300 in this decade. And ultimately, I think both Halladay and Sabathia are going to come up short.
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