7+ RBI GAMES: LEADERS, FEATURES, CREATURES...

WITH just 699 incidences, the 7+ RBI "club" is quite exclusive--consider that the current number of players who've appeared in MLB is just under 23,700. And when we prune the incidences down to the actual number of hitters with 7+-RBI games (531 unique individuals), we see that they comprise just over 2% of MLB's total player population.

So we should be mightily impressed by the following players who had five or more 7+-RBI games over the course of their careers, n'est-ce pas? (The answer is, unsurprisingly, "oui"...)

There are six of them--with one (as you'll see) who truly stands out. First, the three who had five "big RBI days"...

Each of these all-time sluggers managed to have two "big RBI games" in the same season--Jimmie Foxx bested Joe DiMaggio and Alex Rodriguez by pulling off this feat twice. All three had games with more than 7 RBI--A-Rod joined the ultra-rare "double figure" club with that 10-RBI game in 2005, while the man known as "The Beast" seemed to have it in for Cleveland, collecting two of his RBI splatter shows there (the latter of which was witnessed in person by my Dad at the age of fourteen: even late in life, he had a vivid memory of it, accurately recalling that Foxx hit for the cycle that day and had collected six of his RBI in the first two innings of the game).

DiMaggio also had a cycle as part of his "big RBI games"--it was the first of his five, including a second homer as part of a 5-for-5 day.

Note these "big RBI games" tend to be blowouts, or slugfests (sometimes both). Only one of the fifteen games shown above was close--that barnburner of a game (also in Cleveland) which went 18 innings, featured a very fraught seventh inning (13 runs scored between the two clubs), was won by the A's despite allowing the Indians 33 hits--29 of them (!!) surrendered over 17 innings by a beleaguered Eddie Rommel, with Foxx scoring the winning run. (We'll provide more specific data about "big RBI days" and the percentage of close games in the data set a bit later...)

NOW we are six--or, should we say, here are the two hitters with six "big RBI days"...

Perhaps you are surprised to see who is accompanying Teddy Ballgame? What makes Nelson Cruz's presence in this pantheon so notable is the fact that all six of his "big RBI days" occurred after the age of thirty--with half of them happening after age 35. Cruz's sixth 7+-RBI day, achieved a little more than three weeks after his 40th birthday (40-025), ranks fourth all-time in terms of age--only Stan Musial (40-214), Jason Giambi (40-131) and Reggie Jackson (40-123) were older.

Williams has the most unusual batting line in the "repeater" group--a game without a run scored--which, of course, means that he also didn't hit a home run in the game (a rare occurrence in "big RBI games": only 4% of them are homerless). But it turns out that not scoring a run in such games is the rarest "feat" of all--there are only four instances of that happening. (We know--not quite rare enough for Jayson Stark!) In his game against the Pale Hose, Williams doubled in two in the first, but was stranded; he doubled in two more with two out in the fourth; drew a bases-loaded walk in the sixth; and singled in two more in the seventh.

One of Cruz's games is quite rare as well--it's the one where he drove in all the runs scored by his team. That occurred in 2014, during his lone season in Baltimore, during the remarkable second half of his career (a true late bloomer, Cruz ranks fifth all-time in HRs hit from age 30 on). In the game on September 7, Cruz also bloomed late--his first RBIs in the game didn't occur until the sixth inning (a two-run homer). His bases loaded triple in the top of the ninth put the O's ahead, but Tampa tied it in the bottom of the ninth, setting the stage for Cruz's game-winning two-run homer in the eleventh.

Un(der)sung as Cruz might be, he is no match for the hitter with the greatest number of "big RBI days." That would be none other than Lou Gehrig, stepping out of the outsized shadow of Babe Ruth....

IT turns out that Gehrig was an equal opportunity "big RBI masher," victimizing all of his opposing AL teams at least once. He also holds the record for the most 7+-RBI games in a season with three (in 1930). 

(For the record, we should note that Babe Ruth, who scored a lot of the runs that Gehrig drove in, had four 7+-RBI games. That ties him with Ralph Kiner, Dave Kingman, Garret Anderson, and Jason Giambi.)

NOW let's look at a few very specialized subsets in the "big RBI game" data. First: how many times did a hitter drive in all seven runs scored by his team in the game? The answer is...seventeen.

