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March 27, 2013

Tough time for NL third sackers

Maybe there's something going around, but National League third basemen seem to be getting more than their fair share of injuries of late. Fans and fantasy owners probably are a bit panicked right now as this plague spreads.
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Posted by: Greg Simons

August 24, 2012

Bruce Bochy aims at .500

Today, Bruce Bochy fights to get back to sea level. As of this moment, his all-time career record is 1,430-1,431. Thus, if the Giants win today he’ll no longer be underwater but be at .500.

He’s been underwater for quite some time with all those sad sack San Diego games. The early squads, most notably the 1998 Padres pennant winner, put him over .500, but a loss on June 27, 2002 put him under .500, and he’s been under ever since.

That’s a long time ago. It’s so long ago that there was a still a big league team in Montreal. As a matter of fact, the day Bochy went under .500 the Expos got Bartolo Colon. St. Louis still mourned the recently departed Darryl Kile. Don Baylor was still a big league manager.

Moving beyond baseball, it was the same day Who bassist John Entwhistle died. Elsewhere, Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq, George W. Bush was president with very high approval ratings, and Pluto was still a planet.

On June 27, 2002, Bochy’s record fell to 597-598. He’s managed 1,666 games since then, which means that if he does get back to .500, he’ll make history. For a manager who was once over .500 and went under, it’s the longest stretch ever to get back to .500.

The current record holder is Jim Leyland, who went over 1,250 games between going .500. He fell under .500 in May 1998 and went back over at the very end of last season.

I figured Connie Mack would hold the record, but that’s not the case. He was over .500 for almost all his career. He was under .500 from 1922-26, then went back over. He fell under again in 1942, but never got back to .500.

Please note there is a key qualifier up above. Bochy would have the longest stretch in the wilderness for someone who had once been over .500. A few managers had longer stretches under .500 but hat never posted a winning record in the first place.

That’s true of Casey Stengel. He began his days managing some bad Dodgers and Braves teams. That left a sizable hole for the Yankees to dig him out of. They didn’t do it until April 17, 1953, when his record was 972-971. But the record holder is another former Yankees manager: Joe Torre. His first term with the Mets put him under .500 and he didn’t get to and over .500 until Aug. 12, 1998 when his record was 1,169-1,168.

So it took Torre 2,337 games to get there. That’s like Bochy not getting there until September 2016. But Torre had never been there. Among those who’d once been over .500, Bochy will be the new king.

Well, that’s all assuming Bochy does get there. While it’s likely given how well the Giants have played so far, it’s not a guarantee. Good teams go on slumps, and winning teams can have a bad month. And who knows what’ll happen in the offseason.

But, barring a considerable turnaround in the fortunes of the San Francisco Giants, Bruce Bochy will soon end his time under water.
Posted by: Chris Jaffe

November 03, 2011

Matty Alou career highlights

Recently, the world heard the sad news that former major league outfielder and 1966 batting title champion Matty Alou died at age 72.

The main tragedy is the loss of the person. Others can speak of that loss better than I (including THT's Bruce Markusen). What I can do is a career retrospective, some career highlights.

The list includes several types of games. There are the most important games he appeared in, some of the greatest games he saw, his personal highlights, some lowlights, and some of the stranger and more unusual things Alou was on hand for.

Here they are, divided up by teams he played for:
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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

August 05, 2011

Matt Stairs’ career highlights

Matt Stairs recently announced his retirement, which didn’t come as much of a surprise to those who knew he was still playing, but possibly jolted many who figured he left years ago.

He was a late bloomer, not making it to 100 games in a season until he was 29 years old, but then proceeded to play in 100-plus games for 12 straight seasons. He didn’t always start, though. In fact, he appeared as a pinch hitter in 521 of his career 1,895 games played. And he was a pretty good pinch hitter, launching a record 23 pinch-hit home runs.

But that’s not what he’s most famous for. He’s a ridiculously well-traveled player, spending time with 12 different clubs. Or 13, depending on how you count it. He began with the Expos in 1992-93, and ended with that same franchise in 2011, by which time the Expos were the Washington Nationals. Incredibly, that’s the only franchise he ever repeated with, and even then he didn’t repeat the same nickname, town, time zone, or nation. In all, Stairs played for at least one team in all six divisions, and at least two teams in all but the NL West.

That said, if you get a chance, make sure you check out his Baseball-Reference.com page. The highlight isn’t the stats, it’s the row of uniform numbers he had. There are 19 entries, which as far as I know is the most for any player on the site.

But he’s done now. In memory of him, I thought I’d assemble a list of career highlights. These are personal bests, impressive games he played in, and a lot interesting and irregular moments he was personally on hand for.

Here they are in order, presented by team-by-team that he played for:


Stairs and the swing that kept him in the game for years

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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

July 20, 2011

Roberto Alomar career highlights

This weekend, Roberto Alomar receives the game’s highest honor: induction into Cooperstown. Recently, I've posted a series of career highlights about baseball figures upon their deaths—this gives me the chance to do something like that under far more cheerful circumstances.

The career highlights include a player's best (and worst) games, most memorable moments, most important games—as well as some oddities and interesting moments he happened to be on hand for, even if he didn't really take a leading role in them. They're all moments from the career of Roberto Alomar.


This weekend's new Hall of Famer.


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Posted by: Chris Jaffe


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