One of the most unusual baseball games in Amer­ican League history took place at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, on May 18, 1912. Nominally a contest between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers, the men who suited up for the Tigers that day were locally recruited ballplayers, while the real Tigers players bought tickets to sit in the stands and take in the spectacle. How did this turn of events come to pass?

The origins of the crazy contest lie in New York City’s American League Park. commonly known as Hilltop Park. On May 15, 1912, the Tigers were there to play a four-game set with the New York Yankees (nee Americans). Ty Cobb, Detroit’s irascible but ex­tremely talented batsman, had received much vocal abuse in the previous game and the May 15 game was not very different; from the moment Cobb walked on the field New York fans hurled insults and vile epithets at the volatile Tigers star.1 The hot-tempered Cobb, who often fought with opponents and even teammates whenever he felt an injustice had been done to him, seethed under the barrage of verbal abuse. One fan in particular, Claude Luecker—a Tammany Hall clerk who regularly sat behind the home dugout—routinely got on Cobb’s nerves whenever the Tigers came to town.2 On this day Luecker allegedly questioned Cobb’s mother’s race and morals. By the fourth inning Cobb had enough and snapped, leaping over the railing into the stands and pummeling his antagonist. A by stander yelled to Ty, “Don’t kick him, he’s a cripple and has no hands,” to which Cobb replied “I don’t care if the d has no feet.”3 Luecker, a former press man who had lost his left hand and three fingers of his right in a previous workplace accident, described the event to reporters. His account is lengthy, so here are some excerpts:

When the Detroits were in the field in the third inning the boys kept it up on Cobb. Still there was no harm in what was said. I had on an alpaca coat and he seemed to single me out for he yelled back, “Oh, go back to your waiter’s job.”

But that did no harm. [Later] he followed this up with some vile talk. The crowd seemed to be taken back by this but then there was louder booing. I suppose I joined in the rest but there was nothing said at Cobb half as bad as he said himself and he said it firsts.

In the middle of the yells, a man near me called out, “Oh, go on and play ball you half-coon.”

In other games with the Detroits I have seen Cobb who generally gets a good deal of ragging, walk on by the stands across from third base and keep up his talk with the crowd as he went along. Wednesday, after the third inning, it was different. He circled around by first base [Author’s note: he had stood in the carriage lot in the outfield between innings] and then went to the bench of the Detroit players….

Then we saw Cobb followed by a half dozen or more Detroit players each with a bat in his hand start for the section of the stand where we were. Cobb ran over to just the front of where I was and vaulted over the fence. I was sitting in the third row and he made straight for me. He let out with his fist and caught me on the forehead over the left eye. You can see the lump over there now. I was knocked over and then he jumped me. He spiked me in the left leg and kicked me in the side. Then he belted me be hind the left ear.4

Umpire Fred Westervelt and a Pinkerton policeman separated the combatants and Westervelt ordered Cobb from the field.5 American League President Ban Johnson happened to be at the game and witnessed the melee.6 The game continued and Detroit won, 8-4. That evening the Tigers travelled to Philadelphia for a Thursday contest with the Athletics, but that game was rained out. On the evening of May 16, Detroit manager Hughie Jennings received word from President Johnson that Cobb was suspended indefinitely for the Wednesday incident.7

Jennings had no comment, but Cobb thought he had been treated unfairly. “I should at least have had an opportunity to state my case. I feel that a great injustice has been done.”8

 

 

On Friday, May 17, the Tigers, without Cobb, toppled the Athletics, 6-3. That day the Tigers players gathered at the Hotel Aldine and signed an agreement that they forwarded to President Johnson and also released to the press:

Feeling that Mr. Cobb is being done an injustice by your action in suspending him we, the undersigned, refuse to play in another game after today until such action is adjusted to our satisfaction. He was fully justified in his actions, as no one could stand such personal abuse from anyone. We want him reinstated for tomorrow’s game, May 18 or there will be no game. If players cannot have protection we must protect ourselves.9

President Johnson did not receive the telegram until he arrived at 6:40pm. in Albany, New York, where he was en route from the dedication of Fenway Park in Boston to the dedication of Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Johnson informed the press that he had wired Jennings and asked him to provide his version of the New York episode. He did not lift Cobb’s suspension. Johnson responded to the players’ threat to strike:

I am amazed at the attitude of player Cobb and his teammates toward the American League, which while insistent on good order on the field and strict compliance with the rules of the game, has always extended consideration and provided protection for its players. Suspended on report of the umpire. Suspend order not to remain in force indefinitely but until investigation is completed. Any American League player who is taunted or abused by a patron has only to appeal to the umpire for protection.10

Johnson also informed Jennings and Detroit owner Frank Navin that if the Tigers did not put a team on the field on May 18 they would be fined $5,000. Navin immediately put it on Jennings’s shoulders to field a team—any team—to avoid the fine. Jennings backed his striking players, issuing the statement: “The suspension was not warranted. I am in the hands of my players, if they refuse to play I will finish way down in the races. I expect Johnson to reconcile the matter, fine Cobb or announce definitely the length of the suspension.”11

Connie Mack, esteemed manager and owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, met with Jennings and encouraged him to gather some local sandlot ballplayers in case the Tigers regulars carried out their threat not to take the field. Mr. Mack did not care to lose the income from a Saturday crowd, and besides, the A’s likely would get an easy victory against players of lesser ability. Mack also mentioned that during the preseason the Athletics had played an exhibition game versus last year’s Philadelphia scholastic champs, St. Joseph’s College (and had lost the game to the collegians, 8-7).12 Jennings possibly could convince the college team to take the field in place of the Detroit regulars? Connie put Jennings in touch with a Philadelphia sports reporter, Joe Nolan, who was familiar with the St. Joseph’s team.13

Al Travers, an assistant student manager of the St. Joseph’s team who provided team statistics to Nolan, met with him the next morning. Nolan explained why the Detroit management wanted a backup team and said the sandlotters would be paid for their efforts. Travers said he would see what he could do.14 But the St. Joseph’s team had played the day before in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, against Conway Hall and apparently declined the offer.15 Travers then strolled to a popular Philadelphia City street corner and recruited several volunteers for the endeavor. (In several inter views in his later years Travers told the story about Nolan and going to the street corner to recruit players, but he apparently never identified any of the men he recruited).

In the meantime, Jennings pressed two of his coaches/scouts into duty, Deacon Jim McGuire and Joe Sugden.16 Both were former major league players, but well past their baseball prime.

Cobb and his fellow players took the field before the game on May 18 but umpire Ed “Bull” Perrine waved Cobb off the grounds and the Tigers players followed.17 The Detroit regulars left their uniforms in the locker room and proceeded to the grandstand to watch the game. The strike was on.18 Jennings’s “misfits” donned the Detroit uniforms and took to the field to warm up. Allan Travers designated himself the pitcher after Jennings told him the pitcher would get $25 while the rest would have to be satisfied with $10 each. As we will discuss, some accounts of the affair have Travers getting $50 and the others, $25.

Umpires Perrine and Dinneen yelled “Play Ball” and the unlikely contest was underway. About 15,000 fans applauded as “Colby Jack” Coombs, a veteran Athletics hurler, took the mound. Coombs had last pitched on May 14 against the Chicago White Sox after being side lined for a groin injury he had incurred on April 20 in Washington. Mack had implied to Jennings that he would play his reserves against the Tigers’ make-do team, but when the Athletics took the field, only two substitutes were in play, Harl Maggert and Amos Strunk.19

 

 

The play-by-play reproduced in Figure 1 is from the Detroit Times, but note that it is missing the details of the ninth inning.20 The following is derived from the box scores of the day:

NINTH INNING

DETROIT: Irwin tripled. Hughie Jennings bat ted for Travers and struck out. McGarvey was hit by a pitch. McGarvey stole second. Leinhauser fanned. Sugden struck out to end the game. No runs, no hits, no errors.21

The contest lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes. Colby Jack Coombs was declared the winner.

The Tigers regulars bought tickets and watched the fiasco from the grandstand. Donie Bush, Detroit shortstop said, “It’s a circus. Gosh, I’m glad I came.” Jim Delahanty, one of the instigators of the strike, stated, “This is great, I wouldn’t have missed it for a minute.”22 Although a second sacker of credible ability, Delahanty was released by the Tigers in August and was not offered a contract by any other club. One of five major-league brothers out of Cleveland, Ohio, Delahanty, with the exception of a two-year stint in the Federal League with Brooklyn (1914-15), would never again play major-league ball. Some say it was retribution for his role in the strike.23

Jennings washed his hands of the whole matter. “I put a team on the field today to save the owners of the Detroit franchise from being fined $5,000. It is now up to President Johnson of the league and President Navin of the Detroit club to settle with the ‘strikers.’ I do not intend to take sides one way or the other. You can say this much for me. There will be a club, professional club of some sort on the field at Shibe Park on Monday.”24

 

 

Due to Pennsylvania Blue Laws, no professional games were played on Sundays. American League President Ban Johnson arrived at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia on Sunday May 19 and declared there would be no game on Monday and that the Tigers would not play again until the regular team was placed on the field. On Monday, Johnson, Ben Shibe (president of the Athletics), and managers Mack and Jennings met at the hotel as they waited for Navin to arrive from Detroit. Johnson remarked that Jennings apparently forgot he was a representative of the owners and not the players.25

Back at the Aldine Hotel the Detroit regulars were apprehensive about their strike position but Delahanty insisted the players were still sticking together. Chair man Delahanty of the “insurgents” was busy sounding out his teammates and players of other clubs as to the formation of a players’ union.26

At 3:35pm on May 20, Navin announced that he had reached an agreement with his striking players. Navin stated that the team would take the field in Washington without the services of Cobb, who would be suspended pending the investigation of his actions in New York, and that he, Navin, would take care of all fines inflicted upon the players for the strike.27

Cobb spoke to the players after Navin pleaded with them to return to the field:

My advice to you is to stick by Mr. Navin, who is one of the best friends we all have. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the way you have backed me up and stuck by me—and I know you would go through to the finish with it—but I don’t want to take the responsibility of having all you good fellows fined and blacklisted and all that. So I hope if you can see your way clear you all will get back into the game and play for Mr. Navin—and win. I’ll be with you soon, I hope.28

Cobb arrived in Washington on May 21 and issued the following statement to the press:

It matters little to me when president Johnson lifts my suspension. I have made up my mind to go home tonight, no matter whether or not the suspension is lifted or not. If Johnson should decide to lay me off for a month or the remainder of the year, I will be perfectly satisfied. My action in New York was simply on a principle and the Detroit Club will be the sufferer, as my pay goes on, no matter whether I play or not. The same applies to any fine that may be assessed against me, so that if Johnson is seeking to punish me, he will find a different proposition.29

On that same day Ban Johnson announced that he had fined 18 of the Detroit strikers $100 each, representing $50 for each game they missed during the walk-out. Johnson further said he would deal as lightly as possible with Cobb considering the circumstances.30 Those fined were: Sam Crawford, L.E. McCarthy (business manager), Donie Bush, Oscar Vitt, Davy Jones, Jim Delahanty, Oscar Stanage, Jean Dubuc, George Moriarty, R.E. Willet, H.H. Purnoll, Bill Burns, George Mullin, J. Onslow, B. Kocher, H. Perry, Ralph Works, and T. Covington.

In the evening hours of May 25 Johnson officially lifted Cobb’s suspension and fined the Detroit star $50. Johnson stated, “Cobb did not seek redress by an appeal to the umpire, but took the law into his own hands. His language and conduct were highly censurable.”31 Johnson also promised future full protection from spectator abuse to all players and that the league had taken steps to increase police authority on all American League grounds.

Cobb was not fined for missing any games as he was under suspension during the strike.

Claude Luecker, the erstwhile victim in the affair, was described as an innocent looking gentleman “with a jovial face and merry eyes” who was determined to sue Cobb for heavy damages.32 It is not known if Luecker ever followed through with any legal action against Cobb. However, it was later reported that Luecker had run-ins with Cobb years before the infamous incident and at that time Claude was a well-conditioned athlete who had not yet suffered the damage to his hands. Supposedly, this is why Luecker razzed Cobb and when Cobb recognized his old enemy, he went after him.33 Little is known about Luecker’s life after the episode. The time and place of his death is unknown.

We know a bit more about the men who took the field in place of the Tigers, although some mysteries about them persist.

The most interesting controversy is the shortstop position. According to Baseball Encyclopedia folklore, Bill Leinhauser was asked in the late 1950s to research and verify the names of his teammates of that day. Using his memory and the box score of the game, Leinhauser puts Pat Meaney at shortstop, and that is how it was noted in The Baseball Encyclopedia for many years. However, in the early 2000s, Bill Dougherty—a SABR member and a Batavia, New York, baseball historian—made the claim that one Edward Vincent Maney, also of Batavia, was the actual Tigers shortstop.

Dougherty’s evidence included Maney’s obituary of March 12, 1952, which mentions that he was a participant of that game. In a letter to his brother, Maney wrote, “I played shortstop and had more fun that day then you can imagine. Of course, it was a big defeat for us, but they paid us $15 for a couple of hours work and I was satisfied to say I played against the World Champions. I had three putouts, one error, and no hits.” The player in the game did have three putouts and one error, however, the letter neglects to say that he walked or was hit by a pitch and that an error by the Philadelphia catcher attempting to pick him off first base resulted in the Tigers’ only two runs of the game. Dougherty also provided a picture of someone in a Tigers uniform, standing next to Detroit manager Hughie Jennings on the day of the game. The grainy black and white photograph could be Maney, but due to its poor quality it is difficult to tell.

Dougherty also noted that Pat Meaney threw left handed and that Edward Vincent Maney threw from the right side; shortstops are almost never southpaws. But many writeups of his day note that Pat Meaney was proficiently ambidextrous. Finally, there is a newspaper article in the May 23, 1912, edition of the Batavia Daily News stating that Batavian S. Vincent Maney played shortstop for the Detroit Tigers on May 18, 1912. The article notes that he was the office manager of the Iroquois Iron Works in Philadelphia. The Iroquois Iron Works was headquartered in Buffalo, near Batavia, and may have had an office in Philadelphia in 1912. There is a Vincent Maney in the 1912 Philadelphia City directory listed as a bookkeeper.

I believe that Pat Meaney, having been identified by Bill Leinhauser as his teammate, having been a friend of Tigers first baseman Joe Sugden, and having thrown from both the left and right side for many sea sons, was the shortstop on that day in Philadelphia. Mr. Vincent Maney may have been a recruit who sat the bench, but I do not think he played shortstop that day. Ironically, in the 1880 Federal Census the Patrick Meaney family name is spelled “Maney.”

To further muddy the shortstop waters, a well-known Philadelphia semi-professional shortstop by the name of Joe Harrigan is also mentioned by one newspaper of the day as having been at short, but the box score in the same paper has Meaney in the lineup and not Harrigan. Maybe Harrigan was another recruit who did not get in the game.34

As mentioned previously there are conflicting reports about how much each player was paid—anywhere from $10 to $50 according to newspaper accounts, Mr. Maney’s letter, and Father Al Travers’s interview. Would not the contracts the players signed that day state the amount of pay? Unfortunately, in 1912 major league teams only had to sign players to contracts after they had been on the club for five days. Here are the players:

James Vincent “Jim” “Red” McGarr, 23, a machinist in a locomotive factory, handled second base adequately, making only one error in four chances. “Red” possibly received his nickname from his red hair or the fact he lived on Redner Street in Philadelphia. By 1917 McGarr was employed as a Philadelphia firefighter. He served in the United States Army in WWI and was treated for shrapnel wounds and shell shock. Later in life, McGarr left the Philadelphia Fire Department and opened a cafe. He moved to Fort Lauderdale from Philadelphia in 1947 and died at Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida, on July 21, 1981, the last surviving member of the “misfits” of May 18, 1912.

William Joseph “Billy” Maharg, 31, a farmhand and auto mechanic, took the field at third base. At only 5-foot-4-inches, Maharg boxed professionally and fairly successfully, 45-11 with 18 no-decisions 1900-07.35 A featherweight pugilist, Billy was well-known for his aggressive style. Often a headliner in the Philadelphia, Lancaster, and York, Pennsylvania area, Maharg was a fan favorite whose real name was thought to be “Graham”—Maharg spelled backwards36—but that proved to be false.37 Billy worked on the family farm in Fox Chase, Pennsylvania, but also hung around the Philadelphia sports scene, serving as a gofer and chauffeur for pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander and other Phillies. Maharg was suggested to Jennings as a replacement player for the May 18, 1912, game by Detroit pitcher “Sleepy” Bill Burns, who had become an acquaintance of Maharg’s while hurling for the Phillies the previous season.38 On the last day of the 1916 major league season Maharg, then officially the Phillies assistant trainer, made his second and last major league playing appearance, pinch-hitting in the eighth inning, grounding out, and spending the ninth stanza patrolling right field without a fielding opportunity.

During WWI Billy found work as a driller for the Baldwin Locomotive Works, possibly the same place former teammate Jim McGarr worked. However, Maharg was not through with major league baseball. In 1920 Billy spilled the beans to a Philadelphia reporter that he, his friend Burns, and ex-featherweight prizefighter Abe Attell had conspired with the notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein to bribe Chicago White Sox players to fix the 1919 World Series. Maharg received immunity for his testimony.39 Maharg eventually went to work for the Ford Motor Company in Chester, Pennsylvania, and he died in Philadelphia on November 20, 1953.

William Edwin Irwin, 34, a journeyman minor league player, was a bullpen catcher for the neighboring Phillies.40 Ed—or Bill, as he was commonly known—would replace Maharg at third base in the fourth inning and switch to catching in the seventh. Under tragic circumstances, he was the first of the Detroit misfits to pass away. On February 5, 1916, Irwin went to a local saloon with a friend and became involved in a barroom brawl. As reported in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, things went badly:

Philly players will be shocked to learn of the death of “Bill” Irwin the young catcher who was taken south with the Phillies last spring. Irwin also helped both Doolin and Moran when they were short-handed by warming up pitchers and doing general utility work about the ball park. Irwin was thrown through the window of an uptown saloon; his jugular vein being sev ered. It was reported that the dead man’s first name was Edward, but it was in reality the Philly recruit.41

At the time of his death, Irwin was working as a special officer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In those days railroads often hired competent ballplayers to play on the company ball teams. Irwin may have known Billy Maharg, since they both worked for the Phillies organization, and that could be how he was chosen to be a Tiger misfit.

Aloysius Stephen (Stanislaus) Travers, 20, a junior at St. Joseph’s College. would take to the mound for the replacements and toss mostly slow curveballs to the Athletics.42 Al pitched eight innings for the “paper Tigers” and gave up 24 runs on 26 hits. Aloysius was ordained a Catholic priest in 1926 and served at the Saint Andrew Novitiate in Hyde Park, New York, Saint Francis Xavier High School in Manhattan, and eventually at his alma mater, Saint Joseph’s College in Philadelphia. Later he taught at Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia. Father Travers never cared to speak much about his day as a major league twirler. In 1955 he broke his silence and told his story in an interview with sportswriter Red Smith.43 Reverend Travers died in Philadelphia on April 19, 1968.