We present them in chronological order, and (just for fun) we categorize them. (We will let you determine the rationales we used to link the performances together...)

Of the seventeen, twelve resulted in wins, a much lower WPCT (.705) than in the overall dataset (.950, as you may recall). One of the unique games in this subset belongs to Roberto Clemente, with four hits all for extra bases, and a loss to boot. Rondell White, the youngest player to appear on the list, also had four hits but balanced them between singles and XBH, a feat that the aggregate totals clearly indicate is highly anomalous in "big RBI games" (at least in the ones where all the RBI belong to one guy!). And Nelson Cruz is here, too, his 2014 game adding another rare artifact--a triple--into the building blocks of such performances.

Note that the runs scored total for these seventeen hitters exactly matches the number of HRs hit in the game, which makes perfect sense since these guys drove in all the runs for their team...

Two more related scenarios: are there hitters who drove in all eight of their team's runs? There are two: George Kelly in 1924 and Bob Johnson in 1938. And what about nine--anyone drive in all nine runs for his team in a game? The answer is yes--Mike Greenwell did it on September 2, 1996, for the Red Sox in Seattle, guiding Boston to a 9-8 win in ten innings.

ANOTHER intriguing sub-component spirals back into mind when we recall the "cycles" that were part of the ''big RBI days" for DiMaggio and Foxx. How many other times did batters hit for the cycle as part of their RBI avalanche?

So that's a total of eight, with all of these hitters being under the age of thirty when it happened for them. Some unusual (unlikely?) names here...

AND finally, let's look at all the one-run games in the data set,

You will see Greenwell's line here, along with some other fascinating performances--ranging from Granny Hamner's no-homer, no run scored game (oddly enough, happening within a month of the same ultra-rare type of "big RBI day" from Ted Williams that we saw earlier) to Pat Seerey's four-homer game the very next day!

LASTLY...remember we told you that close games in this data set are ultra-rare? The 22 games shown above represent just 3% of the total population. 

OK, OK, one very last thing. We told you who had the most "big RBI games" (Gehrig) but we didn't answer the question about the hitter with the lowest lifetime HRs who managed to break into the 7+ RBI club. The answer? Augie Bergamo, with five lifetime HRs. Use the links and look him up...

SOME "SUMMERY" DATA ABOUT 7+-RBI GAMES...

OUR pun is not necessarily your pun...but it is the beginning of summer, after all, which is really a race backward from the longest day of the year.

And so...we collate, taking care neither to spindle nor to mutilate, but always retaining the option to fold (as in "fold it five ways, and...")

EXCEPT we should fold it seven ways, given what we are talking about--the "under-data" for those 699 games where some King for a Day drove in at least seven runs.

Where to begin...you probably that teams with a hitter who drives in seven runs in a game are going to have a rather fine WPCT in those contests. What do you figure that WPCT actually is--.750? Or perhaps higher still--.800? .850??

THE answer is--higher than that, Walter. In the 699 games where a team has a hitter drive in 7 or more runs, those teams have won 662 times. That's a .947 WPCT.

Of course, we have a tiny sample size here when we consider how many games have been played in MLB history. Our ~700 games, when sliced out of the ~450,000 played in the relevant sample (1898-2026), work out to be less than 0.2% of all games played.

Boog in his "Why me, Lord" stance...

So you would not expect to find amongst those 37 games where teams have lost despite a 7+-RBI performance, a situation where the same player would have done so more than once.

BUT lo--and behold!--there is one instance of this in the annals of the anomalous (a good term, come to think of it, for the life work of Jayson Stark, n'est-ce pas?). And we will be even more surprised to discover that the player who managed to twice cluster his single-game RBI performance into "nose-bleed" territory only to have his team lose each game is someone who played for a team that went to the World Series in each of the seasons involved.

And who is that player, you ask? Why, none other than
John Wesley (Boog) Powell, that's who. On July 6, 1966, Powell drove in 7 runs for the Baltimore Orioles, who managed to lose the game 9-8 (to the then-Kansas City A's) anyway. The O's shook it off and ultimately shocked the baseball world by sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series three months later.

