Surprising facts
 

Anything goes here. I will start with one that surprised me. Greg Maddux spent LESS than half his career on the Braves.

Minnie Minoso played 5 decades of MLB baseball.

Mickey Mantle only hit 30 doubles one time in his career.

During his 19 year major league career of 575 games including 17 postseason games, Jim Palmer never surrendered a Grand slam or allowed back to back homeruns.

Reggie Jackson never hit 30 or more homers in back to back seasons.

Bigfoot is real...

Oh, sorry, wrong sub.

On September 26th, 1964, rookie Mel Stottlemyre, in only the 12th game of his career, shutout the Washington Senators 7-0

AND...

He was 5-for-5 at the plate...the last pitcher to get five hits in a game!



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Carlos Lee had 2 more 100 RBI seasons than Mickey Mantle did (Richardson and Kubek not getting on base at all but hitting at the top of the order sure hurt such a great team's offense).

In 1971 the Pittsburgh Pirates were the first team to field an all-black line up. In 1970 Dock Ellis of the same Pittsburgh Pirates pitched a no hitter while high on LSD. The 70's was definitely a fun decade.

That's honestly stunning.

Reggie hit exactly 29 home runs 3 times. Those 3 seasons manage to break 4 back to back 30 home run season pairings. He would have had 4 such paired seasons if he’d hit just 3 total home runs in the right years.

Surprising facts
 

Nellie Fox Never Struck out more than 18 times in a single season.

Imagine having a bad few days and that’s all of your Strikeouts for the year every year for your entire career.

Japan’s NPB draws more fans per game than MLB does.

surprising facts
 

The most prolific MLB hitter of the decade of the 1950s was...Richie Ashburn.
2nd place? Nellie Fox. When I originally was aked this trivia question, my
answer was Stan the Man. He was 3rd... Trent King

Archibald Leach, Bernard Schwartz and Lucille LeSueur have never been in my kitchen.
Good stuff guys, keep em coming

23 years ago, Fernando Tatis hit 2 grand slams in ONE inning, off the SAME pitcher. Wow talk about taking one for the team !

How much the modern day WAR statistic HATES Dante Bichette. :D:D

In 1995 Dante came a Tony Gwynn and a Mike Piazza away in the Batting race from winning the the Triple Crown in the National League, and still WAR only credited him with being worth 1.2 Wins above an average player (baseball reference).

Guy played 14 years, was a lifetime .300 hitter with plenty of pop, led the league in hits twice and slugging once. Defensively, he led his outfield position in assists, several times throughout his career (he must have been awful at all other phases of fielding ;) ).

His lifetime WAR is less then Aaron Judges........in the current season. :eek:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...icheda01.shtml

In 1996 he had a 30/30 season, while batting .313, driving in 141 RBI's and scoring 114 runs.........and was credited with a WAR of 0.7. :eek:

Don Drysdale is the 20th Century leader in All-Star appearances by a pitcher, and the all-time leader in innings pitched and strikeouts.

Johnny Mize never hit between 30-39 home runs; always hit either 29 or fewer, or 40+.

Crazy. In 1999, Bichette's dWar was -3.9 and he was tied for 2nd of all outfielders with 17 assists, but was 55th in putouts. I guess he just didn't cover a lot of ground?

Teammates Yaz and Rico Petrocelli are two of the 4 players with 10 or more letters in their last names to hit 40 home runs in a season. Neither of them ever hit between 30 - 39 in a season.

EDIT: Like Mize mentioned above.

Probably not. Whatever manager gave him the green light should've been shot. Pretty crappy base stealer too, despite that 30/30 season.

WAR is a weird stat for some people. Right now it's favoring Tommy Edman on the Cardinals in weird ways. His slash line is 252/315/372 with a OPS+ of 98, yet he ranks Fourth among all NL position players wiith a WAR of 5.0, better than Austin Riley, who's slashing 285/351/557 with an OPS+ of 147.