Daniel John McGarvey, 24, a chauffeur, positioned him self in left field for the replacements. McGarvey served in WWI and later worked as a civilian machinist in the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard. From 1927 until 1945 he spent time on and off in United States Veterans Institutions for disabled or mentally incompetent veterans. McGarvey died on August 18, 1945, in Kecoughton, Virginia.

William Charles Leinhauser, 18, an auto machinist, patrolled center field for the substitutes. Bill became a Philadelphia policeman in 1917 and rose to the rank of lieutenant in charge of the Narcotics Bureau. Leinhauser served in the Pennsylvania National Guard for three years before serving in France in WWI. In 1953 he was briefly suspended by the Philadelphia Police Commissioner for negligent duty but was later acquit ted by a police trial board.44 He retired from the Philadelphia Police Force in 1959. It was Leinhauser who, in the mid-1950s worked with co-author S.C. Thompson of The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball to track down the full names and birth data of the Detroit “misfits.” Leinhauser was proud to have worn Cobb’s uniform during the game.45 Bill Leinhauser died in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, on April 14, 1978.

Joseph Sugden, age 41—Detroit Tigers coach and scout at the time of the game—came out of retirement to play first base for the misfits. Sugden was a major league catcher/first baseman for five teams between 1893 and 1905. In his youth, Sugden played sandlot baseball around the Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, area and began playing professionally for the Charleston Sea Gulls of the South Atlantic League in 1892. A catcher by trade and a life-long switch-hitter, Joe signed on with the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League in 1893. Catching was a hazardous occupation in those days; protection was limited to crude face masks, thin gloves, light chest protectors and no shin guards. The Pirates carried four catchers on the roster, including the future Philadelphia Athletics owner/manager, Connie Mack.

The St. Louis Browns acquired Sugden in 1898 and then transferred him to the Cleveland Spiders the fol lowing year, in which the Spiders finished last in the National League with a 20-134 won-loss record. In 1900 Joe caught on with the American League White Stockings and the team took first place with Sugden catching most of the games. The American League was not considered a major league until 1901 and the White Stockings won the American League pennant that season, although Sugden was relegated to a backup role. Despite his increasing baseball age, Joe spent the next four years as mostly the starting back stop with the St. Louis Browns. In his last year with the Brownies, 1905, Joe met a fellow catcher Branch Rickey, a relationship that would prove fortuitous as Rickey would later hire Joe as a scout/coach. With his batting skills eroding, Joe spent 1906 and 1907 in the minor leagues with St. Paul. Not willing to give up the game he spent the next three seasons with the Vancouver Beavers of the Northwestern League.

In the spring of 1911, Jennings asked Sugden to go south with the team and coach his young pitchers. When the team went north, Sugden left to manage and play for the New Castle Nocks of the Ohio-Pennsylvania League. It would be the last time Sugden appeared in a regular season professional game until his appearance with the Detroit misfits of 1912. Sugden, although well past his prime, had kept himself in playing shape, occasionally covering first base for the Tigers as the team barnstormed its way north during the 1912 spring training season.46 While the Tigers were in spring training at Monroe, Louisiana, Sugden’s wife died suddenly back in their home in Philadelphia. When informed of her sudden illness, Joe left camp to be at his wife’s side but did not make it in time. Agnes Sugden died on March 4; Sugden returned to the Tigers on March 27. During WWI Sugden applied for a passport to travel to France to work with the YMCA in aiding the American Expeditionary Force. It is not known if Sugden followed through with that endeavor. After the misfit game, Joe continued to scout and coach with the Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals, and Philadelphia Phillies until his death in Philadelphia on June 26, 1959.

James Thomas “Deacon” McGuire, 48, a 26-year veteran of the major leagues, donned the “tools of ignorance” one more time for the Tigers replacement team. Deacon had earned his sobriquet for his gentlemanly manner and sportsmanship during his lengthy base ball career. As a professional ballplayer from 1883 to 1910, Deacon had rarely been thrown out of a game or fined.47 But on July 21, 1910, he was tossed from a game while managing Cleveland for arguing too ardently for a balk call against a Washington Nationals pitcher. The umpire who sent Deacon back to the team hotel? “Bull” Perrine, who was the infield arbiter in the “paper Tigers” game. McGuire began his big league career with the Toledo club in the American Association in 1884 and ended it 28 years later playing in the Tigers strike game. He participated behind the plate for an unfathomable 26 seasons, spending time with Toledo, Detroit (NL), Philadelphia (NL), Cleveland (AA), Rochester (AA), Washington (AA), Washington (NL), Brooklyn (NL), New York (AL), Detroit (AL), Boston (AL), and Cleveland (AL). Deacon managed the Washington Senators (1898), Boston Red Sox (1907-08), and the Cleveland Naps (1909-11). In 1912 he signed on as a Tigers coach/scout as a favor to his former Brooklyn teammate, Tigers manager Hughie Jennings. McGuire retired in 1926 to his farm in Deer Lake, Michigan, where he died of bronchopneumonia on October 31, 1936. Deacon died on Halloween, which seems appropriate since he wore a mask at work for 26 years.48

Patrick A. Meaney, 40, performed at shortstop for the replacement Tigers. A long-time (1892-1909) minor leaguer who started his career as a left-handed pitcher of great promise, was a friend of Joe Sugden when they played together in Camden. Sugden may have recruited Pat for the game. Meaney resided at 2231 Redner Street just a few houses from teammate Jim McGarr. Possibly Meaney recruited McGarr, or vice versa. Meaney was hurling for the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, team when his arm went dead. Always a strong hitter, Meaney learned to throw righty, moved to right field and ex celled. In 1902 he jumped to a team in San Francisco where he continued to throw from the right side. It was well-publicized that Meaney was an ambidextrous thrower, as in this newspaper account:

An interesting story on a former coal region player comes from California. Pat Meaney who used to be the right field star for Harrisburg when the latter was in the State League went to the coast last fall and is now playing the out field for San Francisco. Pat used to be a southpaw twirler until his arm went “dead” and he then learned to throw with his right wing and starred in the outfield. He used to perform regularly with his right hand last season….Hurt his shoulder and went back to his left.50

A professional and sandlot baseball player his entire life, Meaney died in Philadelphia on October 20, 1922, of a brain tumor. At the time of his death his occupation was listed as “ballplayer.”

John Joseph Coffey a.k.a. Jack Smith, 18, one of the youngest of the misfits, entered the game as the Tigers third baseman in the seventh inning, with Irwin moving from third to behind the plate, relieving McGuire. Jack had worked as an office boy prior to his incarceration for larceny in the Pennsylvania Industrial Reform School in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on March, 16, 1912. His troubles with the law may explain the name subterfuge; maybe he was not where he should have been that day. Coffey was residing with his employer when he was arrested for larceny and receiving stolen goods. His sentence was three years at the Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory in Huntingdon, so he was either paroled or escaped prior to joining the “paper Tigers.” Two months after the game (July 13) he was alleged by Philadelphia police to have sold a large number of newspapers under false pretenses by shouting falsely that Colonel Roosevelt had been assassinated and his murderer hanged.51 Coffey also spent time in the county jail during WWI. Later in life he worked in New York as a writer for a publishing company and as an insurance agent. He died in New York City on December 4, 1962.

Joseph Nichols Ward, 26, worked as a salesman and covered right field for the strikebreakers, making the catch of the game in the third inning. Although Ward is often given the nickname “Hap” in current biographies, there is no mention of that moniker in any write-ups of the day. A “Hap” Ward was a very popular vaudeville entertainer at that time so it is possible that is where the confusion is derived. Ward was a well-known sandlot player in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area. He worked as a salesman for Duo fold Inc., an undergarment company, mostly out of Camden. Joseph claimed an exemption from the WWI draft due to being the sole provider of his mother and wife. However, in June 1918 he traveled to France and later Italy and worked for the YMCA. The YMCA supplied thousands of paid staff and volunteers to provide spiritual, mental, and physical “welfare” services to the doughboys. Ward returned from Europe in February 1919. Joseph died in Elmer, New Jersey, on September 13, 1979.

Hugh (Hughie) Ambrose Jennings, 43, the manager of both the real and “paper” Tigers, pinch-hit and struck out for Travers in the ninth inning. He began his big league career in 1891 with the Louisville Colonels and was the shortstop on the great Baltimore Orioles teams of the mid-late 1890s. In 1899 he moved on to the Brooklyn Superbas who won the National League pennant that year and the next. After a stint with the Philadelphia Phillies, he returned to Brooklyn in 1903. In 1907 Hughie was hired as manager of the Detroit Tigers and led them to the American League pennant three consecutive years (1907-09). Although he never managed another pennant-winner, he led the Tigers until 1921. In the offseason, Jennings attended Cornell Law School and eventually practiced law in the winter months. Upon leaving the Tigers he coached for the New York Giants (1921-25). After the 1925 season, Jennings retired to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he died of tubercular meningitis on February 1, 1928. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1945.52

Other players who may have been in the dugout but not on the field were Arthur “Bugs” Baer53 and the aforementioned Vincent Maney and Joe Harrigan.54 Contrary to the reports of the day and subsequent ones, the substitutes were not baseball collegians; only Travers attended college at the time, and he was not on his college team. McGarvey and McGarr were reported to be former Georgetown college players, but that appears unlikely, as neither finished high school.

It is interesting to note that the game against the paper Tigers did not turn into a farce until the bottom of the fifth. After four and a half innings the score stood 6-2. The eight-run fifth inning did in the make-believe major leaguers. Their errors didn’t help, but they made two spectacular plays in the outfield, hit the ball on occasion, had the game’s only double play, and fielded twenty-four outs. Not bad for a pitcher who could not make his college team, a pint-sized pugilist, two base ball elder statesmen, a journeyman bullpen catcher, a former minor league star pitcher turned shortstop, a salesman, and a few mechanics, and a chauffeur. 

KEVIN W. BARWIN is a retired Northwest Regional Audit Supervisor with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a BA degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a MBA degree from Clarion University. He has contributed to the SABR Biography Project and has written several baseball related articles contained in his book The Paperboy From the Paper City. Kevin can be reached at kbdb5417@yahoo.com. He resides among his library of over a thousand baseball books in Erie, Pennsylvania.

 

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Ancestry.com and Baseball-Reference.com.

 

Notes

1. “Cobb Turns to Boxing,” New York Tribune, May 16, 1912, 10.

2. “Ty Would Thrash Again,” The Sun (New York, New York), May 17, 10.

3. “No Sign of Break in Baseball Strike,” The Lincoln Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, May 19, 1912, 7.

4. “Big Baseball War May Follow Tigers’ Strike to Aid Cobb,” The Evening World, New York, NY, May 18, 1912, 1-2.

5. “Cobb Thrashes Fan,” Washington Post, May 16, 1912, 7.

6. “Ban Johnson Sees Fight From Stands,” Washington Post, May 16, 1912, 7.

7. “Ty Cobb Suspended,” The New York Times, May 17, 1912, 11.

8. “Cobb Banished From Game,” New York Tribune, May 17, 1912, 10.

9. “Tigers Ultimatum to Pres Johnson,” Boston Globe, May 18, 1912, 1.

10. “Suspension Stands,” Boston Globe, May 19, 1912, 9.

11. Boston Herald, May 18, 1912.

12. “Mackies Ease Up, St. Joseph’s Win,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11, 1912, 10.

13. Gary Livacari, “Allan Travers,” SABR BioProject, accessed November 10, 2022.

14. Livacari, “Allan Travers,” SABR BioProject.

15. “St Joe Beats Conway Hall,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 19, 1912, 10.

16. “Detroit Players Strike; Jennings Signs Amateurs,” Pottsville Republican (Pennsylvania), May 18, 1912, 1.

17. “Stir Up Over Ty Cobb,” Tuscaloosa News,” May 19, 1912, 1.

18. Some characterize the Tigers’ walkout as the first players strike in major-league history, but five Louisville players struck during the disastrous 1889 season of the Louisville Colonels in the American Association.

19. Commercial Tribune, (Cincinnati), May 19, 1912, 14.

20. “Detroit Players Make Their Threat Good And Walk Off Field,” Detroit Times, May 18, 1912.

21. The play-by-play found in the Detroit Times ends before the ninth inning. The preceding is derived from the box scores of the day.

22. “Detroit Team On Strike,” The New York Times, May 19, 1912, 1.

23. “Grave Story-Jim Delahanty,” RIPBaseball.com

24. “Quakertown Not Quiescent When Quasi Tigers And Champs Play,” Canton News Democrat, May 19, 1912, 12.

25. “Baseball Strike Growing Worse,” Plainfield Daily Press, May 20, 1912, 9.

26. “Johnson Calls Of Game With Detroit,” The New York Times, May 20, 1912, 2.

27. “Big Baseball Strike Is Over,” Winona Republican Herald, (Winona, MN), May 21, 1912, 2.

28. “Detroit Tigers Will Play Ball,” Bradford Era (Bradford, PA), May 21, 1912, 7.

29. “Ty Cobb Quits Tigers; Will Depart For Home,” St. Louis Star and Times, May 21, 1912, 13.

30. “Players Fined $100 Each,” Daily News (Frederick, MD), May 22, 1912, 7.

31. “Tyrus Cobb Is Reinstated And Is Fined But $50,” Washington Herald (District of Columbia), May 26, 1912, 39.

32. “Victim Will Sue Cobb,” The New York Times, 32 May 20, 1912, 2.

33. “Sporting Briefs,” Nashville Banner, March 3, 1913, 10.

34. “Suspension Stands,” Boston Herald, May 19, 1912, 1.

35. Bill Lamb, “Billy Maharg,” SABR BioProject, accessed November 10, 2022.

36. “Weekly Review of Sports,” Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster), November 14, 1908, 8.

37. Lamb, ”Billy Maharg,” SABR BioProject.

38. “Detroit Team on Strike,” The New York Times, May 19, 1912, 1.

39. Lamb, “Billy Maharg,” SABR BioProject.

40. Bill Lamb, “Ed Irwin,” SABR BioProject, accessed November 10, 2022.

41. “Seaton’s Arm Is As Good As Ever, Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, February 9, 1916, 12.

42. “Strikebreakers Have No Chance,” Omaha Bee, May 19, 1912, 37.

43. “Allan Travers,” SABR BioProject.

44. “Phil. Objects to Dope Smear,” The Plain Speaker (Hazelton, PA), October 23, 1953, 2.

45. The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, Revised Edition 1959, 522.

46. “First Game Of The Season Went To Tigers 9-2,” Hattiesburg Daily News, March 27, 1912, 8.

47. “Is A Model Deacon,” Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana), April 24, 1910, 24.

48. Robert W. Bigelow, “Deacon McGuire,” SABR BioProject, accessed online November 10, 2022.

49. “A Club Without A Home,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 1895, 6.

50. “Base Ball,” The Plain Speaker (Hazelton, Pennsylvania), August 13, 1903, 1.

51. “Fake News Caller Fined,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 13, 1912, 5. Ironically, Roosevelt was shot in an assassination attempt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 12, 1912.

52. C. Paul Rogers III, “Hughie Jennings,” SABR BioProject, accessed November 10, 2022.

53. Philadelphia Inquirer, May 19, 1912, 15.

54. “Detroit Team Out on Strike,” The New York Times, May 19, 1912, 1.

R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?”

TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?”

Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In the top of the ninth the Reds were leading the Cardinals, 2-1. The Reds’ starting pitcher, Jim Maloney, gave up consecutive singles to Orlando Cepeda and Tim McCarver, putting runners at first and third with nobody out. Cincy skipper Dave Bristol then brought in Don Nottebart to face the next batter, Phil Gagliano, who grounded the first pitch to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who, after “checking” Cepeda at third, threw the ball to second baseman Tommy Helms, forcing out McCarver. Helms then whipped the ball to first-sacker Deron Johnson to retire the batter, completing a 6-4-3 ground double play (GDP). However, after initially delaying at third, Cepeda unexpectedly bolted for home trying to score the game-tying run. Johnson alertly fired the ball to catcher Johnny Ed wards who tagged Cepeda, simultaneously completing the triple play and getting the game-winning out.1

“All I wanted to do was get the batter to hit the ball on the ground and hope for a play at the plate,” said Nottebart. As a dejected Red Schoendienst, the Cardinals manager, explained, “Just before Gagliano hit the ball, our third base coach, [Joe] Schultz, had reminded Cepeda to go right home on a play like that. There’s only one place to go and that’s home. You can’t give them the double play. But Cepeda didn’t start running right away.” “It was my fault,” said Cepeda. “I learned something. I’ll never do that again.”2

In this article we present the pertinent details of other examples of Instant Relief—triple plays in which a relief pitcher got the first batter he faced to hit into a rally-terminating triple play in the National League, American League, or the defunct major leagues of the American Association (1882-91), Union Association (1884), Players League (1890), or Federal League (1914 15). The time period covered is from the founding of the National League in 1876 through 2022. “A team’s gotta be lucky to win a game like that,” said Shoendienst after the game. As it turns out, Nottebart is one of 40 relief hurlers to experience Instant Relief.

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

All of the information needed to compose this arti cle was obtained exclusively from the Smith-Boren-Krabbenhoft (SBK) Triple Play database.3 The SBK TP database was created in 1997-98. Jim Smith began compiling a list of triple plays in 1967. Initially, Jim used the official Day-By-Day (DBD) records which recorded the teams involved in TPs beginning in 1912 for the American League and 1920 for the National League, but not the fielders, batters, or runners. The official records began including the fielders (but not batters or runners) beginning in 1928 for the NL and 1930 for the AL. Smith pored through the box scores and game accounts of every major league game (as presented in The Sporting Life, The Sporting News, The New York Times, and several Philadelphia newspapers) to ascertain the batters, runners, and fielders of those TPs as well as TPs not included in the official records. By the end of 1969, Smith (with some help from Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau) had determined the complete details for 377 TPs from 1900 through 1969. During the 1970s, he continued his search for TPs, focusing on the nineteenth century. By 1975 Smith had identified about a hundred TPs 1876-99. And, by 1990, with valuable help from a number of fellow SABR members—in particular, Art Ahrens, Bob Davids, Joe Dittmar, Paul Doherty, Leonard Gettelson, John O’Malley, Pete Palmer, William Rich mond, John Schwartz, and John Tattersall—Jim had identified 131 TPs in the nineteenth century. Alto gether through the 1990 season, Smith’s list included 588 major league triple plays.

In 1988 Herm Krabbenhoft independently initiated a research effort to ascertain the details of each major league triple play from 1920 forward. With the dates of the triple plays given in the official DBD records, he recorded the details of each TP as described in The New York Times. In 1991, at the SABR 21 convention in New York, Herm learned of Smith’s independent triple play research project. Herm wrote to Jim on July 6, 1991, asking if he would be interested in writing a series of articles on triple plays for Baseball Quarterly Reviews (BQR), the unifying theme being “Triple Plays at XYZ Stadium (Park, Field, Grounds, etc.).” Smith responded (July 11), stating that he’d be glad to write about triple plays for BQR. During the next six years Smith authored/co-authored some 80 articles providing the details for the 620 triple plays he and Herm had documented.4

In 1993, Steve Boren began his own independent effort to document major league triple plays. Employing the same brute-force approach utilized by Smith, Steve identified 622 major league triple plays from the 1876 through 1997 seasons. In 1997 Krabbenhoft, Smith, and Boren became aware of each others’ efforts.5 They then combined their databases to produce the comprehensive SBK Triple Play Database. At the conclusion of the 1998 season, the SBK TP database had 636 documented/verified triple plays (including the four triple plays pulled in 1998). Effort has continued during the ensuing years to keep the SBK TP database up to date as new TPs were accomplished and to search for more TPs from the nineteenth century.6 For instance, in 2004 we (Steve) found the first and (so far) only TP in the 1884 Union Association. The SBK TP database now has complete details for a total of 738 documented/verified triple plays through the 2022 season.