Then, on July 1, 1969, Boog drove in 7 runs again, this time with the Orioles playing the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers (who at this time were not nearly so "bomber-y") still managed to win the game 10-9. The O's shook it off and ultimately shocked the baseball world by losing the World Series in five games to the other, even less "bomber-y" team from New York (the Miracle Mets) three-and-a-half months later...

NOW let's shift to what the title of this entry promised to cover..."summery"--er, summary--data about the nature of the 699 hitting performances in the 7+-RBI game database.  We'll do that with distributions of various performances features. Covered here are batting order position, number of hits, number of doubles/triples/homers, and total bases. We'll take each one separately--but you are responsible for visualizing your own "bell curves"...

First, batting order. It's not going to be surprising that two-thirds of these performances are located in the 3-4-5 slots of the batting order, is it? And we think you can visualize a very orthodox distribution curve for it. 

Enjoy the extra white space as we move on to hits. We had a theory that two-hit performances were a good bit more rare in days of yore--we count 32 of these before the first expansion in 1961, and 90 afterwords. But when we broke out the data for the 21st century occurrences, the percentage of 2-hit 7+-RBI games was steady at 17% of the overall total. So much for that idea...

Doubles and triples are not significant factors in these games (though no one will be surprised about triples being scarce). The two games in which hitters had three triples as part of a 7+-RBI game occurred in 1898 and 1900, respectively. The last time anyone hit two triples in a 7+-RBI performance was in 1952--and you will be surprised to discover who it was...

Homers are, of course, the quickest way to get runs on the board, and it won't shock anyone to discover that there have been 502 multiple-HR instances in 7+-RBI games. That's 72% of the total games...

As you'd expect, total bases has the widest distribution in the data set (which is what produces all that white space). The one that might throw you for a loop, though, is the one game where the hitter had just three total bases. That would be Pie Traynor, who collected three two-run singles and a sacrifice fly in June 1930 as his Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, 19-12 (and yes, it was in the Baker Bowl). 

We're leaving the questions we asked in the first installment (most 7+-RBI games, fewest lifetime HRs for a member of the "7+-RBI club") for a bit later in the series, but we will reveal the identity of the last hitter who had two triples as part of a 7+-RBI day. 

It is none other than Ted Kluszewski...and we were surprised as well to discover that "Mister Muscles" was the answer. (Immaculate Grid, here we come!) But consider that the game in question occurred in Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, where the distance to the center field fence was over 450 feet. It's now seventy-four years and counting since it happened--and, given baseball's continuing direction, it's possible that it will never happen again. More soon...

7+-RBI GAMES: A CAPSULE HISTORY

LET's get down to it with "big RBI games"--defined as those where hitters have driven in at least seven runs in a game.

We told you last time that there are 699 of these accounted for at Forman et soeur--truth told, there are likely another 50 or so from the nineteenth century, particularly from the heavy-hitting 1890s (we only have data back to 1898). 

So all of this is, of course, subject to change. But let's proceed with what we've got.

FIRST, the TimeGrid™ that shows us when these 7+-RBI games occurred. Our color-coding in the decade/year grid tracks the record for most such games in a single year as it evolves.

We can have fun name-checking the hitters who contributed to the record-setting seasons in each case...

In 1911, there were five: Fred Merkle, Doc Gessler, Heinie Zimmerman, Roy Hartzell, and Frank LaPorte.

In 1923, there were six: Johnny Mokan, Cy Williams, Ross Youngs, Hack Miller, Irish Meusel, and Travis Jackson. (That's three members of the New York Giants, who won the NL pennant. For Meusel, it was the second time he'd done it--and he was the first hitter to do so when his team lost the game, breaking a 31-game winning streak for "big RBI guys.")

In 1929, there were eight (or, actually seven, since a certain Sultan of Swat did it twice): Charlie Gehringer, Travis Jackson, Babe Ruth (once in June and once in August), Lew Fonseca, Riggs Stephenson, Jim Bottomley, and Buddy Myer.

It should come as no surprise that 1930 bumped the record up to 11: Del Bissonette, Babe Herman, Lou Gehrig (three times during the year, so just nine names); Pie Traynor, Carl Reynolds, Glenn Wright, Harry Heilmann, Bill Terry, and Earl Averill.

