Kid K

In honor of Kid K and his exit from the game of baseball yesterday, here is a short query on pitchers in the live-ball era with the highest HBP% through 2011.

First	Last	Debut	IP	HBP	HBP%	Rank
Carlos	Marmol	2006	459.3	44	2.22	1
Rolando	Arrojo	1998	700	67	2.2	2
Byung-Hyun	Kim	1999	841	80	2.17	3
Brian	Fuentes	2001	583.3	51	2.06	4
Ryan	Rupe	1999	476.7	42	2	5
Victor	Zambrano	2001	706.3	63	1.98	6
Mike	James	1995	314	27	1.98	7
Jose	Paniagua	1996	357	31	1.95	8
Scott	Sullivan	1995	737.3	60	1.91	9
Jerome	Williams	2003	425.3	35	1.91	10
Jeff	Nelson	1992	784.7	64	1.88	11
Brad	Thompson	2005	405.3	33	1.88	12
Mark	Thompson	1994	337	29	1.86	13
Trever	Miller	1996	523.3	43	1.85	14
Mike	Myers	1995	541.7	43	1.8	15
Micah	Owings	2007	473.3	37	1.78	16
Casey	Fossum	2001	786	63	1.78	17
Sun-Woo	Kim	2001	337	27	1.78	18
Jamey	Wright	1996	1828.7	142	1.75	19
Mike	Wood	2003	344	27	1.73	20
Max	Leon	1973	310.3	23	1.71	21
Kerry	Wood	1998	1371.3	99	1.7	22
Horacio	Pina	1968	432	31	1.68	23
Mitch	Williams	1986	691.3	52	1.67	24
Steve	Reed	1992	870.7	61	1.67	25

(min 300 IP, debut after 1920).

Notice Wood is one of only two pitchers on this list with more than 1000 IP .

Travers

This morning I woke up, brewed some coffee, flipped open my laptop and saw this tweet in my feed:

In that game 100 years ago today, #Tigers pitcher Al Travers gave up 24 earned runs on 26 hits in his only MLB game.
— High Heat Stats (@HighHeatStats) May 18, 2012

High Heat Stats is an excellent site that provides an endless supply of similarly entertaining baseball anecdotes on their blog as well as twitter, but this one jumped out at me in an exceptional way.


Travers's player page reveals that his 24 career Runs Allowed all occurred in just 1 lonely career major-league Appearance. That is the epitome of a stat that tells a story. I looked to Baseball-Reference's Bullpen to find the details on what that story actually was.

In Philadelphia, on May 18, 1912, Ty Cobb was suspended for beating a fan with a bat in New York on May 15. The entire Detroit Tigers team protested and refused to play. Faced with a large fine, Tigers owner Frank Navin told manager Hughie Jennings to field any team he could find. Jennings called St. Joseph's University and took seven players from St. Joe's along with two coaches.

 After the game, B-R tells us, Travers returned to St Joe's and became a priest. And so ended one of the quickest and, quite honestly, worst major-league careers of all-time. But I would be remiss not to mention that during the Athletic's 24-run, 26-hit, 7-BB route of the Tigers, Travers still managed to K one batter. I can only imagine the crowd went wild.


It suddenly dawned on me then, that I've never entertained what is likely the most obvious, simplest query one could compose-- worst ERA ever.
 

First	Last	Debut	Final_Game	IP	ERA
Joe	Cleary	1945-08-04	1945-08-04	0.3	189
Andy	Sommerville	1894-08-08	1894-08-08	0.3	162
Frank	Wurm	1944-09-04	1944-09-04	0.3	108
Harry	Heitmann	1918-07-27	1918-07-27	0.3	108
Fritz	Fisher	1964-04-19	1964-04-19	0.3	108
Terry	Wilshusen	1973-04-07	1973-04-07	0.3	81
Ricky	Pickett	1998-04-28	1998-05-05	0.7	81
Art	Goodwin	1905-10-07	1905-10-07	0.3	81
Jay	Sborz	2010-06-22	NULL	0.7	67.5

Samardzija

Jeff Samardzija continues to prove his rebirth in 2012 is legitimate. After last Sunday's victory over the Brewers, he lowered his ERA to 2.94 with a dazzling 2.50 FIP and 2.90 xFIP. The obvious improvement in Samrdzija's 2012 season is his walk rate, which is currently at 7.9%-- a full 5% lower than his Career walk rate of 13.1%.