The tables on pages 21-24 present details for the 40 “Instant Relief” triple plays included in the SBK Triple Play database.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As shown in Table 1 (see Appendix below), the first re lief pitcher to achieve instant relief was Paul Radford of the Boston Reds. In an American Association game on May 26, 1891, against Kelly’s Killers of Cincinnati, played at Pendleton Park (also known as East End Grounds), going into the top of the ninth session, the host Cincinnati nine (who batted first, as was not un customary for the home team to do at the time) held a five-run advantage (18-13). Boston’s hurler, south paw Bill Daley, was in the box. Jim Canavan led off with an easy fly which keystoner Cub Stricker muffed. Yank Robinson got a base on balls. Dick Johnston fol lowed with a grounder to shortstop Radford, who threw wildly to first, the error allowing Johnston to be safe and Canavan to tally. Then Jack Carney smashed a three-bagger, plating Robinson and Johnston. The next batter, Art Whitney, then worked Daley for a pass, putting runners at first and third. At this juncture, Boston manager Arthur Irwin had had enough and made wholesale changes—he derricked Daley, sending him to left field, switched Hugh Duffy from left field to shortstop, and moved Radford to the pitcher’s box. Radford, a right-handed thrower, had been Boston’s regular shortstop for the entire season (133 games, .259 batting average). Facing the righty-swinging Frank Dwyer, Radford pitched only two balls. The first one was fouled. The next one was hit as a little fly back of second. Stricker caught the ball and immediately whipped it home to catcher Duke Farrell in time to nab Carney trying to score. The backstop then rifled the ball back to Stricker who put Whitney out attempting to go to second—completing the rally-squelching triple play. As it turned out, that was Radford’s only mound appearance of the season, a one-two-three performance—one batter, two pitches, three outs.

Other Game-Ending Instant Relief TPs

In addition to the two above-described accomplishments by Nottebart and Radford, there have been four other ninth-inning first-batter-faced triple plays achieved by a relief pitcher. (See Table 1, #5 and #6; Table 2 #15; Table 3 #30, on pages 21-23, Appendix). Two of them were game-enders like Nottebart’s. The first one was achieved by Virgil Trucks on August 29, 1953, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. In a battle of the “Soxes,” the White were leading the Red in the top of the ninth by a 5-1 score. But the BoSox were threatening. The ChiSox starting hurler, right-hander Connie Johnson, had given up a single to Floyd Baker and then walked Al Zarilla (pinch hitting for Ellis Kinder). After he missed the plate on his first two pitches to Karl Olson, the Pale Hose manager, Paul Richards, called on his ace right-handed starting pitcher—Virgil “Fire” Trucks— to extinguish the kindling and prevent an inferno. After taking a called strike (making the count 2-1), Olson ripped Trucks’s next pitch down the first base line. First sacker Ferris Fain snared the ball inches off the ground, retiring Olson for the first out. Next, he casually stepped on the primary sack to double up Zarilla for the second out. Then, he nonchalantly tossed the ball to shortstop Chico Carrasquel who stepped on the middle station to triple up Baker, simultaneously precluding a conflagration and ending the game. Interestingly, according to the game account written by Edward Prell for the Chicago Tribune, “Fain could have made the triple play unassisted as Baker had already reached third.”7

The most recent game-ending first-batter triple play game achieved by a relief pitcher occurred on September 8, 1991, in Montreal. The visiting Reds were trailing the host Expos by a 4-2 score. Mel Rojas was still on the hill for Montreal in the ninth. The Reds began their last-ditch at bats with a single by Hal Morris. This prompted Montreal manager, Tom Runnells, to call on his bullpen; he brought in portsider Jeff Fassaro to square off with left-hand-batting Paul O’Neill. Cincy skipper Lou Piniella countered by sending up righty-swinging Eric Davis. Fassero proceeded to walk Davis on five pitches. So, it was up to the next batter, Chris Sabo, another right-handed hitter. Runnels went to his bullpen again, this time summoning righty-throwing Barry Jones. Piniella had to stick with Sabo since he had no left-handed-batting players left on the bench. Sabo made contact on a 1-0 pitch, sending a hard one-hopper right at the third base bag. Hot corner man Bret Barberie fielded the ball and stepped on third to force out Morris, then fired the ball to second baseman Delino DeShields who, after getting the force out on Davis by stepping on second, relayed the sphere to first-sacker Tom Foley to retire Sabo, thereby completing a game-ending around-the-horn triple play. Afterwards, Barberie mentioned that he had “thought about a triple play right before the pitch; but I never thought it would happen.” Reliever Jones said, “It happened so fast. I threw the pitch, I looked around, and the game was done.”8

Other Lefty-Righty Instant Relief TPs

The managerial chess exhibited by Runnells and Piniella has also occurred with many other first-batter-faced triple plays. Four others are of particular interest. In the game on July 30, 1924, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the visiting St. Louis Cardinals at the Baker Bowl, the Phillies had shelled the Cards’ starting hurler, Leo Dickerman, for three singles and a double (plus a safe-on-error) to jump out to a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first. After the Cardinals picked up one run in the top of the second, the Phillies were threatening to increase their advantage in the bottom half of the inning. Eighth-batting Jim Wilson led off with a double and opposing moundsman Jimmy Ring reached first with a base on balls. With runners on first and second and nobody out, manager Branch Rickey decided that it just wasn’t Dickerman’s day. So, with left-handed batting George Harper (who had singled in his first at bat) coming to bat again, the future Mahatma went to his bullpen, bringing in a southpaw, Bill Sherdel. Phillies skipper Art Fletcher countered by calling on the right-handed batter Johnny Mokan to pinch hit. The substitution of Mokan for Harper had all of the makings of a sacrifice bunt, and the St. Louis first sacker had moved in on the grass in anticipation. But Mokan crossed up the opposition—or so he thought—stroking a drive on Sherdel’s very first offering, straight to first baseman Bottomley, who snared the ball. He then heaved the ball to shortstop Jimmy Cooney, trapping Wilson off second base. Keystoner Rogers Hornsby dashed over to first base, where he clutched Cooney’s relay, completing the triple killing. As it later developed, with the LB/RP — >LB/LP — >RB/LP maneuvering having backfired for Philadelphia, St. Louis went on to score enough runs to eventually win the game, 9-8.

The Phillies and the Cardinals were again involved on August 23, 1947, this time at Shibe Park. Through seven and a half innings, St. Louis had a two-run lead, 5-3. But the Phillies got their first two men on in the last of the eighth: Andy Seminick opened the frame with a single to center and Lee Handley followed with one to right, putting runners on first and second with no one down. The Philadelphia manager, Ben Chapman, called on lefty-batting Charlie Gilbert to pinch hit against the right-handed hurling Jim Hearn. The Cardinals skipper, Eddie Dyer, responded by calling on southpaw reliever Al Brazle. Chapman opted to stick with Gilbert (rather than bring in a right-handed pinch hitter, such as Jim Tabor). On Brazle’s first pitch, Gilbert took a called strike. On the second pitch, he attempted to bunt, but fouled the ball off for strike two. Determined to lay down a bunt at all costs, Gilbert tried again. He lifted a short foul fly that catcher Del Rice was able to catch acrobatically. After quickly regaining his balance, Rice shot the ball to shortstop Marty Mar ion, doubling Seminick, who was almost at third base. Marion then relayed the ball to first baseman Stan Musial, retiring Handley, who was then almost at second base, completing the triple slaughter. So, the right-left maneuvering (this time RB/RP— > LB/RP— > LB/LP) again did not work out for Philadelphia. But it certainly did for St. Louis—another Instant-Relief TP. Plus the Cards won the game, 5-3.

While managerial chess is often played in the late innings, here’s an example of righty-lefty maneuvering in the very first inning. On June 23, 1954, in the inaugural season of the relocated and renamed Baltimore Orioles, the O’s were hosting the Boston Red Sox at Memorial Stadium. After having held the BoSox scoreless in their first at bats, the first four Orioles batters—right fielder Cal Abrams, first baseman Dick Kryhoski, center fielder Chuck Diering, and third baseman Vern Stephens—combined for a base on balls and three hits to produce one run and load the bases against the Red Sox starting pitcher, Frank Sullivan— Stephens on first, Diering second, and Kryhoski third. Scheduled to bat next for the O’s was left fielder Gil Coan, a left-handed batter. Boston’s manager, Lou Boudreau, called on southpaw Leo Kiely to relieve Sullivan. The Baltimore manager, Jimmy Dykes, countered with righty-batting pinch hitter Sam Mele. Mele grounded a Kiely pitch to the shortstop, Milt Bolling, who fielded the ball and flipped it to Billy Consolo at second base for the force out of Stephens. Consolo then fired to Harry Agganis at first to nail Mele, completing a straightforward 6-4-3 GDP. Kryhoski scurried home while the twin killing was being executed. Diering, who had advanced to third, audaciously tried to follow, but Agganis alertly shot the ball to catcher Sammy White in time to nail him, completing an unexpected Instant Relief triple play. Who knows what the game’s outcome would have been if Diering had held at third and the next hitter, Clint Courtney, had had a chance to swing the bat? After nine innings the game was deadlocked, 7-7, and the tie was not broken until Baltimore tallied the game-winner in the 17th! By then the maneuvering and the TP were pretty much forgotten.

The most recent game combining righty-lefty maneuvering and a first-batter triple play took place on August 16, 1988, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, in a game between the Cardinals and the Houston Astros. The Red Birds led by a 3-0 score going into the top of the eighth inning with John Costello on the hill. Gerald Young singled and Bill Doran walked, putting runners at first and second. With the left-handed bat ting Terry Puhl coming up, Whitey Herzog summoned southpaw Ken Daley from the bullpen. Astros skipper Hal Lanier went to his bench, choosing the right handed batting Jim Pankovits to pinch hit for Puhl. It took three pitches to resolve the confrontational maneuvering—with a 1-1 count, Pankovits hit a grounder to third baseman Terry Pendleton, who fielded the smash and stepped on the hot corner to force out Young. He then fired to second baseman Jose Oquendo, who, after forcing out Doran, relayed the ball to first baseman Mike Laga to retire the batter for a nifty around-the-horn triple play—an Instant-Relief TP that fully justified the LB/RP— > LB/LP— > RB/LP maneuvering from the Cards’ perspective. Daley also set the ’Stros down 1-2-3 in the ninth to secure the 3-0 victory.

Instant Relief TPs Initiated by the Reliever

As indicated in Tables 3 (#29) and 4 (#32), two of the Instant-Relief TP pitchers had a direct hand in the execution of the triple play. The first came on August 8, 1990, at the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium with the Athletics hosting the Orioles. Going into the last of the seventh, Oakland trailed, 4-1. Mark Williamson, in relief of starter Ben McDonald, was on the mound for the O’s. The first two batters for the A’s, Terry Steinbach and Walt Weiss, coaxed walks from Williamson, putting runners on first and second and bringing the potential tying run to the plate, the right-handed batting Willie Randolph. Baltimore manager Frank Robinson, eschewing the standard righty-lefty strata gem, brought in southpaw Jeff Ballard to replace the righty Williamson. Oakland manager Tony LaRussa called for a hit-and-run and Randolph smashed Ballard’s first pitch for a low liner right into the pitcher’s glove. The hurler then wheeled around and threw to shortstop Cal Ripken, who was covering second, to catch Steinbach off the base. Ripken then threw the ball to first baseman Sam Horn to catch Weiss off first—a First-Batter-First-Pitch Instant-Relief Triple Play (1-6-3).

The other (most-recent) instant-relief triple play with the pitcher taking part in the three-ply wipeout came on July 13, 1995, at the Kingdome in Seattle. In the top of the ninth, the visiting Toronto Blue Jays, leading the Mariners by a 4-1 score, were trying to add some insurance runs. Shawn Green and Alex Gonzalez had smacked consecutive singles, putting runners at second and first, respectively. Seattle manager Lou Piniella decided that his starting pitcher, right-handed throwing Tim Belcher, had gone as far as he could; Piniella brought in Jeff Nelson, another righty, to face the left-handed batting Sandy Martinez. On Nelson’s very first pitch, Martinez bunted the ball in the air between the plate and the mound. Nelson let the ball drop, then threw to second. There, shortstop Luis Sojo first tagged out Green and then grazed the bag with his foot for the force-out of Gonzalez, before throwing to second baseman Joey Cora, covering first, to retire the batter, completing a nifty 1-6-4 trifecta for Instant Relief.

Another Instant Relief triple play in which the relief pitcher was intimately (but not officially) involved was the one pulled in Cincinnati at Riverfront Stadium on April 6, 1978—Opening Day! The Reds were hosting the Astros and had a 9-5 lead going to the bottom of the seventh. Houston brought in a new pitcher, Tom Dixon, but he got hammered—Pete Rose walked, Ken Griffey singled, Joe Morgan doubled, driving in the two runners. Then George Foster singled, sending Morgan to third, and Astros manager Bill Virdon yanked Dixon. Joe Sambito then faced Dan Driessen. They battled to a full count. Just before the payoff pitch, Sparky Anderson flashed the run sign to Foster. Sambito pitched the ball and Driessen struck out swinging. Astros catcher, Joe Ferguson—who got the credit for Driessen’s out—then threw down to shortstop Roger Metzger, covering second, causing Foster to stop and retreat toward first. Morgan then danced off third, daring Metzger to try. Metzger succeeded: heaving the ball to hot corner man, Enos Cabell, who tagged Morgan for the second out. While Morgan was being eradicated, Foster again reversed his direction and headed back to second, but Cabell rifled the ball back to Metzger in time to nail Foster and complete the strikeout-initiated Instant Relief triple play: K-2*-6-5*-6*.

Afterward, Morgan said, “I know Sparky too well. I know he never sends the man with none out, only one out. So, I figured there was one out, and, well, I panicked. I figured I’d missed an out and got caught off third. Then, when they tagged me and threw to second, I thought, ‘What are you doing, dummy? There’s already three outs.’ I didn’t realize it was a triple play.” “Don’t blame me,” was all Driessen had to say. Morgan added, “I thought when Danny struck out there were two outs. So when George got trapped be tween first and second, I panicked^started jockeying toward home figuring I try to score if I get the chance. It was the first time as a base runner I’ve ever been involved in a triple play. That’s why I say I had to be stupid. I’ve got to give credit to Metzger, though, for some real quick thinking.” Sparky Anderson also commented on the triple play: “I should get a hard kick in the tail for not thinking. That was really stupid of me giving Foster the sign to run in that situation.”9

Time-Consuming Instant Relief TPs

As mentioned above, in only two of the forty instant-relief TPs in our list did the instant-relief pitcher have a direct hand in the execution. The other 38 TPs involved only infielders—except for one, which also included an outfielder—on July 1, 2014, at Dodger Stadium in an interleague game between the host NL Los Angeles nine and the visiting AL Cleveland club. As it turned out, this triple killing was also doubly challenging. At the start of the bottom of the fourth, the Dodgers were trailing, 5-2. But LA plated one run and had men on first and third (Yasiel Puig and Dee Strange-Gordon, both singled). There was no one out when the left-handed batting Adrian Gonzalez stepped into the batter’s box. Cleveland manager Terry Francona felt it would be best to bring in a fresh arm; he summoned southpaw Kyle Crockett to replace righty Justin Masterson. The Los Angeles manager, Don Mattingly, stuck with left-handed batting Gonzalez. On Crockett’s fourth pitch (on a 1-2 count), Gonzalez belted the ball into left field.

Left fielder Michael Brantley ran in fast, a little toward the line (his glove side), and caught the ball at the letters and, with the assistance of his momentum, rifled a one-hop bullet to catcher Yan Gomes. Gordon had tried to score after tagging up after the catch and was a dead duck. Meanwhile, Puig also tagged up at first and made a dash to second. Gomes fired the ball down to keystoner Jason Kipnis who tagged Puig sliding headfirst into second. At first, umpire Paul Nauert called Puig safe. Francona immediately called for a challenge of the play at second, and after a 1-minute, 29 second replay review, the play on the field was re versed. Puig was called out, which should have officially completed the Instant-Relief TP … except at that point Mattingly left the Los Angeles dugout to challenge the play at home, contending that Gordon was actually safe. After a replay review—which consumed an additional 1 minute, 34 seconds—the play on the field was upheld, thereby—finally—officially completing the Instant-Relief TP.

Because of the two challenges, that triple play took longer than what might be typically be termed “Instant.” There has been, however, one—at least seemingly—longer Instant-Relief TP. On May 11, 2000, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, the Florida Marlins were hosting Atlanta. Going into the bottom of the fifth, Florida was in front, 5-4. It looked like the Marlins would be able to increase their advantage when their first two batters got on base—Cliff Floyd walked and moved to second when Preston Wilson singled. That brought up number five hitter Mike Lowell, a right handed batter, to face starting pitcher Kevin Millwood, also a righty.

Bobby Cox decided to go to his bullpen, calling in reliever Greg McMichael, another righty. McMichael’s first pitch was called a ball. His next pitch was a strike, which Lowell looked at. McMichael’s third pitch was another called ball. Pitch number four was another strike, which Lowell again only looked at. At 2-2, Lowell took the bat “off-his-shoulders” on the next pitch—and fouled it. The same result followed pitches six and seven—foul balls—keeping the count at 2-2. Lowell did not swing at McMichael’s next pitch, which umpire Brian Gorman called a ball. With the count now full, Lowell swung at the ninth, 10th, and 11th pitches, but fouled each one off. Finally, on McMichael’s twelfth pitch, Lowell hit the ball in fair territory—a grounder to third baseman Chipper Jones, who fielded the ball and stepped on third to force out Floyd. Jones then threw the ball to second baseman Quilvio Veras, who stepped on second to force out Wilson. Veras then relayed the ball to Andres Galarraga at first to retire Lowell and complete the rapid around-the-horn triple play—an Instant-Relief TP, even though six minutes and fifty-five seconds were consumed from McMichael’s first pitch to Lowell until the ball reached Galarraga.10

One-Pitch Instant Relief TPs

In stark contrast to the 12-pitch effort of McMichael, single pitch first-batter TPs have been thrown by at least 13 firemen—Mike Prendergast (1918), Allen Russell (1922), Bill Sherdel (1924), Ken Ash (1930), Don Nottebart (1967), Daryl Patterson (1969), Jack Aker (1972), Mike Marshall (1973), Dyar Miller (1977), Jeff Ballard (1990), Jeff Nelson (1995), Juan Rincon (2006), and Keiichi Yabu (2008). All but one of these relievers accomplished the feat with a 0-balls-0-strikes count on the batter. The lone exception was the one-pitch first-batter TP induced by Mike Marshall on June 13, 1973, at Jarry Park in Montreal. In a game between the host Expos and the visiting Padres, the home team was ahead, 3-1, when the top of the seventh session commenced. San Diego proceeded to load the bases against starting pitcher Balor Moore—Dwain Anderson led off and singled, Gene Locklear followed with a base on balls, and Enzo Hernadez then singled. That brought up Jerry Morales, a right-handed hitter. Moore fell behind by missing the plate with his first two pitches. With the count 2-0, Expos manager Gene Mauch gave Moore the hook and brought in Mike Marshall, a righty. Padres manager Don Zimmer chose to stick with Morales rather than go to his bench for a left handed batting pinch hitter, such as Leron Lee or Dave Marshall. Zimmer said (later), “I know he [Marshall] has to throw a strike.” As reported by Tim Burke of the Montreal Gazette, “Throw a strike Marshall did and Morales hit a capricious hopper slightly to [second baseman] Ron Hunt’s right. ‘[Umpire] Harry Wendelstedt obscured my view somewhat,’ said Hunt. ‘First I see it hopping high, and the next time I see it, it’s along the ground.’ He chuckled a little and then added, ‘It got under my glove a little.’”11 The baserunners were off and running. Anderson scored while Hunt was getting the ball to shortstop Tim Foli, covering the keystone to force Hernandez for out number one. Foli then relayed the ball to first baseman Mike Jorgensen to retire Morales for out number two. Meanwhile, Locklear reached third easily and Zimmer, coaching at the hot corner, waved him to keep running to the plate. Locklear stumbled a little and was nailed at the pentagon on a peg from Jorgensen to catcher John Boccabella.

