IBC

You'll never see this again. Billy Martin's 1980 Oakland A's starting 5 staff of Rick Langford, Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty, and Brian Kingman completed 93 games of 159 games they started. Including 1 more CG from a relief pitcher turned spot starter (Bob Lacey), Billy gave the bullpen the night off in more games (94) than he used it (68). By my estimation, the relief corps pitched only about 200 innings that year. Langford was the workhorse, completing 28 of 35 starts. Kingman was the lightweight completing only 10.

Greatest Lambs: Robin Yount and Brooks Robinson both had over 100 Sacrifice Flies and 100 Sacrifice Hits over their careers.

Worthless to the Ancient Gods: Frank Thomas has 120 Sacrifice Flies, but has never officially successfully sacrificed on purpose. He has never been credited with a sacrifice hit.

It is a very small sample size but no one can be happier then Danny Richar who faced Johan Santana six times. The results: six strikeouts on 24 pitches.

Mark McGwire knocked in 584 teammates and knocked himself in 583 times. By comparison, most other sluggers knock in teammates twice as often as themselves.

Early in his career while playing for the A's, a stretch of hitting bases-empty home runs earned McGwire the derisive nickname "Marco Solo."

Mike Schmidt (1980) was the last player to lead the majors in HRs on a team that won the World Series.

Not so fast Pitching-Wins-Championships proponents: ERA leaders Greg Maddux (1995) and Randy Johnson (2001) are the only ERA leaders during the same time period to win a World Series in the same year.

Another White Sox fan and I were recounting some highlights and lowlights from the 2007 season which lead to us discussing the White Sox at the Yankees game when Roger Clemens allowed eight runs (only 3 ER) in the 2nd inning but the Yanks scored 8 off of Jon Garland in the bottom of the 2nd as all 8 were ER. Garland's stats were: 1.1 IP, 9 H (1 HR), 8 ER. Amazingly the Pale Hose actually won that August game 13 - 9.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=270802110

But it did get us to talking about about the worst SP line so far this decade. We think (actually JC remembered this which we verified when we looked it up) it was Paul Wilson's start for the Reds against the Dodgers on 5/6/05. It started with a HB and went rapidly down hill from there as it only took Wilson 25 pitches to gave up 8 ER without recording an out. Wilson's stats were: 0 IP, 5 H (2 HR), 1 BB, 2 HB, 8 ER. Or as the Gameday recap put it: It all added up to Wilson seeing the showers before he saw the first out.

http://www.mlb.com/news/gameday_recap.j ... p&c_id=cin

Paul Wilson.. great guy.. but glad his tenure with the Reds is over.

and the Mets for that matter.

and the IBC Athletics

Jerry Owens stole 32 bases last year for the Chicago White Sox - but only 1 of his 32 stolen bases was with a left-hander on the mound.

By breakdown, he had 310 PA (288 AB, 20 BB, 2HBP) against RHP and stole 31 bases (10.0% of his PA vs RHP he stole a base) while he had 76 PA (68 AB, 7 BB, 1 HBP) against LHP and he stole 1 base (1.3% of his PA vs LHP he stole a base).

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/s ... erId=28562

One thing, I am not sure of (yet) is how many of these SB came in a pinch running role ...

George Lee Anderson who was born on this day (2/22 in 1934 in Bridgewater, South Dakota) and later earned the nickname Sparky, (aka Captain Hook) played 2B in 152 games for the Phillies in 1959, and never played another major league game. He did, however, go on to win 2,194 games and capture world championships in both the N.L. and A.L. as manager of the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers.

His line as a major league 2B: .218/.282/.249 w/ 0 HR and 6 SB (9 CS) ...

http://www.baseball-reference.com/a/andersp01.shtml

Sparky!!!! BRM!! woooOOOOOOOOOO!

Wish he'd come back to baseball in some capacity.

1986 - Despite losing his arbitration case, Boston's Wade Boggs receives the largest salary ever awarded through that process to date: $1.35 million.

2008 - Francisco Rodriguez lost his arbitration case on Friday and will make $10 million in 2008.

4% compounded inflation?

The cost of living went up.

Gotta put gas in the Escalade.

Saw where some minor leaguers recently got suspended and one player who stood out for me is Matt Tupman who received a 50 games suspended for a failed drug of abuse test. In real life Tupman is 30 years old career minor league Catcher who played mostly in the Royals organization (though he was in the Diamondbacks last season) and made his major league debut in 2008. He only played in one game and got one at bat before the Royals sent him back down to the minors. Yes, he did get a hit in that one at bat, so he will be one of those eighty or so players who will be listed in the history of major league players who finished their major league career with a batting average of 1.000. He will probably need to play in Japan, an indy league or retire now.

Tupman's situation lead me to look up other career 1.000 hitters. Came up with list that was a year old, which I edited to reflect the last season [For example Jose Morales - who had been 3 for 3 - fell off] :

Charlie Snow, Sparrow McCaffrey, Frank O'Connor, Tom Lipp, Mike Hopkins, C.B. Burns, Hub Knolls, Doc Tonkin, John Kull, George Yantz, Chuck Tompkins, Bob Ingersoll, Pete Sims, Bill Meehan, Ty Pickup, Doc Bass, Hall Deviney, Allie Watt, Uel Eubanks, Red Lutz, John Mohardt, Fred Schemanske, Johnson Fry, Jackie Gallagher, George Abrams, Tige Stone, Heinie Odom, Pete Rambo, Buzz Wetzel, Jim Holloway, Al Wright, Ralph Onis, Abe White, Tom Lanning, Chet Kehn, Bill Peterman, Steve Biras, Claude Crocker, Bud Swartz, Ramon Garcia, Lou Grasmick, Steve Kuczek, Earl Mossor, Chuck Lindstrom, Rupe Toppin, Roy Gleason, John Paciorek, Dave Gray, Larry Loughlin, Roe Skidmore, Don Eddy, Dave Sells, Steve Lawson, Larry Gowell, Eduardo Rodriguez, Mike Dupree, Mike Rowland, Scott Munninghoff, Steve Shirley, Brett Gideon, Miguel Garcia, Dave Liddell, Jeff Banister, Matt Maysey, Esteban Yan, Steve Montgomery, Ryan Hancock, Jeff Kubenka, Joe Davenport, Eric Cammack, Justin Brunette, Kevin Ohme, Jason Roach, Travis Hughes, Cliff Bartosh, Scott Munter, Joel Peralta, Matt Tupman, Bobby Korecky, David Davidson, Carlos Corporan

Most At Bats: John Paciorek
Most Games: Eduardo Rodriguez (264)
Most Homers: Esteban Yan, Frank O'Connor (1)
Most RBI's: John Paciorek, Frank O'Connor (3)

Most of these guys are pitchers but a few guys position players are included.

The greatest of those was probably John Paciorek, who played in one game back in 1963 as an 18 year old rookie playing for the Houston Colt .45's. He got five at bats in the last major league game of that season. In those five at bats he got three hits and two walks, scoring four times and driving in three runs. He never played in another major league game.

Back injuries prevented him from playing extensively in 1964 and throughout his career. John Paciorek is the brother of Tom (former White player and broadcaster) and Jim, both of whom had more extensive major league careers. If you want to take a look at Paciorek’s minor league career it wasn’t that impressive: http://www.astroland.net/paciorek.html.