ELIAN EASES INTO THE RECORD BOOKS

It's precisely because baseball is as close as it gets to a pure meritocracy that the game's marginal players are so interesting. And that brings us to the saga of Elian Herrera, who managed (against long odds) to get himself into the baseball record book a month ago.

Herrera, now 29, has only a little bit of pop in his bat, mostly doubles, and it took him five years to get out of Class A ball after being signed out of the still-burgeoning Dominican baseball factory back in 2003. The Dodgers didn't even put him into rookie ball until 2006. It became clear that Elian's only path to the big leagues would be as a jack-of-all-trades type, so the natural second baseman quickly volunteered his way into playing the outfield. Over the next four years, the Dodgers would move him all around, providing him with enough polish at six defensive positions to make him into a viable utility man.

He finally made it to Albuquerque (AAA) in 2012, and the Coors-like conditions at his home field proved more  than congenial: Elian hit .400 at home and found himself up with the big club in early May.

God bless him...Elian Herrera is STILL struggling out there
in the outfield.

For about thirty games, it looked like it might be a Cinderella story for Herrera, who was not only hitting over .300, but was getting on-base at greater than a .400 clip. But reality set in at that point, and Elian went into a major tailspin. He struggled in the outfield and at the plate, and the Dodgers sent him back to Albuquerque in early July.

After Elian spent another year there in '13, the Dodgers opted for Justin Turner as an upgrade at utility player, and Herrera found himself on waivers. Former Dodger organization man Ron Roenicke, now manager of the Brewers, tipped off his club that Herrera was worth a flyer, and so Elian got a chance to discover life in the Midwest.

That path of discovery began in Nashville, and has proved to be a veritable roller-coast ride so far. Elian has been up and down between Nashville and Milwaukee four times in '14, operating as the 26th or 27th man on the Brewers' roster. It was his most recent return to the big club, though, that permitted him to get into the record books.

Just how did he do that? Why, by slapping out five hits in one of his rare starts. On Sunday, July 13th--"getaway day" for the All-Star break--Herrera collected four singles and a double, scoring three times and driving in two as the Brewers clomped the Cardinals, 11-2. While there are likely close to three thousand players who've had five or more hits in a game (the total at Forman et fils, going back to 1914, stands at 2220), it's still an elite accomplishment for a major leaguer.

The wrinkle for us here is not just the mundane magic of a man on the margins. It's located in the spot in the batting order in which Elian managed his feat. Herrera was batting eighth in the Brewer lineup on  7/13 when he rapped out his five hits.

So that leads us to wanting to know just what the distribution of 5+-hit games looks like when we apportion them across the batting order.

And the answers can be found in the chart at left, where you'll see what likely makes perfect sense. There is a clustering effect at the top of the batting order, with a high preponderance of these games in the #1 and #2 slots.

Makes sense, yes? These guys are the likeliest to get a fifth or sixth chance to bat in a game. So even though they may not be the best hitters on their team--and often it's not close--the vagaries of small sample size distribution and the innate structure of the game works in their favor.

The chart also tells us that Elian Herrera is one of just fourteen players to slap out five or more hits in a game since 2000 while hitting eighth in the batting order.

Of course, it's even rarer to pull this off while batting ninth (just 20 times in one hundred years). And, prior to the DH, we are talking about virtually non-existent. It has happened a total of six times since 1914. The last pitcher to slap out five hits in a game? Mel Stottlemyre, who did it on September 26, 1964.

That's nearly fifty years ago. And it's likely to be another fifty before a pitcher does it again.

But let's not let that distract us from a kindly nod in the direction of Elian Herrera, who found a way to take advantage of his second chance in the big leagues.

PASSING OF A RETROSHEET GIANT...

Just a very brief note to memorialize one of the seminal figures in baseball research whose untimely passing is a significant loss for all of us. Clem Comly was just 59, far too young to be lost both to friends (who were legion) and from the ongoing task of reconstructing the day-by-day brick-and-mortar of baseball history (at which he excelled).

Comly's years of yeoman service in Retrosheet and the Society for American Baseball Research are the type of shining legacy that deserves some kind of official commemoration. We can trust that his friends and colleagues will find a way to create an appropriate ongoing remembrance in his honor.