Even though fireman Marshall succeeded in hurling an Instant Relief TP pitch, a run did score while the triple massacre was being executed. That was the second instance of a base runner scoring on an Instant Relief TP; the first one, as described previously, was the one that Kiely achieved for the Red Sox against the Orioles in 1954. The only other time that a relief pitcher accomplished a first-batter triple play yet permitted a runner to score was in 2006, on May 27 at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. In the top of the eighth frame, with the Twins leading the Mariners, 8-4, Seattle proceeded to load the bases with no one out on a Richie Sexson double, Carl Everett walk, and an Adrian Beltre single. In the batter’s box stood Kenji Johjima, a right-handed batter. On the mound was Jesse Crain, a right-handed pitcher. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire sacked Crain, who had thrown just 16 pitches in facing only the three batters now on the sacks, replacing him with Juan Rincon, also a righty hurler. On Rincon’s first pitch, Johjima grounded slowly to second baseman Luis Castillo, who scooped up the ball and first chased down Beltre and tagged him before throwing to Justin Morneau at first base, retiring Johjima for the second out. On the 4-3 double play Sexson scored easily and Everett advanced to third. Morneau saw that Everett had taken too wide a turn at the hot corner; he fired the ball across the diamond to third sacker Tony Batista, who applied the triple-play defining tag.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this article we have provided the interesting aspects and details for fifteen of the forty Instant Relief TPs listed in the SBK Triple Play Database. The nuts-and-bolts details for the other 25 Instant Relief TPs are given in the Notes accompanying Tables 1-4. With regard to the frequency of instant relief triple plays, they’re moderately rare—just 5.4% of the 738 TPs in the SBK TP database. For comparison, there have been 23 perfect games, making up 7.2% of the 318 no-hit games recognized officially by Major League Baseball (excluding the Negro Leagues).12 Of the 339 cycles noted in the MLB record books (likewise excluding the Negro Leagues), only 9 (2.7%) also featured a grand slam homer.13

To wrap up this article we would like to mention that several eventual Hall of Famers participated in Instant Relief triple plays. Those who were batters are George Sisler, Lloyd Waner, Roy Campanella, and Roberto Clemente. Each of them (except Campanella) was the first out as the result of a flyout; Campanella was the second out of a groundout S-2-3-2 double play, the third out being an overly-aggressive base-runner. HOFers who were retired as baserunners in an Instant Relief TP are Sam Rice, Bucky Harris, Hack Wilson, Jackie Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, Luis Aparicio, and Joe Morgan. Of these, three were the TP-defining third out—Harris, Robinson, and Cepeda. There have not yet been any Instant Relief TP pitchers elected to Baseball’s shrine in Cooperstown (although one relieved pitcher did earn a bronze plaque in the gallery—Dazzy Vance, who twice gave way to Instant Relief TP hurlers in 1933, first to Jim Mooney and second to Bill Walker). 

JAMES A. “SNUFFY” SMITH JR., who passed away in 2010, is deservedly included as a co-author of the article “Instant Relief” in this issue. He was a pioneer in researching triple plays in the major leagues. Before his passing, Smith had authored or co-authored some 80 articles on triple plays, and he had documented the complete details for 40 IRTPs included here. This article is a logical extension and expansion of an earlier article—“Instant Relief: One Pitch, Three Outs, Game Over”— co-authored by Smith and published in Baseball America (August 18, 1997, page 59). Jim presented at the SABR national conventions in Pittsburgh in 1995 and Kansas City in 1996. He won the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award in 1996 for the “Baseball Quarterly Review Triple Play Project.” Smith was a frequent contributor to SABR’s Baseball Records Committee Newsletter. His last contribution, “Team Totals for Triple Plays: For and Against,” appeared in the February and April issues in 2010.

STEPHEN D BOREN, MD graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his emergency medicine residency at Milwaukee County Hospital. He has been a member of SABR since January 1, 1979. He has published a number of articles in SABR publications and Baseball Digest. While originally from Chicago, he and his wife, Louise, and his watchdog golden retriever, Charlie, now live in Aiken, South Carolina.

HERM KRABBENHOFT, a SABR member since 1981, is hoping to see his first in-person major-league triple play this season.

 

(Click images to enlarge)

 

Acknowledgments

We should like to thank Cliff Blau for his eagle-eyed fact-checking as well as the following people for their insights and guidance in composing and reviewing this manuscript—Jeff Robbins, Gary Stone, Patrick Todgham. We also gratefully thank Steve Hirdt and Keith Costas for providing the elapsed time information for TP #33.

 

Dedication

We respectfully dedicate this article to the memory of the late James A. “Snuffy” Smith Jr., our friend and colleague. Jim generously shared his superb triple play research in collaborating with Herm and Steve to create the SBK Triple Play Database. Jim’s quest to track triple plays originated in 1952 when he was stationed in Heilbronn, Germany—while listening to Armed Forces Radio, he heard the game in which Cleveland second baseman Bobby Avila could have turned an unassisted triple play (but, after snaring a liner to retire the batter and stepping on the keystone to get the runner off second, he chose to toss the ball to the first baseman to triple up the runner off first, instead of chasing down the runner who was halfway to second). We, and all baseball fans, are indebted to Jim for his devoted and meticulous efforts to research triple plays. Thanks so much, Jim. It was an honor for us to collaborate with you.

 

Notes

1. James A. “Snuffy” Smith Jr., deceased, 2010. See the Dedication.

2. Lou Smith, “Triple Play, Near-Perfect Pitching—Reds Win, 2-1,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 31, 1967 (33); see also: (a) Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Post, May 31, 1967 (31); (b) Neal Russo, “Triple Play, 7 Perfect Innings,” St Louis Post-Dispatch, May 31, 1967 (1G).

3. We have relied exclusively on the SBK TP database, rather than other online TP databases, such as the SABR TP Database, because we feel that the SBK TP database is more comprehensive—738 documented/verified TPs in the SBK TP database compared to 733 in the SABR TP database (i.e., excluding the TP included for the rained-out game on August 7, 1878)—and because we have hard-copy documentation from multiple newspaper accounts to support the details for each of the 738 TPs in the SBK TP database.

4. James Smith, “Memorial Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 3, Fall 1991), 142-51. See also: Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “American League Triple Plays— The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 93-101 (Summer 1995); James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Federal League Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 3) 171-75 (Fall 1995); Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “19th Century NL Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 4) 237-42 (Winter 1995); James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Players League Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1, Spring 1996), 60-64; Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “20th Century NL Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2), 74-82; (f) Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “American Association Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 3, Winter 1996), 143-47; (g) James A. Smith, Jr. and Herm Krabbenhoft, “Triple Play,” Baseball America, April 14-27, 1997, 63.

5. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herm Krabbenhoft, “A Doubly Appealing Triple Play,” Baseball America, November 10-23, 1997, 39.

6. Stephen D. Boren, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herm Krabbenhoft, “Who Made the Most Triple Plays?,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Volume 32 (2003), 107-9.

7. Edward Prell, “Triple Play Helps Sox Beat Boston, 5-1…Fain Snares Liner for 2, Chico gets 3d…Trucks’ 2d Pitch Ends Game,” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1953 (Part 2, page 1).

8. Jeff Blair, “Triple play gives Expos series sweep,” The (Montreal) Gazette, September 9, 1991 (C3); see also: (a) Rob Parker, “Triple play snuffs out Reds’ rally in 9th,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1991 (C1); (b) Jerry Crasnick, “Reds’ new way to lose: hitting into triple play,” Cincinnati Post, September 9, 1991 (1C).

9. Bob Hertzel, “Rain, Runs, Ridiculous: Reds Win Opener,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1978 (Section B 1). See also: Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Post, April 7, 1978; Hal McCoy, “Sparky fined for triple kill…Charges himself $25,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, April 7, 1978 (36); Kenny Hand, “Astro debut fizzles 11-9 in Cincy rain,” Houston Post, April 7, 1978 (1C).

10. This time information was obtained courtesy of Keith Costas of MLB Network. Timing the TP itself via looking at the YouTube video, the time of the TP from the last pitch to the ball reaching the first baseman’s glove was about 4.7 seconds. The authors gratefully thank Steve Hirdt for his superb help and cooperation in acquiring this information.

11. Tim Burke, “The Jarry Juggernaut rolls right along,” The (Montreal) Gazette, June 14, 1973 (33); see also: Chrys Goyens. “Triple play helps…Expos gaining on Cubs,” Ottawa Citizen, June 14, 1973 (27).

12. “Official No-Hitters,” Baseball-Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pitching/official-no-hitters.shtml (accessed January 8, 2023).

13. “Hitting for the Cycle Records,” Baseball-Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats16d.shtml (accessed January 8, 2023).

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Appendix

Details for the 40 Instant Relief Triple Plays (1876-2022)

Explanatory Notes for Tables 1-4

(A) The “I” column gives the inning.

(B) The “FT” column gives the Fielding Team; the “BT” column gives the Batting Team; an asterisk (*) indicates which team was the home team.

(C) In the “Batter” column, “PHa” indicates that the batter was a pinch hitter who was announced into the game before the relief pitcher was announced into the game; “PHb” indicates that the batter was a pinch hitter who was announced into the game after the relief pitcher was announced into the game.

(D) For the “Bases” column, a number (1, 2, or 3) indicates that the corresponding base was occupied; an “x” indicates that the base was not occupied.

(E) For the “Count” column, entries bracketed with asterisks indicate that the triple play ensued on the pitcher’s first pitch; a cell with the “?-?” entry indicates that the count or pitch number has not yet been ascertained.

(F) For the “TP Sequence” column, “F” indicates that the triple play started with a flyout; “G” indicates that the triple play began with a groundout; “K” indicates that the triple play commenced with a strikeout; the numbers indicate the fielders who took part in the triple play; asterisks indicate which fielders made the putouts.

(G) The notes given beneath the Table provide the reference for the pertinent articles written or co-written by Smith as well as the identities of the base runners and fielders involved in the triple play.

1. Tom Davis, Dixie Tourangeau, Jim Smith, and Herm Krabbenhoft, “American Association Triple Plays in Cincinnati,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 107-13 (Summer 1996): With Art Whitney on first and Jack Carney on third—OUT-1, Dwyer [Cub Stricker (4)]; OUT-2, Carney [Stricker (4) to Duke Farrell (2)]; OUT-3, Whitney [Farrell (2) to Stricker (4)].

2. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Amos Strunk on second and Stuffy Mclnnis on third—OUT-1, Barry [Chick Gandil (3)]; OUT-2, Mclnnis [Gandil (3) to Eddie Foster (5)]; OUT-3, Strunk [Foster (5) to George McBride (6)].

3. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Heinie Groh on first and Rube Bressler on second—OUT-1, Lee Magee [Dave Bancroft (6)]; OUT-2, Bressler [Bancroft (6)]; OUT-3, Groh [Bancroft (6) to Fred Luderus (3)].

4. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Jack Tobin on first and Wally Gerber on second—OUT-1, Sisler [Chick Galloway (6)]; OUT-2, Gerber [Galloway (6) to Ralph Young (4)]; OUT-3, Tobin [Young (4) to Joe Hauser (3)].

5. James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Fenway Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 2) 34-50 (Summer 1994): With Bucky Harris on first and Sam Rice on second— OUT-1, Rice [Muddy Ruel (2) to Pinky Pittinger (5)]; OUT-2, Milan [Pittinger (5) to George Burns (3)]; OUT-3, Harris [Burns (3) to Pittinger (5)].

6. Richard B. Tourangeau and James Smith, “Braves Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 103-9 (Summer 1992): With Billy Southworth on first and Ray Powell on second—OUT-1, Mclnnis [Pie Traynor (5)]; OUT-2, Powell [Traynor (5) to Spencer Adams (4)]; OUT-3, Southworth [Adams (4) to Charlie Grimm (3)].

7. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Baker Bowl Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 4) 222-31 (Winter 1994): With George Harper on first and Jimmie Ring on second—OUT-1, Mokan (batting for George Harper) [Jim Bottomley (3)]; OUT-2, Ring [Bottomley (3) to Jimmy Cooney (6)]; OUT-3, Harper [Cooney (6) to Rogers Hornsby (4)].

8. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Johnny Hodapp on first, Bernie Neis on second, and Glenn Myatt on third—OUT-1, Myatt [Otto Miller (5) to Leo Dixon (2)]; OUT-2, Levsen [Dixon (2) to George Sister (3)]; OUT-3, Neis [Sisler (3) to Dixon (2)].

9. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Danny Taylor on first and Hack Wilson on third—OUT-1, Wilson [Hod Ford (4) to Tony Cuccinello (5) to Clyde Sukeforth (2)]; OUT-2, Grimm [Sukeforth (2) to Joe Stripp (3)]; OUT-3, Taylor [Stripp (3) to Cuccinello (5)].

10. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Heinie Meine on first and Earl Grace on third—OUT-1, Waner [Frankie Frisch (4)]; OUT-2, Grace [Frisch (4) to Pepper Martin (5)]; OUT-3, Meine [Martin (5) to Ripper Collins (3)].

11. James Smith, “Ebbets Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 230-34 (Winter 1991): With Johnny Frederick on first and Jake Flowers on second—OUT-1, Hutcheson [Frankie Frisch (4)]; OUT-2, Frederick [Frisch (4) to Ripper Collins (3)]; OUT-3, Flowers [Collins (3) to Leo Durocher (6)].

12. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at the Polo Grounds,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 1) 34-50 (Spring 1994): With Charlie Mead on first and Buddy Kerr on second—OUT-1, Rucker [Frankie Gustine (4)]; OUT-2, Kerr [Gustine (4) to Frankie Zak (6)]; OUT3, Mead [Zak (6) to Babe Dahlgren (3)].

13. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Lee Handley on first and Andy Seminick on second—OUT-1, Gilbert (batting for Al Lakeman) [Del Rice (2)]; OUT-2, Seminick [Rice (2) to Marty Marion (6)]; OUT-3, Handley [Marion (6) to Stan Musial (3)].

14. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Gus Zernial on first, Allie Clark on second, and Elmer Valo on third—OUT-1, Majeski [Billy Goodman (4)]; OUT-2, Clark [Goodman (4)]; OUT-3, Zernial [Goodman (4) to Walt Dropo (3)].

15. James Smith, “Comiskey Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 219-29 (Winter 1991): With Al Zarilla on first and Floyd Baker on second—OUT-1, Olson [Ferris Fain (3)]; OUT-2, Zarilla [Fain (3)]; OUT-3, Baker [Fain (3) to Chico Carrasquel (6)].

16. James Smith, “Memorial Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 3) 142-51 (Fall 1991): With Vern Stephens on first, Chuck Diering on second, and Whitey Kurowski on third—OUT-1, Stephens [Milt Bolling (6) to Billy Console (4)]; OUT-3, Mele (batting for Gil Coan) [Consolo (4) to Harry Agganis (3)]; OUT-3, Diering [Agganis (3) to Sammy White (2)].

17. James Smith, “Ebbets Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 230-234 (Winter 1991): With Carl Furillo on first, Jackie Robinson on second, and Sandy Amoros on third—OUT-1, Amoros [Randy Jackson (5) to Harry Chiti (2)]; OUT-2, Campanella [Chiti (2) to Dee Fondy (3)]; OUT-3, Robinson [Fondy (3) to Chiti (2)].

18. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Forbes Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 1) 22-30 (Spring 1992): With Manny Mota on first and Dick Schofield on second—OUT-1, Clemente [Merritt Ranew (3)]; OUT-2, Mota [Ranew (3)]; OUT-3, Schofield [Ranew (3) to Andre Rodgers (6)].

19. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Tim McCarver on first and Orlando Cepeda on third—OUT-1, McCarver [Leo Cardenas (6) to Tommy Helms (4)]; OUT-2, Gagliano [Helms (4) to Deron Johnson (3)]; OUT-3, Cepeda [Johnson (3) to Johnny Edwards (2)].

20. James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Fenway Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 2) 34-50 (Summer 1994): With Russ Snyder on first and Luis Aparicio on second—OUT-1, Blair [Joe Foy (5)]; OUT-2, Aparicio [Foy (5) to Mike Andrews (4)]; OUT-3, Snyder [An drews (4) to George Scott (3)].

21. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Major League Triple Plays in Minnesota,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 68-71 (Summer 1995): With Joe Azcue on first and Richie Scheinblum on second— OUT-1, Scheinblum [Rich Rollins (5)]; OUT-2, Azcue [Rollins (5) to Rod Carew (4)]; Horton [Carew (4) to Bob Allison (3)].

22. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at Washington’s Robert F Kennedy Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 6-67: With Barry Moore on first and Paul Casanova on second—OUT-1, Casanova [Don Wert (5)]; OUT-2, Moore [Wert (5) to Ike Brown (4)]; OUT-3, Brinkman [Brown (4) to Bill Freehan (3)].

23. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Municipal Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 4) 227-28 (Winter 1992): With Cookie Rojas on first and Paul Schaal on second—OUT-1, Schaal [Chico Ruiz (5)]; OUT-2, Rojas [Ruiz (5) to Sandy Alomar (4)]; OUT-3, Otis [Alomar (4) to Billy Cowan (3)].

24. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 22-25 (Spring 1996): With Al Oliver on first and Jackie Hernandez on second—OUT-1, Hernandez [Ron Santo (5)]; OUT-2, Oliver [Santo (5) to Glenn Beckert (4)]; OUT-3, Sanguillen [Beckert (4) to Jim Hickman (3)].

25. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “NL Triple Plays in Montreal,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 9-12 (Spring 1996): With Enzo Hernandez on first, Gene Locklear on second, and Dwain Anderson on third—OUT-1, Hernandez [Ron Hunt (4) to Tim Foli (6)]; OUT-2, Morales [Foli (6) to Mike Jorgensen (3)]; Locklear [Jorgensen (3) to John Boccabella (2)].