Eleven instances held as the record for forty years, until the oddball season in 1970 upped the ante to 13 (twelve names): Brant Alyea (twice, the first and the last to do that year), Dick Allen, Willie Horton, Mike Epstein, Frank Robinson, John Bateman, Ron Santo, Jim Ray Hart, Ted Kubiak, Johnny Bench, Orlando Cepeda, and Donn Clendenon.

Bench and Cepeda did on the same day, which is a rare event (we'll get to that later). Kubiak is a strong candidate for the weakest hitter to have a 7+-RBI game, with his lifetime 73 OPS+. He might be in the running for the lowest seasonal RBI total for a hitter with a 7+-RBI game (41).

The 1970 record was tied in 1987. Here are the 13 hitters that season: Bo Jackson, George Brett, Andre Dawson, Keith Moreland, Pete O'Brien, Ellis Burks, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Kevin Seitzer, John Kruk, Mickey Brantley, Todd Benzinger, and Dave Parker.

The offensive explosion of the 1990s threatened this record several times, and it was finally broken (with room to spare) in 2000, when there were 17 7+-RBI games (fifteen names, as Alex Rodriguez matched Brant Alyea's feat of being the first and last to do so; Jason Giambi also did it twice) The full list: A-Rod, Adam Kennedy, Ron Coomer, Jeffrey Hammonds, Henry Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Brian Jordan, Giambi, Bobby Higginson, Bernie Williams, Ken Griffey Jr., Andy Tracy, Jeff Cirillo, Jeff Bagwell, and Charles Johnson .

This record was tied in the launch angle madness that was 2019. Here are the culprits: Christian Yelich, Josh Phegley, Trevor Story, David Bote, Matt Adams, Mike Trout, Josh Bell, Brandon Crawford, Didi Gregorius, Kyle Schwarber (natch!), Eduardo Escobar (natch!!), Yuli Gurriel, Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Marcus Semien, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jose Ramirez.

We'll go deeper into this in our next installment...stay tuned.

WILLI! WILLI! WE'RE JUST ONE AWAY FROM THE 700TH 7+-RBI GAME...

YES, it's been awhile...we have been focused on more film writing, while looking to end the latest curse that has kept us from invading movie theaters for the past year and a half. (We've also weaned ourself off those silly Sumimoto sisters...)

Baseball still beckons, of course--and we''ll get back in the hunt for semi-cosmic meaning in the 2026 season soon--if only to explain how Fenway became a pitcher's park (at least for the first 12 weeks of the season, anyway). 

BUT let's have some fun with the semi-arcane--one of our favorite "side hustles" (are you listening, Sumimotos? They aren't surprised to discover how good we (still) look without much on--but we will spare you, dear reader...)

We come carrying tidings of joy for those who enjoy semi-marginal utility players (SMUPs...) as we update one of our favorite semi-arcane lists--those hitters who have driven in seven or more runs in a single game. One of our faves in the SMUP category in recent years is Willi Castro, a man who has played every position on the field except catcher.  He signed with the High-Mile Down-Lows (you know them--and not in the Biblical sense--as the Colorado Rockies) in the 2025-26 off-season and has been all over the diamond and the batting order for his new club this year.

Lately, it's been at or near the top of the batting order, and that's relevant to the feat he pulled off yesterday. Based on the current data available at Forman et soeur, Willi is the 699th batter to drive in seven or more runs in a game. He totaled four hits, two of them homers (one of them a grand slam) as the Rox rocked the A's 23-9 (in Las Vegas, but that is another story)...

It's the RBI total in a game when batting leadoff that's the really rare feat--Willi is just the 24th leadoff hitter to drive in seven or more runs in a game. It turns out that this was a virtually unheard-of occurrence in twentieth century baseball--it happened only 11 times (see TimeGrid™ chart at left). 

Since the 2000 season, however, we've had thirteen--an average of one every other season. (That is due largely to the fact that teams are batting sluggers in the #1 slot a lot more often than was the case in the last century--with the likes of Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor batting leadoff.) Three such occurrences clustered within eighteen days of one another in 2018; there were three more in 2024, all featuring sluggery types: Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, Ben Rice.

THERE is a lot more to share about 7+ RBI games, and we'll get to much more of it later in the week. (Yes, freed from the vagaries of French film noir and those sedulous Sumimoto sisters, we will be "doing time with baseball" until the walls close in again.) While you wait for that, you might think about who had the most 7+ RBI games in his career...and who had the fewest career HRs of all those who managed this feat (and, no, the answer is not Tony Cloninger!) Stay tuned...

IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HITTING WITN NO OUTS & HITTING WITH 2 OUTS INCREASING?

(LONG time no see...life is hectic and fraught on many levels: we can only hope that the chaotic events that continue to plague us here in Amerika will not disrupt or dislodge our so-called National Pastime...)

THIS is a preliminary, high-level first cut at a phenomenon that seems to have escaped attention--which, of course, is one of the main things we do here...

The long table (at right) captures OPS values for hitting with 0, 1, and 2 outs over time: the source (of course) is Forman et soeur (that's Baseball Reference to the rest of you).

Color coding here is as follows: 1) orange-shaded areas show seasons in AL and NL were OPS values with 0 outs meet or exceed .750 (among other things, providing us with a vibrant identification of the long "offensive explosion" from 1993-2009); 

2) green-shaded areas show seasons where OPS values with 0 outs are less than .700 (clustering in the expanded strike zone era of1963-68, and cratering in 1968--but lingering intermittently into the 1980s); 

3) seasons where the OPS values with 1 or 2 outs are higher than the OPS value with 0 out are shown in red type;

4) seasons where the league ratio of 2-out OPS is higher than 100% compared to 0-out OPS are shown in bold type and highlighted in yellow (as will be clear from a full examination of the table, this is extremely rare, occurring in only two seasons--NL 2022 and AL 1984--over the sixty-six years of data);

...and, finally, 5) extremely low league ratios of 2-out OPS values to 0-out OPS values are shown in green type.

WE ordered the data in reverse historical order so that the reader might more easily pinpoint the accelerating occurrence of low 2-out OPS to 0-out OPS ratios. Not all ratios lower than .950 (meaning a greater than 5% drop...) are highlighted, but the first strikingly low ratio occurs in NL 2006, followed by a increasingly frequency of incidence over the most recent twenty years.

In the current decade, there has been some level of retrenchment: the even-numbered full seasons (2022 and 2024, years in which HR/G totals swung downward) returned these ratios more into overall historical alignment, but there is greater year-to-year volatility in the data than ever before.

The average ratio of 2-out OPS to 0-out OPS over the sixty-six seasons is .965 (actually, .965 in the AL, .964 in the NL), meaning that offensive production has had a pervasive decline of 3.5% when hitters hit with 2 outs. To understand the dynamics of this in a systematic way, we'd need to see if there are consistent patterns in sub-details of the data, such as inning-by-inning ratios--is the drop greater in late innings, and is that driving the 21st-century decline in the 2-out to 0-out ratio? (Forman et soeur does not provide data at that level of detail, but we will ask...)

WHAT we can do at this point, though, is show you how the basic data has shifted over time. At left are the decade-by-decade averages for the 2-out to 0-out OPS ratio (along with breakouts for two longer historical ranges: 1960-1989 and 1990-2025). Focus on the "delta 0-d" columns for each league and notice where the decade-level changes occur. While the NL ratio starts to drop in the 1980s, both leagues experience a significant downturn even as offense surges in the 1990s (a reflection of some form of change in hitting strategy, perhaps?). 

The general downturn in offense in the 10s and 20s has not brought the ratio back up to its pre-1990 levels, and we can see in the three-decade breakouts (1960-1989, 1990-2025) that the gap in the 2-out to 0-out OPS ratio has doubled (from 2.5% to around 4.5%).

WE'LL need to look at what team-level data can tell us--whether, for example, the pitching staffs of teas that make the post-season are getting better at getting the third out relative to the league--to see if we can determine why this is happening, but it looks clear that this is not a case of random variation (despite the year-to-year fluctuations). And a more systematic look at the often-ignored "contextual stats" (runs scored and RBI) might reveal something about the change, which might relate to the slow desiccation of the "long-sequence offense" despite the ups and downs of offensive levels.

So we close by quoting that noted philosopher Stephen Stills (pithier and far more of an MVP in his wayward way than our overly-exalted high-school classmate Michael Sandel, ironically lionized for devising a simperingly perverse but ultimately empty form of "communitarian[ist] condescension"...) in the charismatic guitarist's signature moment of confused clarity--"there's something happening here...what is it ain't exactly clear"--as today we watch more of the world burn for no good reason, and look for solace wherever we can find it...even in the wishing well of baseball statistics (where there is more truth to be found than in Sandel's philosophy). 