A more detailed memorial notice can be found at the SABR site via this link.

2014: COMPLETE GAMES #76, #77, #78, #79, #80, #81...

We've been extrapolating the 2014 complete game total for four months now, noodling around with the concept as part of a look at baseball's "endangered species" (and let's take time to bow/scrape to our "sponsor," that august but shadow-frought meta-enterpreneurial collective "Fright Quotes R Us")...

...but we hadn't taken the time to examine the underlying pattern in the recent CG data to see if delving into even smaller sample sizes could prove informative. We will do that in this entry...eventually.

But first let's note that August has started out with a bang (feel free, however, to substitute your own loud noise or representation of same here...) with 10 complete games in the first ten days of the month.

Our old pal Johnny Cueto returned to the CG column (#76, 8/5) with a five-hitter against the Indians as the Reds score a 9-2 win. It was Johnny's fifth CG of the year, and his first since 5/15.

On that same day, the Rangers' Colby Lewis went the distance (#77) with a six-hit shutout as Texas routed the White Sox, 16-0. Colby is vying for the slot on the CG list that is more than a bit unseemly: he's in the running for "pitcher having the worst season who threw a CG." And an "FQRU" to you, too, Mr. Lewis...

The Royals' August surge has been fueled in part by starting pitcher performances--with two of these being complete games. Jeremy Guthrie (#78, 8/7) was in the thick of things as the Royals cleaned up in interleague play (the hapless D-Backs and the struggling Giants), constituting a turnaround from his subpar work in recent weeks. And nominal staff ace James Shields (#81, 8/9) contributed a four-hit shutout a couple of days later.

Meanwhile, Madison Bumgarner (8/8, #80) became only the fourth pitcher in 2014 to have back-to-back CGs--but, like Jordan Zimmerman earlier in the year, his second route-going game resulted in a loss (again, to the white-hot Royals).

And finally, the A's received a plum performance from latest acquisition Jon Lester (#79, 8/7), who threw a three-hit shutout at the Twins. Lester's next start will be against those streaking Royals later this week.

So the long chase for record-breaking scarcity continues...and these ten CGs in the first ten days of August makes us wonder just how likely is it that the 2014 season will come in under the low mark (108) set in 2007. (Remember, we've removed CGs under eight IP for our count, so looking at Forman et fils will give you different numbers.)

The chart at right is an attempt to at least anatomize (if not answer) the question. Monthly totals for CGs are displayed: high totals for each month (covering years 2007-14) are shown in orange; low totals are shown in green.

When we do the arithmetic, we find that 31% of all CGs in 2007-13 occurred during the last two months of the season. If 2014 matched that average, the total of CGs for the year would come in at 103. The current extrapolation for the year, however, based on the current ratio of CG/G, works out to 112.

Looks like we may go right down to the wire...

2014: THE PATTERN IN THE CARPET FINALLY EMERGES...

The ugly chic of the 60s as captured in the creation of the "non-place" in DEAD HEAT...
James Coburn and Aldo Ray either don't notice or don't care.

We are seeing some movement from the teams that were previously buried "in the pack" of a 2014 season that seemed to be settling for the a kind of parity best described by the phrase "dead heat on a merry-go-round."

Four teams--the Orioles, the Yankees, the Royals and the Pirates--have been making noise since the All-Star break. Interestingly, the only team out of this group that indulged in a "roto wire" makeover at the end of July was the one that plays in the Bronx.

Can the M's escape the horse latitudes??

The Royals may at last benefit from some karma. Even though the Tigers landed David Price at the last possible moment at the "horse latitudes" trading deadline, they have been floundering rather noisily in the past ten days, which might actually give the long-suffering team from KC a shot at the division crown (as of this writing, they are only a game and half behind).

Two other teams are hanging around the AL wild card race (and we are likely down to a race for one wild card slot, unless the Angels take a serious powder). Who's that? Why, those snappy 1977 expansion teams, the Jays and the M's. Toronto needs Edwin Encarnacion to give them enough offense to hit their way past their deficiencies. Seattle needs to keep their pitching healthy and get something resembling production from Kendrys Morales and Austin Jackson.