26. James A. Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at Anaheim Stadium— Home of the California Angels,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 85-87 (Summer 1995): With Bill Stein on first and Dave Collins on sec ond—OUT-1, Collins [Ron Jackson (5)]; OUT-2, Stein [Jackson (5) to Jerry Remy (4)]; OUT-3, Stanton [Remy (4) to Tony Solaita (3)].

27. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 70-72 (Summer 1996): With George Foster on first and Joe Morgan on third—OUT-1, Driessen [Joe Ferguson (2)]; OUT-2, Morgan [Ferguson (2) to Roger Metzger (6) to Enos Cabell (5)]; Foster [Cabell (5) to Metzger (6)].

28. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Busch Stadium in St. Louis,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 65-69 (Summer 1996): With Bill Doran on first and Gerald Young on second—OUT-1, Young [Terry Pendleton (5)]; OUT-2, Doran [Pendleton (5) to Jose Oquendo (4)]; OUT-3, Pankovits [Oquendo (4) to Mike Laga (3)].

29. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays in Oakland’s Coliseum,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 72-75 (Summer 1995): With Walt Weiss on first and Terry Steinbach on second—OUT-1, Randolph [Ballard (1)]; OUT-2, Steinbach [Ballard (1) to Cal Ripken, Jr. (6)]; OUT-3 [Ripken (6) to Sam Horn (3)].

30. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “NL Triple Plays in Montreal,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 9-12 (Spring 1996): With Eric Davis on first and Hal Morris on second—OUT-1, Morris [Bret Barberie (5)]; OUT-3, Davis [Barberie (5) to Delino DeShields (4)]; OUT-3, Sabo [DeShields (4) to Andres Galarraga (3)].

31. Ronald Kabacinski and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Navin Field, Briggs Stadium, and Tiger Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 1) 12-21 (Spring 1992) and (Number 4) 253 (Winter 1992): With Harold Reynolds on first and Dave Valle on third—OUT-1, Vizquel [Skeeter Barnes (5)]; OUT-2, Valle [Barnes (5)]; OUT-3, Reynolds [Barnes (5) to Cecil Fielder (3)].

32. “1995 American League Triple Plays,” The 1996BQR Yearbook, 74: With Alex Gonzalez on first and Shawn Green on second—OUT-1, Green [Nelson (1) to Luis Sojo (6)]; OUT-2, Gonzalez [Sojo (6)]; OUT-3, Martinez [Sojo (6) to Joey Cora (4)].

33. SBK Triple Play Database: With Preston Wilson on first and Cliff Floyd on second—OUT-1, Floyd [Chipper Jones (5)]; OUT-2, Wilson [Jones (5) to Quilvio Veras (4)]; OUT-3, Lowell [Veras (4) to Andres Galarraga (3)].

34. SBK Triple Play Database: With Adrian Beltre on first, Carl Everett on second, and Richie Sexson on third—OUT-1, Beltre [Luis Castillo (4)]; OUT-2, Johjima [Castillo (4) to Justin Morneau (3)]; OUT-3, Everett [Morneau (3) to Tony Batista (5)].

35. SBK Triple Play Database: With Jason Kubel on first and Michael Cuddyer on second—OUT-1, Cuddyer [Casey Blake (5)]; OUT-2, Kubel [Blake (5) to Asdrubal Cabrera (4)]; OUT-3, Redmond [Cabrera (4) to Victor Martinez (3)].

36. SBK Triple Play Database: With Adrian Gonzalez on first and Brian Giles on second—OUT-1, Giles [Jose Castillo (5)]; OUT-2, Gonzalez [Castillo (5) to Ray Durham (4)]; OUT-3, Kouzmanoff [Durham (4) to John Bowker (3)].

37. SBK Triple Play Database: With Yasiel Puig on first and Dee Strange-Gordon on third base—OUT-1, Gonzalez [Michael Brantley (7)]; OUT-2, StrangeGordon [Brantley (7) to Yan Gomes (2)]; OUT-3 Puig [Gomes (2) to Jason Kipnis (4)].

38. SBK Triple Play Database: With Buster Posey on first, Angel Pagan on second, and Denard Span on third—OUT-1, Crawford [Ryan Zimmerman (3)]; OUT-2, Posey [Zimmerman (3)]; OUT-3, Span [Zimmerman (3) to Anthony Rendon (5)].

39. SBK Triple Play Database: With Kendrys Morales on first and Justin Smoak on second—OUT-1, Smoak [Jeimer Candelario (5)]; OUT-2, Morales [Candelario (5) to Ian Kinsler (4)]; OUT-3, Pillar [Kinsler (4) to Efren Navarro (3)].

40. SBK Triple Play Database: With Tucker Barnhart on first, Freddy Galvis on second, and Nick Senzel on third—OUT-1, Akiyama [Kris Bryant (5)]; OUT-2, Senzel [Bryant (5)]; OUT-3, Barnhart [Bryant (5) to Anthony Rizzo (3)].

As we are told by the good-hair talking heads on 24-hour sports networks—as well as by any newspaper, electronic fish wrap, podcast, or blog—the 2021 season featured nine no-hitters. But in 11 games a team was held hitless. Why the discrepancy? Two of those games were seven-inning games, and a 1991 committee had declared that for a no hitter to be “official,” it had to contain at least nine hitless innings. An inexplicably strict adherence to this concept is why the lesser number, nine, is usually cited by media members and fans.

This article will cover the various ways these now “non-official” no-hitters have been treated in the past while looking at a number of interesting no-hit games that have been relegated to lesser status.

1991 COMMITTEE ON STATISTICAL ACCURACY

In August 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent announced the formation of a “committee on statistical accuracy”1 to settle the issue of whether Roger Maris and Babe Ruth should share the single-season record for home runs. Ruth had commonly been listed as the record holder for a 154-game season and Maris for 162 games. Vincent was influenced by a lengthy Roger Angell article in the May 27, 1991, issue of The New Yorker which included this passage:

There is no wish here to revive the shoutings and buzzings that accompanied the Maris achievement thirty years back, but I think the present commissioner and some brave commit tee should meet one of these days and quietly wield an eraser, instead of waiting for some young slugger to come along and do it for them with his bat.2

Vincent said he told his deputy, Steve Greenberg, “I think Roger [Angell] is right.” Vincent added in a 2022 telephone interview, “We couldn’t have two sets of records. It was an embarrassment. It smacked of Ford Frick determining that Roger Maris was a poor successor to Ruth.”3

The committee proclamation the following month of Maris being the sole record holder was well-received. It was offset by an uproar over a concomitant announcement: an “official” definition of a no-hitter as being games of nine innings or more that ended with no hits.4 The decree lopped from the list those games in which a team was held hitless but came up short of nine innings for the no-hit pitcher. Such games had been truncated for reasons such as darkness, rain, and mutual agreement.

Two no-hitters dropped from the “official list” were ones in which the hitless team did not have to bat in the last of the ninth because it had already won the game. Silver King had done this in 1890: holding Brooklyn hitless but losing the game while pitching for Chicago in the Players’ League. Few fans may have been aware of the King game, but most were familiar with a no-hitter pitched by the Yankees’ Andy Hawkins July 1, 1990, in Chicago. The game, but not the no hitter, had blown up in the last of the eighth when the White Sox scored four runs on two walks and three errors. The game made a bigger splash than most no hitters, leading both news and sports broadcasts that evening and being the top headlines in newspapers the next morning.5

Vincent wasn’t shy about what he saw as excessive excitement over Hawkins’s no-hitter: “I thought it was silly—a reaction by a lot of people who didn’t know much about baseball. Within historical context, it was beyond the baseball knowledge of a lot of people, not enough understanding of the history of how many get broken up. The ninth inning is a grave yard for no-hitters.”6

In recalling the committee activities more than 30 years later, Vincent emphasized he didn’t remember much and speculated that “people on the committee may have brought up the no-hitters.” Eminent base ball historian David Voigt was a member of the committee.7 A family friend of Voigt’s recalls him having a different recollection. Steve Ferenchick said he once asked Voigt if he thought it was fair to take away so many no-hitters. “I still remember him grimacing and saying something like, ‘No. We discussed it and a lot of us had the same view I did, that those no-hitters shouldn’t be removed from the books. But Fay Vincent came in with his opinion, and the rest of us were basically brought in to rubberstamp it. I wouldn’t have changed the rule there but it was his call, not mine.’”8

While the Hawkins no-hitter received oversized attention that still resonates, three subsequent no hitters of this type (full games but with the hitless team not batting in the ninth) have been treated as footnotes: Matt Young of Boston April 12, 1992; Jered Weaver and Jose Arredondo of Anaheim June 28, 2008; and Hunter Greene and Art Warren of Cincinnati May 15, 2022.

 

 

PREVIOUS TREATMENT OF NO-HITTERS

Contrary to some reports, no “official” definition of a no-hitter existed before 1991, not that one was needed. The Sporting News, in its record books (One for the Book and later The Official Baseball Record Book) listed all regulation games in which a team was held hitless. The lists included the many times a team was held hit less for fewer than nine innings, and readers in those days were deemed discerning enough to ascribe their opinions to them. Today, people seem to be overly deferential to the 1991 committee definition.

In addition, the TSN record books listed all games in which a team was held hitless for at least the first nine innings but got a hit or hits in extra innings. Of course, these really aren’t no-hitters; on the other hand, how many games are more notable than Harvey Haddix pitching 12 innings before having his perfect game and then no-hitter broken up in the 13th?9

Not as impressive but still noteworthy is Harry McIntire of Brooklyn having a no-hitter for 102/3 innings before giving up a single to Claude Ritchey of Pittsburgh on August 1, 1906. McIntire gave up three more hits and lost the game in 13 innings. A number of pitchers have had a no-hitter through 10 innings, with most of them winning the game at that point. Sam Kimber of Brooklyn did it against Toledo October 4, 1884. George “Hooks” Wiltse of the New York Giants had a perfect game versus Philadelphia July 4, 1908, before hitting a batter; he still completed a 10-inning no-hitter. Cincinnati’s Fred Toney’s 10-inning no-hitter against Chicago on May 2, 1917, stands out because the opposing pitcher, Jim “Hippo” Vaughn, had held the Reds hitless for the first nine innings. In addition, two pitchers—Francisco Cordova and Ricardo Rincon of Pittsburgh—combined for a 10-inning no-hitter on July 12, 1997, against Houston.

Jim Maloney won a 10-inning no-hitter for Cincin nati at Chicago August 19, 1965; earlier in the season he had also pitched 10 hitless innings before giving up a home run in the 11th inning to Johnny Lewis of New York on June 14 (a game in which Maloney struck out 18 batters). Maloney remains the only pitcher to twice pitch hitless ball over the first 10 innings of a game. Maloney got more support from the Reds in his next no-hitter, a 10-0 win over Houston April 30, 1969. How many no-hitters did Maloney have to this point in his career? In their game stories, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Dayton Daily News, and St. Louis Post Dispatch referred to Maloney’s no-hitter being his third. Jim Ferguson, for the Dayton paper, wrote, “Maloney was on his way to the record books as one of only five men in the history of baseball to hurl as many as three no-hitters. Sandy Koufax is alone with four such games while Maloney joins Cy Young, Bob Feller and Larry Corcoran, a name from the 1880s, with three.” On the other hand, United Press International reporter Vito Sellino labeled the gem as Maloney’s second.10

So no-hitters were counted by however one wanted to count them.

NOTABLE NONS

Of the true no-hitters of fewer than nine innings, some are distinctive. They fall into several categories determined by several factors, sometimes unique circumstance and sometimes by the attempts of various teams or leagues to cope.

Played to Natural Conclusions

As for games that truly were no-hitters, but fewer than nine innings, some were not shortened but were played to their natural conclusion. The no-hitters by King, Hawkins, Weaver/Arredondo, and Greene/Warren were nine innings although the hitless team batted in only eight of those.

During the period when doubleheaders were scheduled for seven innings under “COVID rules” in 2020 and 2021, two no-hitters took place: Madison Bumgarner of Arizona no-hit Atlanta on April 25, 2021, and Collin McHugh, Josh Fleming, Diego Castillo, Matt Wisler, and Pete Fairbanks of Tampa Bay held Cleveland hitless on July 7, 2021. Both of these occurred in the second games of seven-inning doubleheaders.11

In addition, some no-hitters happened in games that, by mutual agreement of the teams, were scheduled for fewer than nine innings. Fred Shaw of Providence did it at Buffalo in the first game of a doubleheader on October 7, 1885; “By mutual consent the clubs played only the innings needed to make a record, and the players, umpire, reporters, and the dozen spectators were glad when the two hours in the cold were ended,” wrote the Buffalo Express. Jake Weimer of Cincinnati no-hit Brooklyn on August 24, 1906, and won in the last of the seventh when the Reds scored; the second game of a doubleheader, it was scheduled for seven innings by pre-agreement. Howie Camnitz of Pittsburgh held New York hitless on August 23, 1907, in the second game of a doubleheader, scheduled for five innings by agreement of both managers.12

Ed Karger of the St. Louis Cardinals pitched a perfect game of seven innings August 11, 1907; the second game of a doubleheader, it was set for seven innings by a prior mutual agreement of St. Louis and Boston.13

 

 

Resurrection

On June 12, 1959, Mike McCormick of San Francisco carried a no-hitter into the last of the sixth at Philadelphia. After walking two batters, McCormick gave up a single to Richie Ashburn to load the bases. With Gene Freese next up, time was called because of rain, and eventually the game was called. Because it was an uncompleted inning, the game reverted to the last full inning, San Francisco winning 3-0 and McCormick getting his no-hitter back. (A 1962 rule change called for the reversion to occur only if what happened in the top of an uncompleted inning affected the outcome of the game; in 1980, the rules changed to eliminate any reversions by making these suspended games.)14

A no-hitter by Jimmy Dygert and Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics on August 29, 1906, may have been resurrected in similar fashion to McCormick’s although it is unclear if a play in the third inning of the game was called a hit or an error. Dygert pitched the first three innings with Chicago’s Ed Hahn reaching base in the third when third baseman John Knight fumbled his bunt. Newspaper accounts and box scores differed on if it had been called a hit or error. Waddell relieved Dygert in the fourth—and gave up a run with out a hit15—and then pitched a hitless fifth. Chicago rallied in the top of the sixth and scored two runs to take a 5-4 lead with a walk, error, and singles by Jiggs Donahue and Billy Sullivan. However, with the Athletics batting in the last of the sixth, the game was called by rain and reverted to the bottom of the fifth, wiping out two White Sox runs and hits.

Uncertainty over the status of the scoring decision on Hahn’s third-inning bunt lingered. The game was listed among the no-hitters in The Sporting News Official Baseball Record Book of 1974, but by the 1977 edition of the book, it had been removed.

Another disputed no-hitter, also involving Waddell, was on August 15, 1905, when the Athletics beat St. Louis, 2-0, in a game called by rain after five innings. Morning newspapers in St. Louis and Philadelphia noted one hit for St. Louis, the result of Waddell slip ping while fielding a grounder, but by the afternoon editions, the hit had been removed from the box scores.

First Win for a Forgotten Team

Minnesota’s first major-league team—an 1884 St. Paul squad that was one of the last survivors of the minor-league Northwestern League, finishing its season in the now-recognized-as-major Union Association—is an unremarkable story. The nine games it played were all on the road, and St. Paul lost its first four. It played in St. Louis October 5. Charlie Sweeney struck out six St. Paul batters in the first two innings before switching spots with left fielder Henry Boyle. The fielders did well on the slippery grounds except for the fourth inning, when St. Louis made two errors to allow St. Paul to score a run. Heavy rain came down after the fifth inning, causing a delay. The rain stopped but umpire Harry McCaffery deemed the field too wet to play and called the game. St. Paul had a 1-0 win in a game in which it did not tally a hit.16

Debuts

Cincinnati’s Bumpus Jones, in his first major-league game, no-hit Pittsburg October 15, 1892, and is often credited as the only pitcher to hurl a no-hitter in his debut.17 However, he was pre-dated in this feat by George Nicol of St. Louis in the American Association. On September 23, 1890, Nicol beat a reorganized and hapless Athletic team of Philadelphia following an en masse resignation of Athletic players a week before when the team couldn’t meet its payroll. With the score 21-2 for St. Louis and darkness setting in, the game was stopped after seven innings.

Leon “Red” Ames of the New York Giants pitched his first game in the majors on September 14, 1903, and held St. Louis hitless in the second game of a double header, which was called after five innings either by darkness or threatening weather, depending on which St. Louis newspaper you choose to rely on.18

Last by Darkness

The last game called—not suspended—by darkness was at Wrigley Field September 8, 1985.19 The last no hitter stopped by darkness, rather than weather, was the second game of a doubleheader at Braves Field June 22, 1944. Boston’s Jim Tobin held Philadelphia hitless over five innings before it was too late to continue under existing light.

OTHER “NON” TIDBITS

In a Montreal at San Diego game June 3, 1995, Pedro Martinez became the only pitcher to have a chance to complete an extra-inning perfect game. Unlike Harvey Haddix—who perpetually knew he would have to keep laboring for at least two more innings for a perfect game—Martinez took the mound with a lead in the last of the 10th. However, he gave up a leadoff double to Bip Roberts before being relieved by Mel Rojas, who retired the final three batters.

Tom Hughes of New York was credited as a no-hit pitcher who gave up the most runs when he lost, 5-0 to Cleveland in the second game of a doubleheader August 30, 1910.20 However, this was recognized among lists of no-hitters only because he had pitched nine hitless innings before giving up a hit in the 10th and six more in the 11th. Among true no-hit pitchers, Andy Hawkins gave up the most runs in his 4-0 loss to the White Sox July 1, 1990.

CONCLUSION

As luminaries ranging from Leonard Koppett to Dave Smith have stated, “official” means nothing more than “of the office.” It does not necessarily mean correct. It doesn’t mean that fans, researchers, and historians have to accept Ty Cobb‘s “official” career-hit total as 4,191 or that he had a higher batting average than Napoleon Lajoie in 1910 or that the historical records of the 1901-60 Washington American League team belong to the 1961-71 Washington Senators.21 And it certainly does not require the delusion that a regulation game in which a team is held hitless is not a no-hitter.22

Vincent acknowledged the controversy over the decision on no-hitters but wasn’t fazed by it. He said that he and Bart Giamatti, his predecessor as commissioner, had a philosophy: “Those are the issues that make baseball great, issues that aren’t life and death but that generate disagreement and discussion.” 

STEW THORNLEY has been a SABR member since 1979 and helped to found the Halsey Hall Chapter (Where the Action Is!) in 1985. He has received the SABR-Macmillan Baseball Research Award in 1988, the USA Today Baseball Weekly Award (for the best convention research presentation) in 1998, and the Bob Davids Award in 2016.

 

Author’s Note

Repetitious as they are, the quotation marks around “official” are used intentionally. If readers interpret this overuse as a sign of the author’s disdain for an “official” definition, they are invited to make such an inference.

The author appreciates the help of many SABR members, including John Thorn, Scott Merzbach, Steve Ferenchick, Bob Komoroski, Dave Lande, and Steve Gietschier.