The hole we have dug ourselves is even deeper than that wishing well, but regaining our (metaphorical) ability to hit with two outs is now as crucial to our life on this planet as it is for the ongoing health of what we still (quaintly) call "the National Pastime"...

NEW TOOLS FOR THE HALL OF FAME: 2B BY AGE-DECADES

AS you can imagine, the Hall of Fame vote results (tomorrow) are trapped in amber somewhere between celebration and disdain, owing to the onerous politics that have evolved in the post-neo sabe era. We are resigned to the fact that Andruw Jones will be in the Hall of Fame via the front door (either this year or next), which is a mistake being perpetrated by the WAR-besotted contingent now ensconced at the center of this decision-making--but that's a matter for another time. 

Instead, let's address another way into measuring career performance that might allow us to escape the prison-house of WAR, and possibly even dovetail into the emerging shift in Hall of Fame voting that is now underway (recently articulated by the less doctrinaire members of the current BB-WAA such as Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal). That shift has to do with lowering longevity standards for front-door HOF induction. The rationale is as much a political response as one formed from rigorous analysis (but what else is new?)

For lack of a sexier term, let's call this method the Age-Decade Index.

The method involves evaluation of players at their primary defensive position, which has not always been sufficiently addressed in HOF discussions. (As some of you know already, the WAR approach to positional adjustment is severely flawed, despite the conquer-by-proliferation tactics being ruthlessly deployed by the Tango Love Pie and his followers.)

For purposes of demonstration, we'll use second basemen--for several reasons. First, second base has been a problematic position for the BBWAA and the various semi-feckless committees that have attempted to assemble a sufficient and reasonable group of inductees. Second, we can dovetail the latest committee result--the induction of curmudgeonly keystoner Jeff Kent--into an examination of how a look at age-decades can provide us with greater nuance than WAR or its often-silly offshoot "systems"--especially those devised by deceptively genial egotists like Kent detractor Joe (the Poser) Posnanski. (Space does not permit us to address the massive flaws in his latest agglomeration here; as is almost always the case with Joe, his attempts at "analytical systems" are fatally compromised by his overweening desire to reflect some particularly suppressive subset of "received wisdom.")

Third, and arguably most important, we can use age-decades to bring achievement by decade and by position into alignment in a way that will better define the parameters of the currently evolving changes in HOF voting approaches. (Otherwise, these will remain tainted by WAR.)

SO how does "age-decade" analysis work? The chart at left will be our first guide (but, as Bette Davis said, fasten your seat belts). For each decade (20-29, 30-39), we create age lists based  solely on offensive performance. Because we are neolithic analysts (as opposed to neo- or post-neo sabes), we use OPS+.

Using OPS+, we create ranking lists at each individual age for (in this case) second basemen aged 20-29. To make the list, these folk must have had 400+ PAs in the age-year with an OPS+ of 100 or higher.

We create penalty values for each individual year based on how many second basemen had an OPS+ of 100 or higher. Those penalty values are lower in ages like 20, 21, 22 because fewer second basemen (and few players in general) qualify for the list. The penalty value is higher in ages 26, 27, 28, 29 because more players make the list.

There is some nuance in assigning these values: a player with an OPS+ > 100 but with <400 PAs will generally have the specific penalty value for that age cut in half. 

Once all rankings & penalty values have been assigned, we sum the values for each 2B and average them. In this configuration, lower is better, so we flip the value on to a scale where 100 = perfect. 

Then we sort the list in descending order, and (just because we can) we calculate the number of years in which they make the list, and the number of years they crack the Top Ten.

After all that, we discover that Eddie Collins was the greatest second baseman during the age 20-29 decade, followed (not so closely, as it turns out) by Rogers Hornsby (not always a 2B) and Nap Lajoie.

This is not so surprising, of course, because most systems would generate similar results. (Sometimes greatness is truly obvious...)