First off Edman's only .2 ahead of Riley so it's not like Riley is head-scratchingly low in WAR. Also he's a second baseman so his WAR is being generated by being compared to other second basemen, generally a weaker hitting bunch. Finally he's putting up a 2.8 D-WAR as compared to Riley's .3 so Riley, even by WAR is clearly the superior offensive player, but the totality has them about even in helping their team actually win games.

But is that accurate is what I'm getting at. I don't think there is anyone who would look at each player and determine Edman is having a better season. His OPS is below replacement level.

I also think dWAR is a totally bogus stat that should be ignored and done away with. Look at Mattingly's dWAR. He was universally regarded as an all world glove at first base. His career dWAR is -6.2. That can't possibly reflect his play.

If you believe WAR, it's accurate. If you don't, it isn't. Don't know how else to look at it. A 2.8 DWAR is Mark Belanger, Ozzie Smith level, especially considering the season isn't over. Couple that with better than average offense for his position (though as you pointed out slightly below average over all) and WAR says he has virtually identical impact on his team's win total as the offensive stud who is average in the field.

Ryne Duren won more games 27 than any other Ryne.
Ryne Sandberg hit the most triples 76, but only led the league once.
Ryne is a thirsty river in Europe.:D

But if dWAR isn't an accurate stat then how could a combination of oWAR and dWAR be accurate? Are you saying Mattingly was a negative impact on the field with a glove in his hand?

I'm pretty sure you saw him play same as I did. Did anyone ever say that?

He was great at handling throws, and he fielded what he got to. Range Factor says he got to less balls than the average first basemen. Garvey is another one who rarely made errors but didn't have much range so DWAR hates him.

He led the league in range factor twice and fielding percentage 4 times. His fielding percentage is 8th best all time at first base. Despite all of these facts, he only posted a positive dWAR once his entire career.

So I do think there is a correction needed to the way that stat is determined.

Mattingly appeared in the top 10 in MLB in Range factor at first base 4 times in his career. That's only 4 times he ranked in the top third of all first basemen. He led the majors once, had a 2nd place finish a 5th and a 10th. Over the course of his career he had below average range. If you want to focus on the two outlier seasons that's your prerogative.

Fielding percentage is a VERY flawed number as the guy who gets to nothing but fields the ball hit to him cleanly looks like a stud, whereas the guy who gets to balls the first guy never could, but correspondingly botches a few that the first player wouldn't have even tried for looks like a dog.

My question was never what is the dWar of so and so. It was is dWAR at all accurate.

Let me throw this surprising fact (to being things back to topic) at you.

Cap Anson is number 2 all time in dWAR at first base. He made over 650 errors at first while playing in the dead ball era. How confident are you that he was truly the second greatest fielding first baseman of all time?

After well over 100 years of fighting against players and teams being involved and/or even associating at all with gamblers, MLB figured out a way to partner up and embrace working with the gambling industry so they can make even more money.

Oh wait.......this thread is supposed to be about things that are surprising and relatively unexpected. My bad. :D

This one is probably common knowledge:


Kirk Gibson was a two-time World Champion and won an MVP, but was never on an All-Star team.

MORE:
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Hank Aaron, who wore #44, hit exactly 44 home runs in a season 4 times:

1957, 1963 when he was tied with Willie McCovey, 1966 and...

1969 when he was second to McCovey, who had 45.

McCovey also wore #44 and both he and Aaron were from Mobile, Ala.

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Warren Spahn wore #21, was born in 1921 and won exactly 21 games in a season 8 times.

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Rogers Hornsby won six slash triple crowns in a row (BA, OBP, SLG).

Damn, never realized that.
_

♦ Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn, in his career ...

Pitching: 363 wins — 356 with Braves, 4 with Mets, 3 with Giants
Batting: 363 hits — 356 with Braves, 4 with Mets, 3 with Giants
Playoff pitching: 4 wins
Playoff batting: 4 hits
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Stan Musial rapped out 3,630 hits during his 22 seasons with the Cardinals, the fourth-highest total in MLB history.