Fay Vincent and/or his committee attempted to de-officialize many no-hitters; fortunately several sources still list them. One of the best is Dirk Lammers’s site, nonohitters.com. In addition to all the “official” no-hitters listed for the White and integrated leagues (with more coming from Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1948), the site has the so-called “non” no-hitters as well as no-hitters from around the world and no-hitters from the All-American Girls Professional Base Ball League.

 

Notes

1. Jim Donaghy, Associated Press, “Extra Inning,” September 5, 1991, https://apnews.com/article/9a48ac96f06749fa10d0a8d97f2fc8df.

2. Roger Angell, “The Sporting Scene: Homeric Tales” The New Yorker, May 27, 1991: 69.

3. Author telephone interview with Fay Vincent, July 18, 2022.

4. Steve Gietschier, “Year in Review: Two Record-Keeping Revisions,” The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide, 1991: 169, and Donaghy, “Extra Inning,” Associated Press, September 5, 1991, https://apnews.com/article/9a48ac96f06749fa10d0a8d97f2fc8df. Gietschier’s piece covered the home-run record and the no-hitter definition. Donaghy did not even mention the issue of the record for home runs, even though this had been the focus of news when the committee was announced. Regardless of the committee’s decision, in the ensuing years The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book continued to list the single-season records for home runs for both a 154-game and 162-game season as well as listing all types of no-hitters, including the “non-official” ones.

5. The no-hitter was at the top of the front page—the front page of the entire newspaper, not the sports page—in USA Today on July 2, 1990.

6. Interview with Vincent, July 18, 2022. Vincent is correct that many no-hitters get broken up in the ninth. Since 1961, approximately 48 percent of no-hit games carried into the ninth inning have been broken up in the ninth. https://milkeespress.com/lostninth.html.

7. In addition to Vincent and Voigt, then a professor of sociology at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, the other committee members were Rich Levin, director of public relations for the commissioner’s office; Michael Bernstein, manager of publishing of Major League Baseball Properties; Seymour Siwoff, general manager of the Elias Sports Bureau; Jack Lang, executive secretary of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America; Joe Durso, reporter for The New York Times, and George Kirsch, professor of history at Manhattan College in New York.

8. Submission from Steve Ferenchick on SABR-L, the SABR listserv, June 25, 2022.

9. A typically inane exchange between Archie and Meathead on All in the Family (Season 3, Episode 17—Archie Goes Too Far, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3mesNGrPcE) centers on whether Haddix did or did not pitch a perfect game. With 25 cents at stake, the pair never resolved the bet.

10. Bob Hertzel, “Maloney Throws No-Hitter!,’” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 1, 1969: 61; Jim Ferguson, “Chaney‘s Fielding Gem Helps Maloney,” Dayton Daily News, May 1, 1969: 22; “Maloney Takes Casual Approach to No-Hitter,” St Louis Post-Dispatch (reference to third no-hitter in caption for UPI Telephoto), May 1, 1969: 1E. Vito Stellino, “Cincinnati’s Jim Maloney No-Hits Astros,” (UPI), Raleigh Register (Beckley, West Virginia), May 1, 1969: 12.

11. Although the Official Baseball Rules define a “double-header” as “two regularly scheduled or rescheduled games, played in immediate succession,” the term doubleheader is common parlance for two games in the same day and is used here, even though Bumgarner’s no-hitter was in the second game of a day-night twinbill.

12. “Good-By Baseball,” Buffalo Express, October 8, 1885: 2; “All Out Easy,” Cincinnati Post, August 25, 1906: 6; “Two Wins Put Pirates Back in Second Place,” Pittsburgh Post, August 24, 1907: 6. Another no-hitter, by Jack Stivetts of Boston versus Washington on October 15, 1892, was called by mutual agreement after five innings to allow Boston to catch a train; however, this was not a pre-game agreement for a set number of innings. King Cole of the Chicago Cubs pitched a truncated no-hitter at St. Louis July 31, 1910, in a game called by a predetermined end time (not a predetermined innings limit) to allow both teams to catch a train to New York.

13. Three other pitchers have perfect games of fewer than nine innings: Rube Vickers of the Philadelphia Athletics versus Washington October 5, 1907 (second game of doubleheader), called by darkness after five innings; Dean Chance of Minnesota versus Boston August 6, 1967, called by rain in the last of the fifth; and David Palmer of Montreal versus St. Louis April 21, 1984 (second game of doubleheader), called by rain after five innings.

14. San Francisco had a run scored in the top of the sixth erased, making the final a 3-0 win for the Giants. Prior to this, the erasing of an uncompleted inning that did not affect the game outcome was inconsistent and uncertain. These included several no-hitters although none of them erased a hit that resurrected a no-hitter such as was the case for McCormick. George Van Haltren of Chicago no-hit Pittsburg in a six- or seven-inning game on June 21, 1888; the Chicago and Pittsburg newspapers differed on whether or not the uncompleted seventh inning remained part of the game. King Cole’s July 31, 1910, game is also fuzzy as to whether an uncompleted inning was kept on the books. Two pitchers had no-hitters in games in which completed innings apparently were counted: Ed Stein of Brooklyn June 2, 1894, and Elton “Ice Box” Chamberlain of Cincinnati September 23, 1893.

15. Beyond the disagreement on a hit or error on Hahn’s batted ball in the third, line scores differ regarding the innings in which runs were scored. The August 30, 1906, (page 13) Philadelphia Inquirer shows 012 00 for Chicago and 110 01 for Philadelphia. The August 30, 1906, (page 8) Scranton Times has 110 10 for Chicago and 112 00 for Philadelphia. Retrosheet (https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1906/B08290PHA1906.htm) has a line score similar to that of the Philadelphia paper and also indicates a hit for Hahn.

16. “The St. Paul Unions: Minnesota’s First Major League Team” by Stew Thornley, https://stewthornley.net/unions.html.

17. Note on the use of “Pittsburg”: In a post on SABR-L June 25, 2022, John Husman cited a page from the Popular Pittsburgh website and wrote, “In 1890, the United States Board of Geographic Names, which was created to bring consistency to the spellings of locations throughout the country, deemed that all cities ending in ‘burgh’ must drop the ‘h’ in the spirit of uniformity…Eventually, a special meeting of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names was arranged. On July 19, 1911, the board met. A preponderance of evidence citing Pittsburgh spelled with the ‘h’ over the decades convinced the board to reinstate the final letter.”

18. On Opening Day in 1909 (April 15), Ames had a no-hitter for 91/3 innings for the Giants against Brooklyn. He lost the no-hitter in the 10th inning and the game in the 13th.

19. The Cincinnati-Chicago game—in which Pete Rose got his 4,191st hit— was stopped by darkness after nine innings with the score tied, 5-5. It was determined that the game would be replayed in its entirety if it was necessary (it was not) to bring the teams back together to determine a division title. However, in 1969 the National League had changed its rules so that regulation games stopped by darkness would be suspended, not called. This happened after a controversial Cubs loss to Montreal June 22, 1969, when the game was called by darkness.

20. ESPN made this oranges-to-apples comparison in its coverage of Andy Hawkins’s July 1, 1990, no-hitter, comparing the four runs Hawkins gave up without a hit to the runs Hughes gave up with multiple hits in extra innings, a comparison that is not valid.

21. Tom Mee, who was part of the Minnesota Twins public-relations department from 1961 to 1991, claimed that American League president Joe Cronin in the 1960s declared that the expansion Senators owned the records and history of the Washington Nationals of Walter Johnson, Cecil Travis, and Ossie Bluege. Historians never bought into this manipulation, and in 2020 the Twins even publicly displayed their heritage with banners at their ballpark for the 1924, 1925, and 1933 American League pennants won by the Nationals (1924 also being a world championship).

22. Many of the fewer-than-nine-inning no-hitters featured in the SABR Baseball Games Project include a disclaimer with language along the lines of the no-hitter being counted as until 1991, when a committee edict removed them from the ranks. These, of course, are still no-hitters, just not ones “officially” recognized by Major League Baseball.

23. Interview with Vincent, July 18, 2022.

According to conventional baseball wisdom, the home team enjoys a significant advantage in batting last. But in the early days of big-league baseball, it was not uncommon for teams to choose to bat first.1 By the time the American League declared itself a major league in 1901, home teams batting first had become a rarity, and by 1914 the practice had completely vanished.

This paper will begin with an overview of the methods used to determine which team batted first in the major leagues of the late 1800s and early 1900s, briefly summarizing the decline in popularity of bat ting first at home, and then focusing on the 1901-14 period—the dying days of home teams batting first (HTBF). Specific examples will be given to illustrate the various reasons why managers sometimes went against the prevailing winds and sent their team to bat first. This article will also detail the unexpected rebirth of teams batting first in their home ballpark in the twenty-first century. Traditionally, home teams batted first because of tactical or superstitious considerations, although the recent reappearance of the phenomenon was caused by very different circumstances.

Whether or not there is a benefit in batting last is outside the scope of this paper. (For more information on this topic, the reader is invited to review the 2008 study by Theodore L. Turocy of the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University.2)

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

Retrosheet game log files for 1901-14 were used to calculate the frequency of HTBF and to identify the teams and individuals who used the practice most (and least) often. For select games, contemporary newspaper ac counts and Baseball-Reference game logs were used to determine, when possible, why the home team chose to bat first. Retrosheet game log files were also used to ascertain the HTBF games 2007-22, followed by inspection of Baseball-Reference game logs and con temporary newspaper accounts to again establish the circumstances.

DETERMINING WHICH TEAM BATS FIRST (1871-1949)

Baseball’s first fully professional organization, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, left it up to team captains to determine which team would bat first in its inaugural season of 1871. This typically involved a coin toss, with the winner being given the right to decide if his team batted first (“the ins”) or last (“the outs”).3

That method remained in use until 1877 when the National League—in its second year of existence— made a “radical change.”4 The NL eliminated the coin toss and mandated that the home team must bat first. One year later, however, the previous rule was reinstated. “The rule [of always] giving the home club the privilege of going to bat first was abandoned,” re ported the Chicago Inter Ocean in December 1877, without providing a reason for the flip-flop.5

The American Association was founded in 1882. In 1885 it got rid of the coin toss, allowing the home team’s captain to unilaterally decide which team batted first.6 The National League followed suit in 1887, and the rule remained that way until after the 1949 season.7

THE DECLINE OF HTBF

In the early days of big-league baseball, it was common for a captain to choose HTBF. Games could be played with a single ball, and so being the first team to take swings at a new sphere was believed to be advantageous.8 However, in the late 1880s Henry Chadwick—the “Father of Baseball”9—was a strong proponent of batting last. He passionately advocated his position in print several times in 1888.10 In the August 8 edition of Sporting Life, he excoriated those who chose to bat first. “Will the League captains kindly tell me what advantage the ‘first crack at the new ball’ in the first part of the first inning yields, which is not similarly at command in the second part of the first inning?” he asked pointedly. “And can any one of them point out wherein going to the bat first in a match equals the desirable advantage of having a chance for a winning rally which going to the bat last gives a team in the last part of a game? Is not that habit you have all of you got into of sending the visitors to the field first one of the many ruts you have got into?”11

It is unclear exactly when the custom of batting last at home became firmly entrenched, although there are several helpful clues.12 The July 30, 1892, edition of Sporting Life pointed out that Brooklyn Grooms player-manager John Montgomery Ward was “sending visiting teams to the bat first on the Brooklyn grounds,”13 which may have indicated a shift in opinion was underway.14 Chadwick continued to push for home teams to bat last in the spring of 1894, writing that “sending men to the bat first, in nearly every instance is a weak point of play.”15 Eventually his message got through, because by 1901 teams rarely batted first at home.

THE DEATH OF HTBF (1901-14)

Home teams batted first in only 1.7 percent of major-league games in 1901. Contemporary news sources indicate getting first crack at the new ball was not a commonly cited rationale. Instead, teams primarily used the strategy in an attempt to snap a losing streak, or “break the hoodoo,” in the parlance of the times.16

Between 1901 and 1914, home teams batted first only 70 times, or in 0.4 percent of all major-league games. After 1914 no home team batted first for the remainder of the twentieth century.17

Choosing to bat first was often an act of desperation by struggling teams. Only twice in this period did a team that went on to win the pennant bat first at home.18 Teams went 32-38 (.457) with this strategy between 1901 and 1914, which was considerably worse than the .536 winning average posted by those teams when bat ting last at home.19 It is worth noting that the lower winning average may not have been caused by choosing to bat first, but may have had more to do with the difficult circumstances which drove them to try HTBF.20

As the chart in Figure 1 shows, HTBF dropped off steadily at the beginning of the twentieth century, effectively ending in 1908. Three outliers 1913-14, two in the AL and one Federal League contest, seemed to be the end of the practice.

 

 

MANAGERS AND CLUBS USING THE STRATEGY MOST OFTEN (1901-14)

According to Retrosheet, five men between 1901 and 1914 were responsible for 40 of the 70 examples of HTBF (Table 1). All five were from the National League, so it’s not surprising that 49 of the 70 games in which the host club batted first were in the senior circuit.21 By comparison, it happened 20 times in the American League and only once in two seasons of Federal League play.

On top of being future Hall of Famers, the field generals on this list all broke into the big leagues when it was common for home teams to bat first.22 For in stance, Ned Hanlon made his major-league debut as an outfielder with the National League’s Cleveland Blues in 1880, while Bid McPhee’s rookie season came in 1882 as a second baseman with the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association.23

Aggregating the Retrosheet data by team (Table 2) shows that the top five clubs in HTBF account for 48 of the 70 games, led by the Cincinnati Reds, who did it 15 times between 1901 and 1914. As mentioned earlier, the strategy was not typically used by pennant contenders. In 1901 through 1914, the closest the Reds came to first place was 161/2 games in 1903.

The Washington club was responsible for 7 of the 20 American League games with the home team batting first between 1901 and 1913; no other team in the AL did it more than twice.

 

 

NOTEWORTHY EXAMPLES OF HOME TEAMS BATTING FIRST (1901-14)

This section will describe some of the more interesting cases of HTBF, starting with the 1901 New York Giants, who were led by 30-year-old player-manager George Davis. Davis chose to send the Giants to bat first at home seven times in 1901, the most by any team in a single season between 1901 and 1914. All seven came in a 42-game stretch between August 8 and September 16, and no other big-league team bat ted first at home during that period.

The Giants had been in first place as late as June 10, but they had won only 17 of their previous 50 contests heading into the second game of their August 8 doubleheader against Brooklyn. Davis was feeling the heat, and that day the team issued a tersely-worded statement on his future as manager. “Davis will continue to manage the team,” it read. “But he has been told that if the team has another ‘slump’ or demoralized streak he would be deposed and [former Giants skipper Bill] Joyce put in his place as manager.”25 To add to the pressure, Joyce was in attendance at the doubleheader and received a hero’s welcome from the fans at the Polo Grounds.26

Davis tried to change the Giants’ luck by having them bat first in the second game of the twin bill.27 The ploy had the desired effect, as New York scored two runs in the top of the first and held on for a 4-1 victory, snapping its four-game losing skid. But after the Giants lost their next two home games batting last, the superstitious Davis again attempted to break their “hard luck” by having them bat first at home in the second game of their August 14 doubleheader.28 They won again, ending another four-game losing streak.

The Giants continued to struggle for the remainder of the season, and Davis chose to bat first at home five more times, including back-to-back home games on September 7 and 9. New York won both times to snap an eight-game losing skid.

The Giants finished the season with a dismal 52-85 record. Seeing the writing on the wall, Davis jumped to the American League for the 1902 season.29 He never managed in the big leagues again.

Frank Selee had his Chicago Orphans (later Cubs) bat first at home 11 times during his 31/2-year run as the team’s manager (1902-05). Selee’s reasons ranged from the customary—as when he used the strategy to break an eight-game losing streak on August 23, 1902—to the extraordinary. On September 15, 1902, the Cubs batted first against Cincinnati’s weakest starting pitcher, 21-year-old Henry Thielman, who had lost 13 of his previous 16 decisions. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Selee “preferred the first crack at the chilled wing of the Red’s [sic] premier loser to a final assault.”30 Chicago scored three runs in the top of the first against an ice-cold Thielman and held on for a 6-3 win.31

Selee had a unique reason to send the Cubs to bat first at home on May 15, 1904. Chicago was on a two-game winning streak, although there was another outstanding “hoodoo” to overcome: The Cubs had lost all four Sunday games up to that point of the season.32 Selee’s move worked yet again. “The Chicago Nationals, after a month or more of strenuous effort, have finally succeeded in winning a game of ball on a Sunday,” re ported the Chicago Inter Ocean.33

Cincinnati Reds player-manager Joe Kelley had his squad bat first at home five times in 1903 and three more times the next season. After dropping the first two regular-season games in 1903 to the defending National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates, Kelley chose to bat first on April 18 at the Palace of the Fans against Kaiser Wilhelm, who was making his major-league debut. In the top of the first inning, the nervous rookie made a throwing error and surrendered three runs, although he settled down after that to foil Kelley’s strategy.34 Wilhelm tossed a complete game to pick up his first big-league win.

Perhaps spurred on by Wilhelm’s difficulties in the top of the first inning, Kelley sent the Reds to bat first the next day against another Pittsburgh hurler making his major-league debut, 21-year-old Bucky Veil. That move failed too, as Veil earned the first of his five career victories in the big leagues.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’S FINAL FIVE GAMES WITH THE HOME TEAM BATTING FIRST

In 1908 the home team batted first once in both the National and American Leagues. Just when it looked like the practice had died out, it happened twice more in 1913; one year later the home team batted first for the final time in the twentieth century. A list of the last five games can be found in Table 3.

 

 

Although Frank Chance was the player-manager in two of the last five games, one should not conclude that he was a strong proponent of this strategy. He didn’t choose to bat first in any of the other home games that he managed between 1905 and 1914.

The 1908 Chicago Cubs’ bid for a third consecutive pennant ran into a snag in late June and early July when they were hit with a rash of injuries, knocking them out of first place.35 They came into their July 16 matchup against the surging New York Giants on a four-game losing streak. In an attempt to “dent the hoodoo,” player-manager Chance sent his squad to bat first at the West Side Grounds.36 In the top of the ninth inning, the Cubs looked like they might snap their losing streak, but Christy Mathewson—who had started showering in the clubhouse on the assumption that he would not be needed—hurried to the mound to snuff out a Chicago rally.37

Nearly a month after Chance’s gambit, on August 14, manager Joe Cantillon of the seventh-place Washing ton Nationals also elected to bat first at home. The Nationals were on a two-game winning streak when they faced the Chicago White Sox in the first game of a doubleheader. Cantillon, trying to break a different sort of jinx, chose to bat first against a tough south paw, Doc White. Although the Nationals had beaten White in Chicago two weeks earlier, he had gone 4-0 with three shutouts in his four starts in Washington so far that season.

“In order to change their luck, the Nationals went to the bat first,” reported the Washington Herald, “and celebrated the occasion by shoving a run across the plate before White got his true bearings.”38 A 20-year-old Walter Johnson—making his 28th career appearance—made the first-inning run stand up. John son carried a no-hitter into the ninth, only to lose it when White led off with a single. The Big Train settled for a two-hit shutout.39

Five years passed before another big-league team batted first at home: the struggling New York Yankees.40 Then tenants of the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds and still eight years from their first pennant in club history, they came into the second game of their June 2, 1913, twin bill against the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox on an eight-game losing skid. Worse still, the Yankees were 0-12 at the Polo Grounds so far that season and had an 18-game home winless streak against Boston dating back to June 22, 1911.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and 36-year-old player-manager Frank Chance chose to have the Yankees bat first, hoping to change his team’s luck. It failed.41 “The only benefit derived from the shift,” chided The New York Times, “was in allowing the spectators to get away from the Polo Grounds a half inning earlier than would have been the case under usual conditions.”