What will surprise you is that the M's have the second best Pythagorean Winning Percentage in the AL right now. Yes, that's right: second--they have slipped past the Angels. Right now, however, they're playing six games under that projection.

Mara Branscombe: the "new age" Camilla Sparv??

Over in the NL, the Great Muddle seems destined to continue. The Pirates, waiting for the condemning in-print folly of ex-Prospectus kackster Jonah Keri, now masquerading as a meta-numerate mediot, have found themselves and are back in the thick of things.

The other NL Central teams (Brewers, Cardinals, Reds) have been up and down since the All-Star Break; St. Louis is the one team here that went for the bold makeover at the "fluid body" deadline, and thus far the results of their pitching revamp (John Lackey, Justin Masterson) is spectacularly inconclusive. Underpowered offenses seem to be the order of the day in the NL Central, except for the Brewers, who've been betrayed mostly by their bullpen (2-7, 4.44 since the first of July).

The East and West aren't quite so murky, with only two teams in each division making a play for things. The Braves have a crippled pitching staff and an enigmatic offense, so it's looking more and more like they will drift in at or near .500. That leaves the Nationals by default in the NL East. On the other side of the country, the Dodgers have played sluggishly all season, and the edges of their starting rotation has been turning up with intermittent flakiness and/or injury, but they do have the most overall talent in the league and that should keep them from blowing it. The Giants stopped hitting homers in June (they hit more round-trippers in April than they hit in June and July combined) and they'll have to get back to the long ball to bolster a sagging pitching staff.

We expect the Pirates will assert themselves into the #4 slot (first wild card) and that it will be a knotty, molasses-like stretch drive for the #5 slot between the Cards and Giants--though the Reds and/or the Braves might patch something together and make some noise.

ALL-TIME ASTRAL TEAMS (aka ZODIAC LEAGUE)/9: LEO

It's the "showy" sign--at least that's what all the astrology mavens like to claim.

It's frickin' Leo the Lion, and in the Zodiac League (which, by all rights, should have its simulation staged in San Francisco...note to self: suggest that fearless game-runner relocate long enough when we are done previewing all this schlock to give the Bay Area its due) it is quite simply a packed house.

One hundred and eighty-seven players with enough "look-at-me" juju to make the cut and have their names inscribed into the master list. It's no wonder that the fingers feel like lead pellets.

And, as you might expect, there are some serious "look at me" players to be found on this list.

As in three of the greatest ballplayers who will be long on the outside looking in when it comes to the Hall of Fame (not that we're talking about those punters anymore after their chickensh*t rule change).

As in: Bonds, Barry; Clemens, Roger; Rodriguez, Alex.

The presence of these three "amigos" should have all versions of the press--the throwback racists; the so-called "mediots," inheritors of the tradition of ignorance; and the new breed of overly-numerate kacksters--swarming around this team like the creatures unleashed when a rock is rudely wrested from its chthonic moorings.

Heck, when we witness a juxtaposition like this one, it almost makes us want to actually believe in all this schtuff.

But that's a discussion for another time (and probably another universe). So let's focus on the lineups and pitching staffs for the Leo "A" and the Leo "B" team--with the proviso that this is one "B" team that will be loudly disputing its status--these are folks who need reinforcement(s).

Just to placate them, we'll talk about the "B" team first. We're going to exercise a thimble full of caution and place Mike Trout on this squad...figuring that three years doth not a mega-God make. (Five or six years, maybe: but not three.)

So here's the "Leo B" lineup:

1. Mike Trout, cf;
2. Cupid Childs, 2b;
3. Roberto Clemente, rf;
4. Sherry Magee, lf;
5. Harlond Clift, 3b;
6. Nomar Garciaparra, ss;
7. John Olerud, 1b;
8. Jorge Posada, c.

The pitchers we've selected for the "B" starting rotation:

Andy Messersmith, Dolf Luque, Max Lanier, Max Scherzer, Tiny Bonham, Rube Walberg.

The pitchers we've selected for "B" bullpen:

Troy Percival, Greg Minton, Paul Lindblad, Bill Campbell, Larry Sherry, Gerry Staley.

It's a fun team, though probably a bit on the whiny side. We especially like having two Maxes in the starting rotation. But it's likely to be a bit on the short side in terms of power.