BUT who knew that big little man Jose Altuve (still in pursuit of 3000 hits) is right on Lajoie's heels? And who the heck are those guys named Cupid Childs and Larry Doyle? Their Age-Decade Index values for their twenties are mighty good: if they both hadn't played prior to 1920 and buried in the mists of time, they might already be in the HOF along with several (Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker) whose absence remains haunting for a certain coterie (identified during Christina Kahrl's "cheeky phase" as "armchair analysts"). 

Note, BTW, that actual HOF inductees are shown above in bold type. We kept a sample of also-rans displayed on the list to give you an idea of how deep it goes.  And we showed you how HOFers who switched away from second base (Rod Carew and Paul Molitor) were faring before they moved to another defensive position.

Those also-rans are also useful in order to see how the math works, as evidenced by the adjacent entries for recidivist Twin Edouard Julien and Federal League flash-in-the-pan Duke Kenworthy. (Julien hasn't come close to his fabulous rookie season in 2023 (age 24). but the method isn't ready to penalize him for later-age seasons that haven't occurred yet; Kenworthy dominated a tetchy major league in 1914-15 (age 27-28) but could never pass muster in the real big leagues, It seems appropriate that they are lumped here together...)

And many of you 19th century aficionados will know that the mysterious fellow named "William Robinson" is actually the early walkman better known as "Yank."

But another Robinson--Jackie--does not show up well here, owing to the fact that he couldn't play in MLB until he was 28 (and in that year he was forced to play first base). We'll see how he fares in the 30-39 decade. 

AND then there's Jeff Kent. How did a guy with such a middling offensive performance in his twenties possibly wind up inducted into the HOF (even by a "vets committee")?

But before we do that, we want to sell you some insurance...or, should we say, we want to show you BBB's version of an actuarial table--a tool that should be more front-and-center in baseball analysis for many reasons. This particular actuarial table (at right) reveals some things not generally acknowledged in terms of second basemen and their career survival rate.

We have here the total number of second basemen in baseball history with 400+ PAs in all the age-years from 20 to 40. If we graphed the "Total" data we'd see that it is a front-loaded bell curve with a steep early ascent and a long decline. The general finding is that there are nearly twice as many 400+ PA seasons at second base during the 20-29 decade as is the case for 30-39. The number of them that are above 100 OPS+ (and above 120 OPS+) start declining at age 23 as teams settle for good glove men when the supply of good young hitters at the position lag (in part because some of the better hitters get moved to other positions). The top hitters at 2B (120 OPS+) tend to survive longer relative to the number of 2Bs with 400+ PAs, which declines rapidly starting at age 32.

But these survivors are even rarer than the more general actuarial data. Age 20-25 2Bs with 120+ OPS radically outnumber their counterparts at age 35-40 (79 for age 20-25, just 24 for 35-40). Such a performance really is exceedingly rare--and if it is something that gets repeated multiple times during that age range, it is deserving of weighted consideration with respect to the Hall of Fame

So, to add nuance to the arguments now being made by Stark and Rosenthal, it isn't just the peak that should get greater emphasis, but also the location of the peak within specific age ranges.

AND that brings us back to Kent. The data for 2Bs in the age 30-39 range (table shown at left) provides astonishing confirmation that it is the Curmudgeonly One who scores best in a year-by-year anatomization. (Just barely, though, over Joe Morgan...)

And this is especially the case in the age 35-39 range, where such performance levels are almost exclusively limited to HOFers.

The all-time greats (Collins, Hornsby, Morgan, Lajoie, Gehringer) are still significantly greater than Kent, of course, due to their early achievements. 

But here is where Kent leapfrogs into the Hall, in defiance of WAR and the even more distorted, jackleg method coughed up by Joe the Poser (apparently due to a tantrum over the latest HOF rejections of his favorites). At best, the tool he devised should be in a group of measures with at best a tertiary level of weighting.

WIT the Age-Decade Index, we also see that the criminally overlooked duo of Grich and Whitaker score well here, confirming their worthiness for enshrinement in Cooperstown. We see the short-term dominance of Jackie Robinson, too. Finally, the method also validates claims to be made on behalf of Robinson Cano (don't you know)...and gives a boost to Chase Utley, too.

We think the method needs a little more calibration before the 20-29 and 30-39 ranges can be combined to form a fully unified career evaluation--in particular, the weighting between the two decades requires some additional refinement. We'll work on that and present it here in a subsequent post...stay tuned!