Unlike the sad-sack Yankees, the Washington Nationals were expected to contend for the pennant in 1913.42 But poor play in late May and early June had cost them dearly, and the Nationals came into the second game of their June 26 doubleheader against the league-leading Philadelphia Athletics 13 games out of first place.

The Nationals were on a modest two-game losing streak after being humiliated by the Athletics by a combined score of 25-4 in those two contests. Washington manager (and part owner) Clark Griffith hoped to “change his luck” by sending the Nationals to bat first.43 Griffith was clearly desperate, because it was the only time he used the strategy in his 20-year managerial career.

It made no difference, as Philadelphia pummeled Washington for a third consecutive game, marking the low point in the Nationals’ season. Led by a dominant Walter Johnson, Washington bounced back and went 56-33 the rest of the way to finish in second place, 61/2 games behind the Athletics.44

The final time a home team batted first in the twentieth century came under bizarre circumstances. Hal Chase, generally regarded by many as the most corrupt player in baseball history, had jumped his contract with the White Sox on June 20, 1914, and signed with the Federal League’s Buffalo Buf-feds.45 He played one road game for Buffalo before White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was granted a preliminary court injunction preventing Chase from playing for any other team.46

But Chase still had to be served with the injunction, so he went into hiding, eventually returning to Buffalo on June 25. That afternoon the Buf-feds staged “Hal Chase Day” in an attempt to cash in on the drama. The team had learned that Chase would be served with the injunction as soon as he set foot on the field, so player-manager Larry Schafly informed the umpires that Buffalo was choosing to bat first.47 The strategy was in tended to improve the odds of Chase making at least one plate appearance in front of the large weekday crowd.

Chase batted second for the Buf-feds—he struck out—and remained in the game until the Buffalo sheriff personally delivered the injunction to him as he returned to the dugout after the bottom of the second inning. Less than a month later, Chase’s lawyers got the injunction dissolved in court and he returned to action with Buffalo.48

CLUBS USING THE STRATEGY LEAST OFTEN (1901-14)

Table 4 lists the five clubs that batted first at home the least often between 1901 and 1914. The skippers of those five teams were largely a newer generation of managers as compared to those in Table 1. Only 3 of the 19 men listed in Table 4 began their major-league managerial careers prior to 1901: John McCloskey (1895), George Stallings (1897), and Patsy Donovan (1897).

 

 

1950 RULE CHANGE

Happy Chandler was baseball commissioner for less than six years (1945-51), but his impact on the game was considerable, in particular the pivotal support he provided for baseball’s integration.49 In 1949 Chandler directed the Rules Committee to rewrite the rule book, making it more understandable and helping to ensure that the rules were correctly and uniformly applied. Chandler asked them to rewrite the rules in plain language, define all terms, and regroup the rules in logical sequences.50 It was the most significant alteration of the rule book since 1904.

The modernization resulted in the removal of the home team’s choice to bat first or last, which was considered more of a housekeeping change since the option hadn’t been invoked in decades.51 Specifically, rule 26 was dropped:

Rule 26—Choice of Innings-Fitness of Field for Play

The choice of innings shall be given to the manager or captain of the home team,

It was replaced by rule 4.02:

Rule 4.00—Starting and Ending a Game … 4.02 The players of the HOME TEAM shall take their DEFENSIVE POSITIONS, the first batter of the visiting team shall take his position in the batter’s box, the umpire shall call “Play” and the game shall proceed.

A key member of the Rules Committee was Tom Connolly, who had umpired in both the National (1898-1900) and American Leagues (1901-31) before becoming the junior circuit’s umpire-in-chief.52

The Associated Press story announcing the rule book enhancements quoted Connolly as saying that he “never heard of a manager wanting to bat first.”53 The statement was surprising considering Connolly had umpired in 7 of the 20 American League games in which the home team batted first between 1901 and 1913, and he was the home plate umpire the last time it happened.54 The 79-year-old future Hall of Famer could be excused for his imperfect memory. “Shucks, who can remember ever seeing a home club bat first in a game?” asked the Albuquerque Journal that off season. “Not even the oldest inhabitant.”55

THE REBIRTH OF HOME TEAMS BATTING FIRST

After 92 consecutive seasons with no home teams batting first, MLB quietly made a change that ensured its eventual re-emergence.56 Starting in 2007, any team that had to relocate a home game to another city would still bat last. Since the team was already penalized by having to play an extra game in front of an unfriendly crowd, it no longer made sense to take away the privilege of batting last.57

The change came far too late for the 1991 Montreal Expos and the 1994 Seattle Mariners. On September 13, 1991, a 55-ton concrete slab fell off Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, forcing the Expos to play their last 13 “home” games of the season on the road.58 Montreal’s opponents batted last in their home ballpark in each of those games.59 A similar situation happened in 1994 when the ceiling tiles inside the Kingdome needed to be urgently replaced and the Mariners had to play 13 “home” games on the road.60

MLB’s revised policy for relocated games resulted in the home team batting first in 44 contests be tween 2007 and 2022. The yearly breakdown can be seen in Figure 2.

 

 

These 44 games came about for a wide variety of reasons, the majority of which would have been incomprehensible to Henry Chad wick 120 years earlier. The different circumstances will be briefly out lined below.

HOME TEAMS BATTING FIRST (2007-19)

A freak 2007 snowstorm dropped 16 to 18 inches of snow on parts of northeast Ohio over the Easter week end.61 The cold and snow wiped out the entire four-game series between Cleveland and Seattle on April 6-9, which was the Mariners’ only scheduled trip there.62

Three of the games were rescheduled for Jacobs Field on what would have been off days for both teams (May 21, June 11, and August 30).63 The fourth game was played as part a September 26 doubleheader at Safeco Field in Seattle, with the Mariners batting first in the opener.64 No American, National, or Fed eral League team had done so since “Hal Chase Day” in 1914.

In 2010 the Group of Twenty (G20) economic summit was held in downtown Toronto.65 Law enforcement authorities created an extensive security zone in the area, erecting a 10-foot-high fence around the Rogers Centre and restricting the movement of vehicles and pedestrians in the downtown core.66 The CN Tower and many downtown businesses were closed during the summit, and the Toronto Blue Jays’ three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies on June 25-27 was moved to the City of Brotherly Love.67

The Jays wore their home jerseys and batted last in all three games at Citizens Bank Park.68 It was the first time the Designated Hitter rule was used in a National League ballpark during the regular season.69

Almost exactly one year after the G20 summit, a three-game series on June 24-26, 2011, between the Mariners and Florida Marlins was moved from Miami to Seattle because of a June 29 concert featuring the band U2. The Irish rockers were on the final leg of their 360° tour, the highest grossing concert tour of all time.70 The $25M stage production, complete with a 300-ton, 167-foot-tall stage, required four days of setup time.71

Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria may have lost three home games, but the venue change was likely to his financial benefit.72 The Marlins were last in National League ticket sales every year between 2006 and 2011, and they were unlikely to draw big crowds for the games against the Mariners.73 U2, on the other hand, attracted approximately 73,000 fans to Sun Life Stadium.74

The series opener on June 24 at Safeco Field was the first time since the DH was instituted in 1973 that National League rules were used in an American League ballpark in the regular season.75 Mariners pitchers held their own at the plate, batting a combined .250 in the series.

The next time a team batted first at home came in 2013 after the finale of a four-game series between the Reds and San Francisco Giants was rained out on July 4 in Cincinnati. Since it was the Giants’ only visit to the Queen City that season and no common off days were suitable as a makeup date, the contest was played as the nightcap of a July 23 doubleheader in San Francisco.76 Perhaps the most notable aspect of the rescheduled game was that Giants manager Bruce Bochy earned the 1,500th managerial win of his career while wearing a road uniform in his home ballpark.77

Tragic circumstances caused the relocation of three games in 2015. Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man from the west side of Baltimore, suffered a broken neck while in police custody on April 12, and died a week later.78,79,80 Civil unrest broke out after his April 27 funeral, resulting in the postponement of games be tween the White Sox and Baltimore Orioles on the next two nights.81,82 The National Guard was called in and a weeklong curfew imposed. On the afternoon of April 29 the gates of Camden Yards remained locked while the Orioles and White Sox played an eerie game with no fans in attendance. It was the first time one of the four major North American sports leagues held a game with no fans present.83

The next series—three games versus the Tampa Bay Rays—was moved to Tropicana Field May 1-3.84 The games were played without the Rays’ usual in-game promotions, and the Orioles’ traditional seventh-inning stretch song, John Denver’s ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy,’ was played.85

Hurricane Irma caused widespread devastation in South Florida on September 10, 2017, killing hundreds and causing billions in property damage.86 Although Marlins Park suffered only minor damage, team officials moved the three-game series on September 15-17 between Miami and Milwaukee to Miller Park to avoid straining the resources of police and fire rescue crews.87,88

Since the Marlins’ extended road trip began three days before the hurricane slammed into Florida, they didn’t have their home uniforms with them for the games in Milwaukee; they batted last in their road jerseys.89 In a lighthearted touch, the Brewers tried to make Miami feel at home by installing neon palm trees in Miller Park’s outfield pavilion.

THE PANDEMIC-SHORTENED 2020 SEASON

On March 12, 2020—one day after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic—spring training came to an abrupt halt.90 Eventually, baseball restarted in early July, and a 60-game regular season kicked off on July 23 with no fans in the stands.91

But after several COVID-19 outbreaks among major-league teams, it was unclear how many of the games could be played in the narrow 67-day period set aside for the regular season.92,93 One week into the sea son, the owners and the union agreed to an innovative rule change to help deal with a potential glut of rescheduled games and conserve pitching resources: Doubleheaders would consist of two seven-inning games.94 The move proved significant, as a whopping 55 twin bills were necessary in 2020.95

COVID-19 outbreaks caused the postponement of 45 games during the regular season, with 16 of those games moved to a different city to ensure the regular season was completed on time.96 Another 12 contests in 2020 were postponed and relocated for other reasons, bringing the total number of games with the home team batting first to 28, or 3.1 percent of regular-season games—the highest percentage since prior to the 1901 season. Incredibly, only two games didn’t get played despite the unprecedented challenges.97

Since the Canadian and United States governments had closed their border to non-essential travel, playing games in Canada was impossible in 2020.98 After exploring several options, the Blue Jays made a last-minute decision to play their home games at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, the ballpark normally used by their Triple-A affiliate.99 But necessary ballpark infrastructure improvements couldn’t be completed before Toronto’s first home date, so two games against the Washington Nationals on July 29-30 were shifted to the US capital.100 The Jays batted last, wore their home whites, and heard their seventh-inning stretch song, “OK, Blue Jays,” echo across an empty Nationals Park.101

COVID-19 wasn’t the only hazard affecting play in 2020. Aside from Toronto, no team had more games moved out of its home ballpark in 2020 than the Mariners. In addition to one game being postponed and relocated because of a positive COVID-19 test, the team had to play five more away from T-Mobile Park because of dangerously poor air quality in Seattle.102,103 Smoke from wildfires on the West Coast elevated the air quality index into the 300s across most of Washington state—anything above 150 is considered unhealthful for everyone, not just “sensitive” groups.104 The Mariners batted last in two games in San Francisco on September 16-17 and three more in San Diego on September 18-20.

Hurricanes caused two other games to be relocated. First, the threat from Hurricane Isaias bumped a Yankees-Phillies game on August 4 to Philadelphia the next day.105 Hurricane Laura had a similar effect on an August 26 contest between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels in Houston; it was played as the second game of a twin bill on September 5 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.106

On August 26, six National Basketball Association teams made the decision to not play their postseason games to make a strong statement against racial injustice.107 The player action came three days after a White police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a 29-year-old Black man named Jacob Blake seven times.108 The boycott soon spread to other professional sports, including baseball. The Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Seattle Mariners were the first MLB teams to refuse to take to the field, and eventually 11 ballgames were postponed because of the boycott.109,110

Two of those games required a change of venue in order to be made up. The Red Sox’s decision to sit out their game against the Jays in Buffalo on August 27 resulted in a September 4 doubleheader at Fenway Park.111 In the second game, the Red Sox batted first at Fenway for the first time in the history of their storied ballpark, which opened in 1912.112 A change of venue was also required when the Orioles decided not to play their Au gust 27 game in Tampa Bay.113

One other game was relocated during the turbulent 2020 season because of a far more traditional postponement: an August 28 game was washed out by rain.114

HOME TEAMS BATTING FIRST (2021-22)

The 2021 season featured only one game with a team batting first in its home ballpark. That was the first game of an August 10 twin bill in Anaheim between the Angels and Blue Jays, made necessary because of a rainout on April 11 at TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida, one of three venues the Jays called home in 2021.115

The 99-day owners’ lockout that began on December 2, 2021, played havoc with the 2022 regular-season schedule.116 The first eight days of the season were wiped out, forcing makeup games to be played on for mer off-days and/or turning single games into doubleheaders.117 The game between the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers that was originally scheduled for April 4 in Oakland was moved to Detroit and played as the first game of a May 10 doubleheader, with the Tigers batting first at Comerica Park. It was the only instance of a team batting first in its home ballpark in 2022.

SUMMARY OF HOME TEAMS BATTING FIRST (2007-22)

After a 93-year absence, teams batted first in their home ballpark a stunning 44 times between 2007 and 2022. The underlying reasons for these games—aside from the 2007 change to how relocated contests were conducted—are summarized in Table 5.

 

 

CONCLUSIONS

The rules and customs of the game of baseball are not chiseled in stone. Even basic features like determining which team bats first have evolved over the years without altering the fundamental nature of the game. This insight is particularly relevant as the major leagues enter a new era in 2023 with the introduction of pitch clocks and a ban on defensive shifts.

In the early days of the big leagues, it was common for the home team to choose to bat first and in one season (1877) the National League even mandated the practice. Helped in part by the urging of Henry Chad wick, the strategy became less common in the 1890s, and by 1901 it had become a rarity. Since batting first at home was typically done to break out of a losing streak during this period, elite teams rarely did it. Only twice between 1901 and 1914 did a team that went on to win the pennant choose to bat first at home.

The rule book modernization initiated by Happy Chandler in 1949 eliminated the home team’s choice to bat first or last. But starting with the 2007 season, any team that had to relocate a home game to another city retained the privilege of batting last. Since then, a global pandemic, extreme weather, poor air quality, and racial injustice were the most common reasons why teams batted first in their home ballpark. Given that society continues to grapple with these serious issues, it may only be a matter of time before major-league teams bat first at home more times in the twenty-first century than in the previous one.118 

GARY BELLEVILLE is a retired Information Technology professional living in Victoria, British Columbia. He has written articles for SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Games Project, and Baseball Biography Project, in addition to contributing to several SABR books. Gary grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Computer Science) degree.

 

Acknowledgments

The author thanks SABR Games Project Committee Chair John Fredland and two anonymous peer reviewers for providing valuable feedback on early drafts of this article. The author is grateful for the help provided by Retrosheet President Tom Thress. Thanks also to Andrea Gough at the Seattle Public Library for her research assistance.

 

Notes

1. David Nemec, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated (Guildford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2006), 51.

2. Theodore L. Turocy, “In Search of the ‘Last-Ups’ Advantage in Baseball: A Game-Theoretic Approach,” Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (February 2008). Accessed November 1, 2022. Turocy concludes that there is no significant strategic advantage to batting first or last. However, he theorized that there may be a psychological advantage to batting last.

3. Nemec, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated, 51.

4. “Convention of Base-Ball Managers at Cleveland,” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1876, 7.

5. “Base Ball Rules,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), December 7, 1877, 5.

6. Nemec, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated, 51.

7. The home team’s captain also decided which team batted first in the Player’s League (1890), American Association (1885-91), and American League (1901-49). Nemec, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated, 51.

8. Nemec, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated, 51.

9. Andrew Schiff, “Henry Chadwick,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 9, 2022.

10. Henry Chadwick, “Chadwick’s Chat,” Sporting Life, May 9, 1888, 8; Henry Chadwick, “Last at the Bat,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 29, 1888, 1.

11. Henry Chadwick, “Chadwick’s Chat,” Sporting Life, August 8, 1888, 5.

12. It will be possible to tell precisely when the custom of batting last became firmly entrenched once Retrosheet releases revised game logs prior to 1901.

13. “Editorial Views, News, Comment,” Sporting Life, July 30, 1892, 4.

14. As of December 2022, the preliminary Retrosheet game log files indicated that National League teams batted first at home 53 percent of the time in 1882, 41 percent in 1894, and just 9 percent in 1898. (Revised Retrosheet game log files for 1871 to 1900 will be released in the coming years. E-mails with Retrosheet President Tom Thress, October 13, 2022.)

15. Henry Chadwick, “Chadwick’s Chat,” Sporting Life, April 14, 1894, 5.

16. “Piatt Goes to Pieces,” Boston Globe, June 9, 1903, 5.

17. The World Series in 1921 (Giants-Yankees), 1922 (Giants-Yankees), and 1944 (Cardinals-Browns) featured two teams who shared a home ballpark. However, the author does not consider these games to have the home team batting first, since both squads were playing in their home ballpark.

18. Connie Mack had his 1902 Philadelphia Athletics bat first at home on May 15 against Cy Young and the Boston Americans. Player-manager Frank Chance sent his 1908 Chicago Cubs to bat first in a home game against the New York Giants on July 16. It was the last time a National League manager chose to bat first at home.

19. Teams that batted first at home at least once in a season from 1901 to 1914 had a combined record of 1286-1112 (.536) when batting last at home.

20. It is worth reiterating that Turocy concluded that there is no significant strategic advantage to batting first or last. However, he theorized that there may be a psychological advantage to batting last. Turocy, “In Search of the ‘Last-Ups’ Advantage in Baseball: A Game-Theoretic Approach.”

21. It is unclear if manager Bid McPhee or captain Tommy Corcoran made the decision to bat first at home four times during the 1901 season.

22. Frank Selee never played in the major leagues, although his professional baseball career dated back to 1884 in the Massachusetts State Association.

23. Selee began managing in the big leagues in 1890 for the Boston Beaneaters. One year later, he managed rookie outfielder Joe Kelley. George Davis began his big-league playing career in 1890 with the National League’s Cleveland Spiders. David Fleitz, “Frank Selee,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 8, 2022.

24. Davis turned 31 on August 23, 1901.

25. “Joyce Reaches Gotham,” Evansville (Indiana) Journal-News, August 9, 1901, 5.

26. Davis was also cheered by the fans when he came to bat, although perhaps not as enthusiastically as Joyce was welcomed. “‘Scrappy Bill’ Joyce is Again in Town,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 9, 1901, 10.

27. “Teams Break Even,” (New York) Daily People, August 9, 1901, 3.

28. “Taylor’s Curves Easy,” Boston Globe, August 15, 1901, 5.