The "Leo A" team doesn't suffer quite as much in that department, as you'll see:

1. Larry Doyle, 2b;
2. Alex Rodriguez, ss;
3. Barry Bonds, cf;
4. Harry Heilmann, rf;
5. Carl Yastrzemski, lf;
6. Todd Helton, 1b;
7. Sid Gordon, 3b;
8. Ted Simmons, c.

Now it's a darn shame that Sid can't be on the same team with the two Maxes, but the compensating factor is that we have Barry and Harry batting back-to-back. And we're sure that sometime we'll drop A-Rod down in the order just to get Larry, Barry and Harry properly aligned.

Too bad that Sherry and Gerry are trapped on the "B" team. But thank goodness Huey, Dewey and Louie have a previous engagement.

The "A" starting rotation will allow us to sweep all of this under the rug (or the Tuscan sun, depending on what you're willing to read when you take that summertime funky ride/just to tan your hide):

Christy Mathewson, Roger Clemens, Burleigh Grimes, Don Drysdale, Larry Corcoran, Vida Blue.

And the "A" bullpen is a thing of perverse beauty (and believe us when we say we know more than we want to about that topic):

Hoyt Wilhelm, Billy Wagner, John Wetteland, Clem Labine, Huston Street, Tom Burgmeier.

Now this is a "look at me" team that's worth looking at. They may not win (though they just might), but  they will make a lot of noise.

2014: COMPLETE GAMES #72, #73, #74, #75

Four more CGs over the past four days...we'll get to those in a moment. But--first--let's take a look at who has had the most CGs thrown at them thus far in 2014.

Yes, that's most thrown at, not thrown by. With 75 CGs (remember, 8+ IP) as of this afternoon, that averages out to 2.5 CGs per team. But, as you'd suspect, it's not that uniform.

So who's the team with the most "CGs against"? It's not really close. It's--

The Mariners. With a total of eight (8). They had one in April, two in May, two in June, and three in July.

The Padres are their only competition: they've had six (6) thrown against them.

The Mets have the early lead in August, however, and they can thank the Giants. First, Ryan Vogelsong (#72, 8/1) allowed only two hits in a 5-1 win (the only run coming on Lucas Duda's eight-inning home run.

Next, Madison Bumgarner, who's been giving ground of late, threw a two-hit shutout at them (#74, 8/3), needing only 95 pitches to complete the CG.

Earlier that same day, the Astros' Scott Feldman, having an indifferent year, scattered eight hits against the Blue Jays (#73, 8/3). He struck out only two, tying him with Lance Lynn for second place in the "least Ks in a CG" 2014 sweepstakes. (Rick Porcello would seem to have a lock on first, what with his 0-K performance back on July 1st.)

Last night (8/4, #75), Garrett Richards blanked the Dodgers on a five-hit shutout as the Angels took the first game in their in-season "Freeway Series." It broke Richards' two-game losing streak (he dropped games to the Tigers and O's in his previous two starts).

BTW, until Richards beat them with a CG last night, the Dodgers were undefeated in games where the opposition had thrown CGs against them. (No, it wasn't just one CG, it was two...wonder if anyone has managed to win all of the games where CGs have been thrown against them--it can't be more than two or three CGs over the course of a season, n'est-ce pas?)

WORLD SERIES WALKOFF GAMES--REVISITED

The dangling question from our earlier post on this subject was: how many walkoff World Series games were won by the team who won the World Series?

The dangling error in the earlier data presentation was that we added up the total number of walkoff games erroneously. There are actually 57 such games, not 56 as reported earlier.

OK, we won't let the answer dangle in the midst of this mea culpa. But the answer is rather surprising--or it will be for those of you who expect the results to reside in coin-flip territory.

Interestingly, the team who wins the World Series has significant success in winning the walkoff games that occur in the Fall Classic. (We haven't gone back to look at division series, championship series, or wild card shootouts: after all, in the age of omnivorous content on the Internet we've got to parse all of this as carefully as Bill Clinton parsed the definition of oral sex.)

What's that winning percentage, you ask? You can see it in the chart (above right): it's .684, or 39-18. Winning WS teams have won more than twice as many of the walkoff games in the WS. (In the chart, teams winning walkoff games who went on to lose the WS are shown in red.)

