Ryan K. Howard

Keep an eye on Ryan Howard this season, for he’s going to shatter a record.

His own record.

The single-season strikeout record.

Never mind the 29 home runs the guy has, today Ryan Howard recorded his 135th strikeout of the season in a 3-K performance against southpaw Oliver Perez and the Mets at Shea Stadium.  His record of 199 strikeouts in one season was set last year. Interestingly, right now he’s tied for the major league lead in home runs with Cincinnati’s Adam Dunn, who happens to hold the second and third spots behind Howard in contact futility, with 195 Ks in 2004 and 194 in 2006.  Right now Dunn has 103 strikeouts, a pretty good season for him.

So keep an eye on Mr. Howard.  And if you don’t, I’ll do it for you.  Right now he’s batting .234 with 29 homers and 88 RBI through 102 games.  He’s batting .358 on balls hit in play, which goes to show you that he often finds a hole or jacks it out of the park if he makes contact.  He just doesn’t make contact all that much.  Especially with two strikes.

O’s! The Humanity!

On Sunday the Detroit Tigers finished up a series split with Baltimore, beating the Orioles 5-1. No big deal, right? Both teams have mediocre records (though heading in different directions), so it was just another four-game series split (love the scheduling this year by the way) completed on a Sunday afternoon. But some of you know it was a little more than that (Oriole fans especially). It was Baltimore’s 15th-straight loss on a Sunday. That’s right, their FIFTEENTH straight. And it’s not like this is the 1988 version of the Baltimore Orioles, who finished with a record of 54-107, one of the worst in the modern era. This is a team that, while now in last place in the AL East, has just recently dropped below .500. Hmm…I wonder what’s different about Sundays. I mean sure, it’s the Sabbath, and they usually don’t take batting practice on Sunday, but why do the Orioles perform so poorly (they’d be 47-36 right now if they didn’t have to play on Sundays)?

Baltimore’s last win on a Sunday was April 6 (during the first week of the season), a 3-2 win over Seattle. Before that they had lost 7-of-8 games on Sunday, their only win in that stretch an 8-6 squeaker over Toronto in 12 innings on September 16, 2007…which shows just how close they actually are to having lost 23-of-24 games on Sundays. Baltimore’s opponent this coming Sunday? The Los Angeles Angels and 11-game winner Ervin Santana, in Baltimore.

The subject of Oriole losing streaks got me thinking about their classic streak, the untouchable 0-21 start to the 1988 season. I had never really looked at that horrible run very closely before, though I remember when it was going on and how the O’s were the talk of baseball, and then the talk of sports, and then front page news. If you examine the Orioles’ month of April 1988, it’s interesting to see the 52,000+ that showed up for the season opener against the Brewers at Memorial Stadium on a Monday dwindle to 11,000 at the start of their next homestand the following Tuesday (fair weather fans in April?). But Baltimore couldn’t have been the least bit exciting to watch during April ’88. They only scored two runs in their first four games, and a total of 17 in their first 12 games. The games weren’t really that close — they didn’t lose a one-run game until a stretch of three in losses nine, 10 and 11 (loss 11 was a 1-0 heartbreaker against Cleveland in 11 innings in which Oriole pitcher Mike Morgan threw a nine-inning two-hitter but watched his teammates strand 10 men on base). They only scored more than four runs three times in the 21 losses, which explains a lot, and ace Mike Boddicker tallied five losses in the opening month of the season. Baltimore finally snapped the 21-game losing streak with a 9-0 victory at Chicago against the White Sox (but would lose their next two games, giving them a horrific 1-23 record on May Day.

“O” to be an O’s fan. They haven’t really done anything notable since their World Series Championship in 1983, but at least they have some interesting streaks to show for 25 years of relative futility.

Will White, The Workhorse

While watching Roy Halladay pitch against the Yankees shortly before the All-Star Break, a friend commented to me as to how much of a workhorse Halladay is.  He threw a career-high nine complete games in 2003, and his two-hit shutout against the Yankees the other night was his league-leading seventh CG of the year, tying his mark from last year.  Seven complete games at the Break is unheard of in the “hold+save” era, so by today’s standards, Halladay is indeed a workhorse. 

I commented about this stat to a co-worker at the end of last week and was told to look at the 1980 Oakland Athletics pitching staff to “see how hard Billy Martin worked those guys.”  What I found blew my mind.  In 1980, the 83-79 A’s and manager Martin used a five-headed monster consisting of Rick Langford, Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty and Brian Kingman to start an unbelievable 159 games, and between the five they totaled 93 complete games (28/24/20/11/10, respectively).  Closer Bob Lacey, who naturally only scrounged up six saves that season, added a complete game for good measure (Wait, what?  A complete game from your closer?), giving them 94 as a team.  A closer look at this tells me that, taking into account their staff’s 13 total saves, the 1980 Athletics pitching staff lost 23 games in which their pitchers went the distance.  Wow.  In addition, in the three years that Martin was in Oakland between his stints with the Yankees, the starting rotation (which was pretty much intact for all three seasons) tallied 196 complete games (an average of more than 65 per season).

So who holds the record for the most complete games in a single season, you ask?  Cy Young?  Actually, no.  The record-holder is Will White, who tossed 75 complete games in 1879, winning 43 games and losing 31 (apparently there was a forfeit in there somewhere).  He threw a whopping 680 innings that year, and managed just four shutouts despite a 2.33 earned run average.  So nice try 1980 Oakland A’s, and nice try Roy Halladay, but I think we’ve found our true workhorse (not to take anything away from the great Cy Young, who more than doubled White’s career CG total with 749, but Ol’ Cy never even topped 48 in a season…slacker).

For good measure, Bob Feller threw 36 complete games in 1946, and Greg Maddux is your active career leader with 109 total in 23 seasons (he had 10 CGs in a season twice) – 71 more than Halladay, who’s been in the majors for half as long.

The Stat Miner

Greetings.  I am The Stat Miner.  I work in the bowels of a dirty, grimy baseball statistics mine, spending all day breaking away the mundane and boring statistics and uncovering the gems.  Sometimes I might find an interesting stat from the history books, inspired by a sudden need to know who the all-time single season leader in getting hit by pitches* was, or sometimes I hear a stat on ESPN or from a friend that blows my mind, and I have to spread the word.  There are also instances while surfing the Internet that I uncover some statistical analysis that is far too much for my brain to comprehend, and I’ll pass along a link for the enjoyment of those of you smarter than this statistical prospector.  No matter what, I always try and give you those stats that I feel are the brightest and most shiny.  And when I emerge from the depths of the mine in the evening, all covered in the soot of OPS and WHIPs, I feel that I’ve done y’all some sort of service.  Most importantly to me though, I’m keeping all of these treasures in one place so I know where to go if I leave one of my gems lying around…and here’s one now:

*Hughie Jennings was hit by 51 pitches in 1896.  The modern-day record is held by Ron Hunt, who was beaned 50 times in 1971.  Both Jennings and Hunt batted right-handed.