Surprising baseball facts
 

Here's one that doesn't seem right -- Greg Maddux pitched for the Braves only one more season (11) than for the Cubs (10).

I’ve always liked Warren Spahns career stats:

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

In 1919 Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell was hit by lightening during a game. He finished the game and picked up the win.

Jim Palmer is the only pitcher in major league history to win World Series games in three different decades; 1966, 1970 (and 1971) and 1983.

That was randomly cool. Thank you.

And never gave up a grand slam in his career.

Hoyt Wilhelm hit his first and only home run in his very first at bat.

Rogers Hornsby played until he was 41.

At age 35 he had 2855 hits.

Over the next 6 injury-filled seasons he only managed 75 hits over 305 plate appearances. Even with the injuries he still managed hitting .291 with a .400 ob%.

He finished his career with 2930 hits. He should have been flirting with 3500 hits

Cecil Fielder and Prince Fielder both hit 319 career home runs. Stan Musial had 1815 hits at home and 1815 hits on the road. Adam Dunn hit exactly 40 home runs four years in a row.

2010 Topps Prince Fielder is an all-time great baseball card. If it was made a decade later it would be a SP/SSP at best.

In 1974 Herb Washington appeared in 92 games for the A’s. He scored 29 runs and stole 29 bases, appeared in 3 World Series game and won a ring without ever getting an official at bat.

Joe Niekro hit only one home run in his career. The victim was his brother, Phil, in 1976.

In 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, got stopped, and then hit safely in the next 16 games as well. Meanwhile, Ted Williams went 6-for-8 on the final day of the season to hit .406. But neither led the American League in hits that season.

From 9/21/75 through 9/25/75 Jim and Gaylord Perry had identical lifetime records 215-174.

Mattingly hit 6 grand slams in '87 which is tied for the most in any season. Crazy stat is he never hit another one in his career.

I always liked that Vinny Castilla of the Rockies
had 40 Home Runs, 113 RBI & hit .304 in 1996 & in 1997

Khris Davis hit .247 four years in a row.

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Columbia University, hardly a big name these days in collegiate athletics, is the only college in America that has three alumni in the baseball hall of fame.

Lou
Eddie Collins
John Montgomery Ward

John Miller hit HRs in his first and last plate appearances. This is made especially bewildering by his .164 career BA and the fact that those were the only two HRs of his brief career.

In a ten season career, Will White won 40 games three times and 30 games twice...yet nobody ever seems to talk about him getting into Cooperstown.

Baseball Stats
 

Speaking of Spahn, 277 of his 363 lifetime wins came AFTER the age of 30….incredible! Only Cy Young (316) and Phil Niekro (287) compiled more wins after turning 30.

Already posted about stanthe man.

University of Michigan has George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer and Barrly Larkin.

USC produced Randy Johnson, and both Don Sutton and Tom Seaver also went there for a year.

Still pretty amazing that Columbia produced 3 HOFers.

Speaking of Lou Gehrig--not everyone knows what a well-rounded athlete he was. He had football scholarship to Columbia and was their pitching Ace. His greatest mound performance came on April 18, 1923, the same day that Yankee Stadium opened, in a game against Williams College. Gehrig struck out 17 batters, setting a school record that stands to this day.

Chuck Finley was the first pitcher to have two four-strikeout innings. He did it three times before anyone else had done it twice. All three were in a period of less than one year.

In 1945, Tommy Brown became the youngest to hit a MLB hr at 17 yrs old.


https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...er-tommy-brown

Thanks! The claim sounded reasonable and I guess was correct for many years.

Gehrig had to sit out the 1921 football season at Columbia as a suspension for playing some semi-professional baseball in Hartford the preceding summer under an assumed name ("Lou Lewis" I believe). I do think he played in 1922.

Stan “the man” Musial and Ken Griffey Jr. “the kid” share a birthday (November 21) and a hometown--Donora, PA, population less than 5,000.

$700,000,000 for 10 years.

Mario Mendoza's career batting average is above the Mendoza line.

I had to look up who led the AL in hits in 1941. C. Travis… I didn’t know this as both Williams & DiMaggio outshined the entire season

Roberto Clemente is the only MLB player to hit a walk-off inside-the-park grand slam. His hit gave the Pirates a 9–8 win over the Chicago Cubs at Forbes Field on July 25th, 1956.

Brian

Odd Stat
 

Mickey Lolich hit his only home run in the 1968 World in Game Three off of Nelson Briles. He also pitched 3 winning complete games.