Even when you remove the "bias" of the walkoff win in Game 7 (or, for 1912, where there was a tie, in Game 8), the winning team in the WS still has a sizable lead (33-18, .647).

As you might suspect, the Yankees have been in the most walkoff games in World Series history--a total of 20. Their won-loss record in those games? 12-8. The Dodgers are next with nine walkoff games: their record is 3-6 (2-4 against the Yankees). Remember that these are overall records in walkoff games: the Yankees' record in walkoff games in which they won the WS is 9-3; the Dodgers' is 3-1.

2014: INTERLEAGUE PLAY UPDATE (JULY RESULTS, AUGUST SCHEDULE)

Slow drip revisited...again.

July was not a fun month for the National League WRT interleague play. The two weeks surrounding the All-Star Break were a disaster: they lost 12 of 15 during that stretch.

They held their own otherwise, but the damage was done. All in all, the AL went 24-14 in July.

The Brewers and the Dodgers, two .500+ NL teams, combined to go 1-8 in cross-league contests.

Theo Epstein had fun, however, when his Cubs beat the Red Sox twice in Fenway at the beginning of the month.

The battle of last year's league doormats (Marlins and Astros) was the other bright spot for the NL during July. The Fish knocked the 'Stros out of asynchronous orbit with a three-game sweep.

August, somewhat alarmingly, will be a much, much busier month for interleague play: with the O's-Nats rainout from 7/8 rescheduled for this coming Monday (8/4), there will be a total of 69 interleague games in August, with much of it occurring in the 8/4-8/10 time frame.

There are several big matchups during the month:

--The Dodgers and Angels will play four games next week; the Pirates and Tigers will play four over the following week.

--The Braves will face one AL west leader (the A's) and one pretender (the M's).

--The Cardinals will hope to get their momentum going with  a series at home against the Red Sox in a series next week (8/5-8/7) that might pit the recently traded John Lackey against his former teammates; they'll then follow up with a road trip to Baltimore.

2014: COMPLETE GAMES #67, #68, #69, #70, #71

Well, that will teach you. Mouth off about a long gap in complete games, and before you can say "roid rage" an entire handful of 'em rain down on you.

Five, to be exact, in the past four days. First, travelin' man Vance Worley, currently with the Pirates, whose beefy frame and unstylish frames (translation: he's chunky and wears glasses...) make him a sentimental favorite, got his game on last Monday (7/28), shutting out the Giants on four hits in a 5-0 win.

Next, the Indians' Corey Kluber, rounding into an ace at age 28, tossed his second CG of the season (the first was back on April 24th against the Royals), a three-hit shutout vs. the Mariners on Wednesday (7/30). No one has been more economical in a CG win this season than Corey was in this game: he needed only 85 pitches. (Jordan Zimmerman threw just 76 in his CG on 6/13, but it was an eight-inning CG loss.)

#3 was actually a bit earlier that evening: down in Houston, the Astros' ace Dallas Keuchel four-hit the A's en route to an 8-1 win. (It may have been this game that gave A's GM Billy Beane the extra incentive to deal for Jon Lester, as Jason Hammel made his fourth consecutive rocky start since coming over from the Cubs.)

Yesterday, we had a true rarity: two CGs in the same game--which, of course, means one win and one loss. How rare is it for two pitchers to go the distance in the same game these days? In 2014, this is only the second time that it's happened (not counting that five-inning rain-shortened game in mid-July). It only happened twice in 2013 as well.

The loser: Julio Teheran of the Braves, who was actually pinch-hit for in the top of the ninth when the Braves mounted an unsuccessful effort to tie the score. Teheran struck out nine and allowed only five hits, but he was tagged with the loss.

The winner: Clayton Kershaw, in his fourth full-length CG of the season. (He had one of the four five-inning CGs that we don't add to our official count.) Clayton allowed the most hits of any pitcher whose 2014 CG also resulted in a win (nine), but he was helped out by the Dodgers defense, who turned three double plays behind him. Final score: Los Angeles 2, Atlanta 1.

That flurry of CGs has brought the projected 2014 total back up to: 107.