Which Catcher has the Lifetime Record for Pickoffs?

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Posted By: identify7

Which pitcher?

How about the season record?

Inning, game, @ 2B, 3B, etc.?

Id like to collect cards which commemorate these achievements. I read baseball stuff often, it seems, but I have never come across these statistics. Did I miss them? Are they too trivial for discussion? Are they obscure stats? Where can I find the list for this?

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Posted By: Dave Williams

Pickoffs in an inning by a pitcher is held by Tippy Martinez, Baltimore reliever.

In the late 70's or early 80's he picked 3 runners off first base, in the 9th innning I believe.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Sometimes i dont know why i dont go with my instinct and just guess but it took me a couple hours to find a source to confirm that Pud Galvin also accomplished the feat of walking the first 3 runners then picking them off.If you read online youll be misled into thinking Martinez was the only guy to accomplish this(1983 vs the Blue Jays,10th inning) but Galvin also did it on 9/23/1886.

Its funny,ive also read that he got his nickname from his grandmother who always made him Pudding as a kid and said he liked it so much she named him Pud(rhymes with good not dud).If you look online you cant find this anywhere and alot of false info of where the name came from.My source of the name came from a personal quote from Galvin,the others are probably guesses and alot of sites copied it from each other.

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Posted By: identify7

Well John, thanks for that effort. It is good to know upfront that assembling a collection of pickoff commemoration cards will not be as inexpensive as I had hoped.

What started this off (in my mind) was a recollection that somewhere I had read that Pete Browning had once been picked off by the pitcher unassisted. I have not been able to find a description of this recollection, and Im wondering who the pitcher was.
This was no hidden ball trick, the pitcher walked over and tagged him out. Now that is some pickoff move.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

That i can find confirmation of easier and it is true,Browning was picked off by Dave Foutz unassisted in 1886.I could see it happening again tho if the pitcher runs towards the runner and fakes a couple throws.I know ive seen that happen on a comebacker to the mound before so i find it odd that its the only know occurence as a pickoff move.

So in that case Gilbert,who would you get the card of,Foutz? Browning? or both of them?

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Posted By: identify7

The original plan was to assemble an inexpensive grouping of relatively unknown pitchers and catchers who just happened to have lots of pickoffs as part of their statistics.

Adding Foutz and Browning to Galvin is not stepping in the initially intended direction.

But I have to believe that Browning was not quite as alert as he could have been, for Foutz to pull this off. So in this individual instance, both cards would be included.

Edited to add:

I wonder who got caught offbase with the hidden ball trick, before it became illegal. And who perpetrated these deceptions.


Ooops, it is not illegal - only limited - and it has happened too many times to collect. Unless you collect "who pulled it off the most" or "which dummy got caught most often", etc.

Two players have pulled it off six times: George Stovall + Frank Crosetti