It's about baseball records and such.
I've been plugging away, in the occasional idle moment, on a look at the historical use of relief pitchers. I shared a few of the things I learned earlier in the summer, and then decided to put the thing on hold until the season ended. A lot of the relievers I'm looking at are still active, so I wanted to wait until the target stopped moving.
Anyway. In the meantime, the great and mighty Retrosheet (no praise is praise enough!) continues to add more information. They now have boxscores for much of the 1920s and early 1930s. Which means they have Game Logs for most of Fred Marberry's career. Marberry is one of the most significant pitchers in the history of the game, the first great pitcher used largely in a relief role. (He was one of the all-time Save Leaders in my own lifetime - in the early 1960s, forty years after his prime, he was still one of just three pitchers to have saved more than 100 games in his career.)
So I've been going through the Marberry Game Logs to find out how he was used as a reliever. I'll report on that later - I will add that I had to create a whole new column on the spreadsheet, just for him. That would be for the 19 out save, which is unusual.
But here's the thing. Every source I've ever seen credits Marberry with 11 saves in 1929. That's what you'll see at Baseball-Reference.com; it's what you'll see on his Retrosheet page; it's what you'll see on ESPN; it's what you'll see at Baseball Cube; it's what you'll see at the Minnesota Twins official site.
I'm quite sure it's wrong. I'm pretty sure that he had just 9 saves in 1929.
If you just add up the games marked as SV on the Retrosheet Game Log Page, you see there's only 9 saves. I then checked all of the other games in the GF column: in each of them, Marberry either got a Win or a Save, or the Senators lost the game. So it wasn't there. I then checked the rest of his relief appearances (he appeared in 49 games, 26 as a starter). Nothing there either. He only saved 9 games that year - I'm certain of that - and for the moment, his career total drops to 99. Which is sad. (I've located four other discrepancies in the Marberry record so far, but I haven't examined them in detail yet.
Naturally, this isn't the only instance I've come across so far. The save rule was invented in 1969, if I remember rightly, and applied retroactively to all that had come before. One would expect to find some odd stuff. On May 14 1968, Jack Aker came into a game with one out in the eighth inning. There were two runners on base, but the A's had a 13-8 lead. (The tying run was not on deck.) Aker finished the game and got a save. Later that year (July 16) Jim Brewer came into a game with one out in the seventh inning and a runner on base. The Dodgers had an 8-1 lead. Brewer finished the game and got a save. There are some pretty strange saves (and non-saves) in the careers of Don McMahon and Lindy McDaniel. (And there's probably a whole lot more out there - the only thing that made me look in detail at the Aker game, or the Brewer game, were discepancies in the season total from one source to another.)
Anyway, what I'm wondering is this - what do I do with this information? Every source you could possibly look at is wrong about Firpo Marberry's league leading save total in 1929. Who do I tell?
I've been plugging away, in the occasional idle moment, on a look at the historical use of relief pitchers. I shared a few of the things I learned earlier in the summer, and then decided to put the thing on hold until the season ended. A lot of the relievers I'm looking at are still active, so I wanted to wait until the target stopped moving.
Anyway. In the meantime, the great and mighty Retrosheet (no praise is praise enough!) continues to add more information. They now have boxscores for much of the 1920s and early 1930s. Which means they have Game Logs for most of Fred Marberry's career. Marberry is one of the most significant pitchers in the history of the game, the first great pitcher used largely in a relief role. (He was one of the all-time Save Leaders in my own lifetime - in the early 1960s, forty years after his prime, he was still one of just three pitchers to have saved more than 100 games in his career.)
So I've been going through the Marberry Game Logs to find out how he was used as a reliever. I'll report on that later - I will add that I had to create a whole new column on the spreadsheet, just for him. That would be for the 19 out save, which is unusual.
But here's the thing. Every source I've ever seen credits Marberry with 11 saves in 1929. That's what you'll see at Baseball-Reference.com; it's what you'll see on his Retrosheet page; it's what you'll see on ESPN; it's what you'll see at Baseball Cube; it's what you'll see at the Minnesota Twins official site.
I'm quite sure it's wrong. I'm pretty sure that he had just 9 saves in 1929.
If you just add up the games marked as SV on the Retrosheet Game Log Page, you see there's only 9 saves. I then checked all of the other games in the GF column: in each of them, Marberry either got a Win or a Save, or the Senators lost the game. So it wasn't there. I then checked the rest of his relief appearances (he appeared in 49 games, 26 as a starter). Nothing there either. He only saved 9 games that year - I'm certain of that - and for the moment, his career total drops to 99. Which is sad. (I've located four other discrepancies in the Marberry record so far, but I haven't examined them in detail yet.
Naturally, this isn't the only instance I've come across so far. The save rule was invented in 1969, if I remember rightly, and applied retroactively to all that had come before. One would expect to find some odd stuff. On May 14 1968, Jack Aker came into a game with one out in the eighth inning. There were two runners on base, but the A's had a 13-8 lead. (The tying run was not on deck.) Aker finished the game and got a save. Later that year (July 16) Jim Brewer came into a game with one out in the seventh inning and a runner on base. The Dodgers had an 8-1 lead. Brewer finished the game and got a save. There are some pretty strange saves (and non-saves) in the careers of Don McMahon and Lindy McDaniel. (And there's probably a whole lot more out there - the only thing that made me look in detail at the Aker game, or the Brewer game, were discepancies in the season total from one source to another.)
Anyway, what I'm wondering is this - what do I do with this information? Every source you could possibly look at is wrong about Firpo Marberry's league leading save total in 1929. Who do I tell?