If you include Koufax, who attended night classes in Architecture at Columbia during his Rookie season, and actually went to class right after the Dodgers' game 7 when they finally won a World Series, then Columbia can claim 4 HOFers.

Hall of Famer Joe Sewell had an interesting career:

1) He was called up mid-season by Cleveland to replace Ray Chapman after he tragically died after being hit by a Carl Mays pitch.

2) He used only one bat during his entire major league career. It was a 35-inch, 40-ounce Ty Cobb model Louisville Slugger he dubbed "Black Betsy" and kept in condition by seasoning it with chewing tobacco and stroking it with a Coke bottle.

3. He only struck out 114 times in 7,132 at bats including 115 straight games without a strikeout.

I had to look up Cecil Travis, too.

He should be in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah, I've always said there'd be no argument from me on that idea.

Both Cecil and his contemporary Mel Harder, who was a friend of mine, need to be put in there. Harder has the strange distinction of getting enough votes but NOT being inducted (?!). He could have lived to see it happen, too. Stupid, stupid "institution", Cooperstown is.

Nolan Ryan was robbed of a Cy Young in 1973 by the pretty boy in Baltimore.

Game 2.

Spahn is incredible. Look up his WW2 combat experience.

+1,000,000 on that. Some of these guys getting in are pathetic next to him. Now he's forgotten.

Not trying to be argumentative, but it doesn't look like Harder came close to getting the 75% needed to get in with the regular voting. Which election are you referring to where he got enough votes but was not inducted? Was it one of the versions of the Veteran's Committee? It's harder to find percentages for those, especially for the earlier incarnations of the committee.

EVERY ONE of you, +1 +1 +1 for each of you!!!

Great thread. Thank you.


Will White and Cecil Travis should both be in The H _ _ _ of F _ _ _.

Joel Horlen's ERA in 1964 was 1.88. https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...orlejo01.shtml

Admittedly not especially interesting, though obviously very good, but I just noticed it is listed wrong on the AL ERA Leaders 1965 Topps card. (Not sure why these are sideways, for some reason I consistently have this problem on this forum.)

I was checking out another 19th century Hall of Fame candidate (Jim McCormick) and I noticed that he had won 40 games and lost 40 games in different seasons. Will White and George Bradley (who threw the first National League no-hitter) are the only other players to do this.

Wow amazing.

In 1982, Dave Kingman led the NL in HRs with 37 and finished last in batting average at .204.

Dick Ruthven pitched for 14 years in MLB and won a World Series in 1980. He made two All Star Games. In one of those years, he led the league in losses and in the other, he had an ERA over 5.00.

I think you’re leaving too much of a wide border around the item you’re trying to show. If you take your photo and crop it closer, you can then use the preview function to see how it’s going to look before you actually post it. Then if needed, you can rotate the photo to its correct orientation.

In the history of the major leagues, there have been 24 perfect games (should be 25).

Two of the perfect games were thrown by Yankees (actually, 4 of the perfectos were thrown by 4 different Yankees).

Don Larsen and David Wells were two Yankees that threw to perfection and both attended the same high school (Pt. Loma High School - San Diego).

Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays started and finished their careers in the same city but with different teams.

Ted Wingfield, who began his career as a shortstop for the Chattanooga Lookouts, struck out 1 batter in 74.2 innings for the 1927 Red Sox.

Red Barbary was a minor league catcher from 1941 to 1945. His pitching line for the Piedmont League Charlotte Hornets in 1942 was 1-0, 22 innings, 11 hits, 3 runs - and 1 game. The catcher won a 3-2 22 inning game.

Frank Shone won a pitching triple crown in his first full season as a pitcher. As a 31-year-old former PCL catcher, with Albuquerque in the West Texas-New Mexico League, he had a line of 21-7/223/3.85.

In 1942, for Sheboygan of the Wisconsin State League, Roman Wantuck had a 19-6 record, 2.70 ERA, .291 AVG, and hit 16 home runs in 62 games. He started the All-Star game as pitcher, threw 5 shut-out innings, and hit two home runs. He was killed in action in New Guinea June 16, 1944.

Sachio Kinusaga hit 504 home runs in his 23-year-career, all of it spent with the Hiroshima Carp, but never hit more than 31 in a season.

Craft Akard had a 18-1 record in his last pro season.

Katsuya Nomura was a catcher who hit 657 home runs.

In 1944 Roger Wolff was 4-15 with a 4.99 ERA for the Washington Senators. In 1945 he was 20-10 with a 2.12 ERA.