Musial, a model of sustained, consistent excellence during his Hall of Fame career, had exactly 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road. And though he obviously wasn’t much of a stolen-base threat, he also had exactly 39 stolen bases at home and 39 on the road.
_

Bobby Richardson is the only World Series MVP to play for the losing team.

Isao Harimoto is the only pro ball player to have ever had a nuclear bomb dropped on him.

He is also Japan’s career hits leader.

That's good knowledge. Harimoto dropped a few bombs of his own on opposing pitchers.

For sure.

The guy has the most insane “overcoming adversity” back story of any athlete in history.

At 4 years old his right hand was crushed and burned when a truck ran over it, leaving it permanently disfigured.

So he became a lefty.

A couple years later he is in Hiroshima when the bomb drops, he only survived because his mom threw herself on top of him.

He spent the next week watching his sister slowly die of her injuries in the ruins of their home.

A few months later, after the war ended, his father got on a ship sailing to Korea to get a new job to support the family.

The ship sank and his father died, leaving the family completely destitute.

All this happenned to him before his tenth birthday.

Then he went on to play 20 plus seasons in NPB, cracking out more than 500 hone runs and 3,000 hits, the only Japanese player to ever accomplish both. All done with only one functioning hand and with the threat of cancer from the bomb developing at any moment.

Incredibly, he is still alive and kicking today. Biggest bad ass in baseball history as far as I’m concerned.

Wow! Incredible story of resilience. Harimoto and Nagashima are my two favorite Japanese players. Can you post some Harimoto?

A menko from his early years!

THAT IS AMAZING!!!

Great Research!


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Mark Lemke had 3,664 career plate appearances but was never hit by a pitch. It is the major league record.

Conversely, Hughie Jennings holds the all time record for HBP with 287.

didnt prince fielder and cecil fielder have equal amount of home runs? I too lazy to check

Also Pat Tabler hit better than anyone alive with the bases loaded..

319 apiece.

Baseball really was the national pastime. So much so that the OSS specifically designed a grenade to mimic the size, weight and shape of a baseball, so that troops would be more accurate with their throws with less training. The T-13 design failed for other reasons but it was issued during the end of WWII.

Now that is amazing and cool fact

John Lindsey made his debut for the Dodgers in 2010 at the age of 33. He got 12 at bats and one hit in 11 career games.

He had spent the previous 16 seasons in the minor leagues, and is the record holder for time served in the minors before being called up.

Over 7000 innings pitched
 

Joe McGinnity’s HOF career lasted 10 years in the majors until 1908.
He didn’t retire though until he was 54 years of age.
He pitched 115 more innings in the minors than in the majors before hanging up his spikes in Dubuque in 1925.

When he retired, Jamie Moyer had faced 8.9% of all hitters in Major League Baseball history. I believe this is the record.

The all time hit king in the minor leagues is Spencer Harris, who somehow managed to play 26 minor league seasons and record 3,538 hits between 1921 and 1948, spanning ages 20 to 47.

He also had 94 career major league hits.

Combined, he had 3,632 hits in professional baseball.

Billy Purtell was the " first player in major league history to strike out twice in the same inning, suffering the indignity at the hands of Walter Johnson. "

Not sure who was having the worse inning....

Pretty sure Addie Joss holds the career lowest WHIP .

Upon completing his career, this second baseman joined Rogers Hornsby and Joe Morgan as the only second basemen in history to score 1,000 runs, have 1,000 RBIs, collect 2,000 hits, and launch 200 home runs....

Lou Whitaker

Curry Foley was the first to hit for a cycle in 1882. He began with a grand slam home run in the first inning and completed the cycle in the fifth inning of a 20-1 nail biter. He held the record for the quickest cycle for 118 years.