Dude. Did you catch that? I said, "5%".


Entering the 2012 season, the possibility of control-correction was looking grim for the Cub's oft-hyped 5th-round draft-pick after 169 career IP of the pure, lavish, indulgent wildness. But here we are, already 43 IP into 2012, and this new-found control has been sustained. If Samardzija is able to hold to that 5% cutback for an entire season (say, at least 150 IP), that would be an awesome and rare feat.

To provide some historical context to Samardzija's 2012, I queried all pitchers who lowered their walk rate by at least 5% for an entire season (150 IP) from their career rate (also with at least 150 IP).

Best BB% IMPROVERS, LIVE-BALL ERA

namefirst	namelast	IP Before	BB% Before	year	age	IP	BB%	KmBB	ciBB%
Billy	Pierce	456.3	15.18	1951	24	240.3	7.24	3.97	7.94
Duane	Pillette	309	12.67	1952	29	205.3	6.25	0.8	6.42
Bob	Bruce	522	9.85	1964	31	202.3	3.98	12.29	5.87
Tracy	Stallard	292.3	13.58	1964	26	225.7	7.72	4.77	5.86
Roy	Halladay	575.7	8.42	2003	26	266	2.99	16.06	5.43
Earl	Wilson	490.7	13.61	1964	29	202.3	8.27	10.53	5.34
Luke	Walker	358.3	13.21	1971	27	159.7	7.96	4.95	5.25
George	Earnshaw	709	11.58	1931	31	281.7	6.39	6.56	5.19
George	Pipgras	215	12.79	1928	28	300.7	7.62	2.66	5.17
Bob	Feller	488.3	16.57	1939	20	296.7	11.42	8.37	5.15
Dolly	Gray	151.7	12.54	1925	27	203.7	7.4	2	5.14
Dennis	Eckersley	386	10.4	1977	22	247.3	5.37	13.62	5.03
Randy	Johnson	818	14.5	1993	29	255.3	9.49	20.04	5.01
Lefty	Grove	197	14.43	1926	26	258	9.42	8.68	5.01

where ciBB% is "change in" walk rate

LaHairs

Bryan LaHair continues to mash on the north side of Chicago. He hit his 8th home run of the young season last night, and has accrued so far an impressive 16 wRAA (per Fangraphs) with a slash line of .388/ .479/ .800.

This is all very impressive on its own, but what really makes LaHair's scorching start to the season so notable is that this is his first full season and he's already 29 years old.

I was curious about the best seasons from similar late-bloomers and set up a query that only included players who also saw less than 150 PA before their age 28 season. This is the top 10.

Best Late Bloomer Seasons  -->

First	Last	Year	Age	Team	wRAA	wOBA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Lefty	O'Doul	1929	32	PHI	78.8	0.493	0.398	0.465	0.622	1.087
Lefty	O'Doul	1930	33	PHI	57.9	0.473	0.383	0.453	0.604	1.057
Lefty	O'Doul	1932	35	BRO	55.4	0.444	0.368	0.423	0.555	0.978
Melvin	Mora	2004	32	BAL	48.4	0.424	0.34	0.419	0.562	0.981
Earl	Webb	1931	33	BOS	43.3	0.422	0.333	0.404	0.528	0.932
Bob	Cerv	1958	32	KC1	41.2	0.413	0.305	0.371	0.592	0.963
Hank	Sauer	1954	37	CHN	39.7	0.42	0.288	0.375	0.563	0.938
Mike	Easler	1984	33	BOS	39.4	0.395	0.313	0.376	0.516	0.892
Hank	Sauer	1952	35	CHN	38.8	0.407	0.27	0.361	0.531	0.892
Davey	Lopes	1979	34	LAN	33.3	0.39	0.265	0.372	0.464	0.836

....

Here is the top 100 (google doc).