Although he isn't in this discussion because the leagues were smaller, Jim Kaat pitched to one batter (Ted Williams) who started 1939 and another (Julio Franco) who retired in 2007.

The Great Cole Porter
 

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got the shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock
If today
Any shock they might try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock would land on them
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows
Anything Goes
Good authors too
Who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose
Anything Goes
If driving fast cars you like
If low bars you like
If old hymns you like
If bare limbs you like
If Mae West you like
Or me undressed you like
Why nobody will oppose
When every night
The set that's smart
Is intruding on nudist parties
In studios
Anything Goes
When Missus Ned McLean, God bless her
Can get Russian Reds to yes her
Then I suppose
Anything Goes
When Rockafeller still can hoard
Enough money to let Max Gordon
Produce his shows
Anything Goes
The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today
And black's white today
And day's night today
And that gent today
You gave a cent today
Once had several Chateaus
When folks
Who still can ride in Jitneys
Find out Vanderbilts and Whitneys
Lack baby clothes
Anything Goes
When Sam Goldwyn
Can with great conviction
Instruct Anna Sten in diction
Than Anna shows
Anything Goes
When you hear that
Lady Mendl standing up
Now does a handspring landing up
On her toes
Anything Goes
Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From those news you've got
And those pains you've got
(If any brains you've got)
From those little radios
So Mrs. R
With all her trimmin's
Can broadcast a bed from Simmon's
Cause Franklin knows
Anything Goes

Anything goes here indeed

Patti Lupone or Sutton Foster?

Casey Stengel was born in 1890.

He graciously signed this for a chubby 9 year old in 1957.

https://www.collectorfocus.com/image.../stengel-casey

I am still kicking in 2022, just not as hard, and still have his autograph.

Ella Fitzgerald did it her way

I love Ella but not one of her best IMO, too sterile and beautified, supposed to be a raucous song.

Tabler only had 2 career grand-slams, but was 43-for-88 (.489) w 108 RBIs!!



I am now a big fan of MISTER ISAO HARIMOTO - truly the Baddest of Badasses!! >chuck norris

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Gaylord Perry was an outstanding hitter, during batting practice only. He routinely hit balls to the warning track.. During games he was awful.

While watching batting practice a reporter commented to Giant Manager Alvin Dark about Perry's "powerful" swing. Dark replied "A Man will land on the moon before Perry hits one out".


Well, The Perry brothers set a Major League record winning 3 games in one day. Jim won a suspended 16 inning game from the day before against Seattle, then his regular start. Gaylord beat the Dodgers.

The date was July 20,1969

The day man landed on the moon.

Perry's first at bat after the moon landing was the first home run of his Major League career after nearly 500 at bats.

Barry Bonds reached base safely 376 times in 2004. He only had 373 official at bats.

Hank Aaron is the only member of the 700 home run club to also get 3,000 hits. If you subtract his 755 bombs, he would still have 3,000 hits.

Ruth homered and walked so much that even with his .342 average he didn’t get 3,000.

This is in danger of changing very soon.

Surprising Facts
 

Phil Niekro is the last pitcher to win 20 games in a season and lose 20 games in a season. 21-20 in 1979. He tied his brother Joe for the most wins in the NL that year.

Love that stat

Just like in football stat Jamie’s Winston 2019 33 TD’s and 30 INT and over 5k yards.

In 1952 Pirates minor league pitcher Ron Necciai pitched a 9 inning no-hitter and he had 27 strikeouts. In his next start, he pitched a 2 hitter and had 24 strikeouts.

Don Sutton holds at least two ignominious Major League records, losing his first 13 decisions against a team (Cubs) and having the most career plate appearances without a home run (1559).

While Tommy James' late 60s hits "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mony Mony" both made it into the top ten of the Billboard charts, it would be nearly 20 years before they each made it to number one. In back to back weeks in 1987, as covered by Tiffany and Billy Idol respectively.

Isn't Babe Ruth the first MLB player known to work out with a personal trainer?