29. Nicole DiCicco, “George Davis,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 9, 2022.

30. “Back to .500 Mark Again,” Gincinnati Enquirer, September 16, 1902, 4.

31. Thielman only pitched in five more games in the major leagues. His final appearance on a big-league mound was on May 12, 1903.

32. Sunday games usually attracted bigger crowds than games on other days of the week. “Colts Capture the Final Game,” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1904, 8.

33. Jack Tanner, “Colts Break the Hoodoo and Win,” Chicago Inter Ocean, May 16, 1904, 6.

34. “Downed; In a Fighting Game,” Gincinnati Enquirer, April 19, 1903, 10.

35. Gary Belleville, “July 16, 1908: Christy Mathewson Bolts from the Shower to Preserve Giants’ Victory over Cubs,” SABR Games Project. Accessed November 17, 2022.

36. Charles Dryden, “Cubs Pipe Fails, and Giants Land,” Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1908, 6.

37. Belleville, “July 16, 1908: Christy Mathewson Bolts from the Shower to Preserve Giants’ Victory over Cubs.”

38. “Two From White Sox,” Washington Herald, August 15, 1908, 8.

39. Johnson was in his first full season in the big leagues in 1908 and he had been inconsistent up to that point. His August 14 outing was his third shutout of his career and the most impressive so far. “Two From White Sox.”

40. In the first game in Yankees club history, played on April 22, 1903, in Washington, Senators manager Tom Loftus had his team bat first. The Yankees batted last at American League Park and lost, 3-1. Loftus also had the Senators bat first at home for the first two games of the 1902 season. No American League manager chose to bat first at home more frequently than he did. According to the Retrosheet game log files, Loftus chose to bat first in 1.9 percent of home games between 1901 and 1903. He began managing in the big leagues in 1884 with the Milwaukee Brewers of the Union Association.

41. Chance was in his first and only full season with the Yankees. He also played first base in both games of the doubleheader; the Yankees’ regular first baseman, Hal Chase, had worn out his welcome in New York and was traded to the White Sox the previous day. First baseman Babe Borton, who was acquired by the Yankees in the Chase trade, had not yet reported for duty. Martin Kohout, “Hal Chase,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 10, 2022; “Chance Trades Chase to Chicago,” Dunkirk (New York) Evening Observer, June 2, 1913, 7.

42. Mike Grahek, “Clark Griffith,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 10, 2022.

43. “Macks Hit and Score at Will in a Soft Bargain-Day Bill with Senators,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 27, 1913, 10.

44. Johnson had a career year in 1913. The 25-year-old went 21-2 for the rest of the season to finish with a 36-7 record and a 1.14 ERA. The extraordinary effort earned him the first of his two American League MVP Awards.

45. Kohout, “Hal Chase.”

46. Jack Zerby, “June 25, 1914: Buffalo and the Sheriff Greet Hal Chase on His ‘Day’ at Federal League Park,” SABR Games Project. Accessed November 11, 2022.

47. Zerby, “June 25, 1914: Buffalo and the Sheriff Greet Hal Chase on His ‘Day’ at Federal League Park.”

48. The court ruled in Chase’s favor because his contract with the White Sox lacked mutuality-the team could terminate his contract on 10-days notice, but Chase did not have that ability. Zerby, “June 25, 1914: Buffalo and the Sheriff Greet Hal Chase on His ‘Day’ at Federal League Park.”

49. Terry Bohn, “Happy Chandler,” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 11, 2022.

50. J. G. Taylor Spink, Baseball Guide and Record Book 1950 (St. Louis: Charles C. Spink & Son, 1950), 93. Accessed November 11, 2022: https://archive.org/details/baseballguiderec1950stlo/page/92/mode/2up?q=Recodified.

51. Perhaps the most significant change to the rule book was the redefinition of the strike zone. The upper portion of the strike zone was changed from the shoulders to the armpits. The lower portion was more precisely defined as the “top of his knees” instead of just “knees.” Fritz Howell, “Chandler Predicts Few Players to Be Drafted,” Idaho Falls (Idaho) Post-Register, 11; Spink, Baseball Guide and Record Book 1950, 524; J.G. Taylor Spink, Baseball Guide and Record Book 1948 (St. Louis: Charles C. Spink & Son, 1948), 591. Accessed December 12, 2022: https://archive.org/details/baseballguiderec1948stlo/page/590/mode/2up.

52. Connolly also umpired in one American League game in 1932 (July 31 at Cleveland).

53. Howell, “Chandler Predicts Few Players to Be Drafted.”

54. According to Retrosheet data, Connolly also umpired a bunch of National League games in which the home team batted first between 1898 and 1900.

55. Wilbur Bentley, “Angle Shots,” Albuquerque Journal January 11, 1950, 12.

56. This is under the assumption that the definition of the “home team” is aligned with the one adopted by Baseball Reference and Retrosheet. By their definition the home team is the one playing in its home ballpark-not necessarily the team batting last. In neutral site games, the home team is the one batting last. E-mails with Retrosheet President Tom Thress, October 13, 2022.

57. David Andriesen, “Home Teams Sweep Doubleheader,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 27, 2007, D-1.

58. Rory Costello, “Olympic Stadium (Montreal),” SABR BioProject. Accessed November 11, 2022.

59. For statistical purposes, all 13 relocated games were considered road games for the Montreal Expos.

60. For statistical purposes, all 13 relocated games were considered road games for the Seattle Mariners. The issues with the Kingdome roof surfaced on July 19, 1994, forcing the Mariners to play on the road for the remainder of the season. They would have played many more “home” games on the road had the players’ strike not canceled all games beginning on August 12. Bob Condotta, “Ten Years After the Kingdome files Fell,” Seattle Times, July 19, 2004. Accessed November 11, 2022: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20040719&slug=tile19.

61. “The Boys of Winter?,” Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, April 10, 2007, C-1.

62. The bad weather also forced the three-game series between Cleveland and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to be moved to a neutral site (Milwaukee) on April 10-12.

63. The addition of a game on May 21 required the approval of the players’ union because it forced the Mariners to play games on more than 20 consecutive days. They played on 23 consecutive days (May 15 to June 6).

64. David Ginsburg, “M’s Will Make Three Trips to Cleveland for Makeups; but Fourth Game Snowed Out in April Is Moved to Seattle,” The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington), May 5, 2007, B-5.

65. The Group of Twenty (G20) is an organization comprised of the world’s major economies, including the United States and Canada. “Canada and the G20,” Government of Canada. Accessed November 13, 2022: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/g20/index.aspx?lang=eng.

66. Ken Fidlin, “The Good,” Toronto Sun, June 25, 2010, S-31; Jennifer Yang, “A World of Security in the Heart of the City,” Toronto Star, May 29, 2010, GT-3; Justin Skinner, “Downtowners Looking to Get Out of Town for the Weekend,” City Centre Mirror (Willowdale, Ontario), June 24, 2010, 1.

67. Kenyon Wallace, “G20 Shuts Down Trains, Jays and Musicals in Toronto,” Edmonton Journal, June 5, 2010, A-5.

68. “2010/06/25 Recap: PHI 9, TOR 0,” YouTube. Accessed November 13, 2022: https://youtu.be/YXgmALFSW3o.

69. The DH was used in World Series games in alternate years between 1976 and 1985. John Cronin, “The Historical Evolution of the Designated Hitter Rule,” SABR Baseball Research Journal (Fall 2016): 12. Accessed November 13, 2022.

70. As of November 2022, U2’s 360° tour was still the highest grossing tour after adjusting for inflation. It was surpassed in 2019 in unadjusted dollars by Ed Sheeran’s Divide tour. Gabrielle Olya, “28 of the Highest-Grossing Concert Tours of All Time,” Yahoo Finance, July 21, 2020. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/28-highest-grossing-concert-tours-175633028.html.

71. Jordan Levin, “U2 and Bono: Connecting the Universe,” Miami Herald, July 1, 2011, B-5.

72. Phil Rogers, “Time to Gaze at Stars,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 2011, 3-3.

73. The Marlins briefly escaped the NL cellar in attendance in 2012 with the opening of their new home, Marlins Park. They returned to having the lowest attendance in the league in 2013. As of the end of the 2022 season, the Marlins had not yet escaped the NL cellar in attendance (no fans were allowed during the COVID-shortened regular season of 2020).

74. Sun Life Stadium was originally known as Joe Robbie Stadium. It was the home of the Marlins from 1993 to 2011. Levin, “U2 and Bono: Connecting the Universe.”

75. “Late Friday; Mariners 5, Marlins 1,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 26, 2011, 4-C.

76. Associated Press, “Rain Washes Out Reds-Giants,” Sidney(Ohio) Daily News, July 5, 2013, 13.

77. Janie McCauley, “Reds Split DH After Missed Chances,” Advocate-Messenger (Danville, Kentucky), July 24, 2013, B-2.

78. Amelia McDonell and Justine Barron, “Death of Freddie Gray: 5 Things You Didn’t Know,” Rolling Stone, April 12, 2017. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/death-of-freddie-gray-5-things-you-didnt-know-129327.

79. Kevin Rector and Justin Fenton, “Doctor Defends Autopsy Ruling,” Baltimore Sun, June 11, 2016, A-1.

80. McDonell and Barron, “Death of Freddie Gray: 5 Things You Didn’t Know.”

81. “Freddie Gray’s Death in Police Custody – What We Know,” BBC News, May 23, 2016. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32400497.

82. The April 27-28 games between the White Sox and Orioles were replayed as a May 28 twin bill in Baltimore.

83. Mike Huber, “April 29, 2015: Orioles and White Sox Play for Normalcy in Empty Stadium,” SABR Games Project. Accessed November 14, 2022.

84. Eduardo A. Encina, “Schedule Shifted After Rioting,” Baltimore Sun, April 29, 2015, B-1.

85. Roger Mooney, “Rays Right at Home Even as Road Team,” Tampa Tribune, May 2, 2015, S-1.

86. “5 Years Later: Hurricane Irma in Florida,” Federal Emergency Management Agency, August 29, 2022. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/5-years-later-hurricane-irma-florida; Associated Press, “Hurricane Irma Caused 400 Senior Deaths in Florida, Study Finds,” Orlando Sentinel, October 14, 2020, B-5.

87. “Brewers Set to Host Marlins,” (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal, September 14, 2017, B-2.

88. Steve Wine, “Marlins-Brewers Series Moved to Milwaukee,” Naples (Florida) Daily News, September 14, 2017, C-6.

89. Associated Press, “Stuck on Road, Marlins Lose 6th in Row,” Palm Beach Post, September 16, 2017, C-5.

90. Dayn Perry, “Timeline of How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Impacted the 2020 Major League Baseball Season,” CBS Sports, July 29, 2020. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/timeline-of-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-impacted-the-2020-major-league-baseball-season.

91. The National League Championship Series and the World Series had limited fans in attendance in 2020. All other regular-season and playoff games were played with no fans present. Jordan McPherson, “Prospects Face Major Loss with Minors Canceled,” Miami Herald, July 1, 2020, A-11; “Fan Friendly: Spectators Return to Park as NLCS Opens in Texas,” Daily Press (Newport, Virginia), October 13, 2020, B-5.

92. Perry, “Timeline of How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Impacted the 2020 Major League Baseball Season.”

93. Mike Axisa, “Dr. Anthony Fauci Warns Marlins COVID-19 Outbreak Could Put MLB Season ‘In Danger’,” CBS Sports, July 28, 2020. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/dranthony-fauci-warns-marlins-covid-19-outbreak-could-put-mlb-season-in-danger.

94. Ben Walker, “MLB Will Play 7-Inning Games in Doubleheaders,” Daily Journal (Flat River, Missouri), August 1, 2020, C-2.

95. The shortened 60-game regular season in 2020 had the most double headers since 1984. Tom Goldman, “Baseball Made It, So Far, through a Pandemic; Football Hopes to Follow,” National Public Radio, September 28, 2020. Accessed November 14, 2022: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/28/917707419/baseball-made-it-so-far-through-a-pandemic-football-hopes-to-follow.

96. Goldman, “Baseball Made It, So Far, through a Pandemic; Football Hopes to Follow.”

97. The St. Louis Cardinals did not play a game between July 29 and August 15 because of a significant number of COVID-19 cases among players and staff. Only two of the four games between the Cardinals and Detroit Tigers originally scheduled for August 3-6 were played. Jeff Seidel, “Don’t Shame the Cards for Virus Outbreak; Praise Tigers for Staying Healthy,” Detroit Free Press, August 4, 2020, B-1.

98. Mark Davis, “July 30, 2021: Blue Jays Play First Home Game in Canada in Nearly Two Years,” SABR Games Project. Accessed November 15, 2022.

99. The minor leagues were shut down for the 2020 season because of the pandemic. Associated Press, “Blue Jays Will Play in Buffalo,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 25, 2020, WS-5.

100. Laura H. Peebles, “July 29, 2020: Toronto Blue Jays Play ‘Home’ Opener in Washington, Lose to Nationals,” SABR Games Project. Accessed November 15, 2022.

101. “Roundup; MLB Suspends Dodgers’ Kelly 8 Games for Throwing at Astros,” Miami Herald, July 30, 2020, A-16.

102. A three-game series in Seattle scheduled for September 1-3 was canceled because of a positive COVID test in the Oakland Athletics’ traveling party. Two of the games were rescheduled in Seattle (September 14 doubleheader), while the other was shifted to Oakland (Game 2 of September 26 doubleheader). Lauren Smith, “Mariners Series Against A’s Rescheduled as Doubleheaders Later This Month,” News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington), September 2, 2020, B-1.

103. Lauren Smith, “Mariners vs. Giants Postponed Due to Poor Air Quality in Seattle,” News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington), September 16, 2020, B-2.

104. Anything above 100 is considered unhealthy for “sensitive” groups. Brandon Block, “Hazardous Air across Washington Could Last for Days,” The Olympian (Olympia, Washington), September 16, 2020, A-4; “Air Quality Index (AQI) Basics,” AirNow.gov. Accessed November 15, 2022: https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-basic/.

105. The contest was played as the first game of an August 5 twin bill at Citizens Bank Park. Scott Lauber, “‘Weird’ Day Ends in Defeat,” Philadelphia inquirer, August 4, 2020, D-1.

106. Associated Press, “Angels Strike Early to Earn Doubleheader Split,” Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California), August 27, 2020, B-3.

107. Brian Mahoney and Tim Reynolds, “Six NBA Playoff Teams Make Bold Statement,” Spo/resman-R’eview (Spokane, Washington), August 27, 2020, B-2.

108. Christina Morales, “What We Know About the Shooting of Jacob Blake,” The New York Times, November 16, 2021. Accessed November 15, 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/article/jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha.html; Joe Barrett, “Jacob Blake Shooting: What We Know About the Shooting in Kenosha,” Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2021. Accessed November 15, 2022: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jacob-blake-shooting-11598368824.

109. Bob Nightengale, “Baseball (Finally) Takes a Stand,” Palladium-Item (Richmond, Indiana), August 28, 2020, B-1.

110. Three games were canceled on August 26, followed by seven more the next day, and one on August 28.

111. The Blue Jays had decided to play on August 27. “Player Protests,” London(Ontario) Free Press, August 28, 2020, 8; Peter Abraham, “Bradley, Sox Agree to Sit,” Boston Globe, August 28, 2020, C-1.

112. Associated Press, “Jays: A Win on the Road, a Loss at Home in Fenway Doubleheader,” Toronto Star, September 5, 2020, S-4.

113. The Rays were planning on playing on August 27. It was rescheduled for the second game of a September 17 doubleheader in Baltimore. Marc Topkin, “The Rays Unite with the Orioles and Opt Not to Play. ‘Obviously the World Is Much More Important than Just Sports’,” Tampa Bay Times, August 28, 2020, C-1.

114. The day after the Twins and Tigers jointly decided not to play their August 27 game in Detroit in support of the racial injustice boycott, their game was postponed because of rain, resulting in the second game of a September 4 doubleheader being played in Minnesota. Omari Sankofa II, “Tigers, Twins Opt for Not Playing,” Detroit Free Press, August 28, 2020, B-1.

115. The Blue Jays opened the 2021 regular season at their spring-training home in Dunedin before moving back to Sahlen Field on June 1. They played their first game since 2019 at the Rogers Centre on July 30, 2021. Aside from the one game in Anaheim on August 10, the Jays played the remainder of their 2021 home schedule at the Rogers Centre. Mike Harrington, “A Second Home,” The Citizen (Auburn, New York), June 2, 2021, B-1; Davis, “July 30, 2021: Blue Jays Play First Home Game in Canada in Nearly Two Years.”

116. Mike Axisa, “MLB Lockout Ends: What’s Next for Baseball as MLBPA, Owners Reach Agreement and Get Ready for 2022 Opening Day,” CBS Sports, March 13, 2022. Accessed December 19, 2022: https://www.cb-ssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-lockout-ends-whats-next-for-baseball-as-mlbpa-owners-reach-agreement-andget-ready-for-2022-opening-day.

117. Three days were also added to the end of the regular season. “MLB Announces Revised 2022 Regular-Season Schedule,” MLB.com, March 16, 2022. Accessed December 19, 2022: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlbrevised-2022-regular-season-schedule.

118. With a more balanced schedule having been introduced for the 2023 season, that milestone may be reached even sooner than one might expect. The 2023 schedule had all 30 teams playing each other for at least one series. This decreased the number of home series against each team in the same division from three to two and increased the number of times a team made one and only one visit to a city. The number of divisional games was reduced from 76 to 52 and interleague games were increased from 20 to 46. Non-divisional intraleague games were re duced from 66 to 64. Mike Axisa, “MLB Releases 2023 Schedule: All 30 Teams Will Face Each Other in New Format; Opening Day on March 30,” CBS Sports, August 25, 2022. Accessed November 15, 2022: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-releases-2023-schedule-all-30-teams-will-face-each-other-in-new-format-opening-day-on-march-30.

On the surface, baseball does not appear overly complex. Not only is the sport easy enough for millions of children to understand and play in their Little League games, its charming simplicity is one of the many reasons it was adopted as “America’s Pastime.” However, as both the interest and capital involved in professional baseball have drastically in creased, so too have the measures taken by teams to ensure their victories. Since the dawn of sabermetrics, our vision of baseball has become both much clearer and cloudier: although analysis does reveal many in sights, one of them is that baseball is an intricate system that we have only begun to understand.

An important aspect of the game’s strategy is the pitch-by-pitch decision making taking place through out a plate appearance. The nature of this matchup between the pitcher-catcher duo and a batter is sequential. The pitcher acts and is met with a reaction by the batter, a process that iterates until the batter either fails or succeeds to reach base. There are two domains of behavior sequences to consider when analyzing the pitcher vs. batter matchup: the sequential behavior of the pitcher, and the sequential behavior of the batter. I refer to the former, the sequence of strategic decisions that a pitcher makes throughout an at-bat, as sequential pitch behavior. A pitcher’s sequential pitch behavior can be divided into several subfactors, each concerned with one of the variables over which the pitcher has control. For example, a pitcher may vary the type of pitch thrown (e.g., fastball vs. breaking pitch), the velocity at which it is thrown, or the in tended target area of the strike zone. In this paper, I will exclusively discuss location sequence behavior— how pitchers use strategic decisions about locations within the strike zone to retire batters.

Any behavior is closely linked to previous behaviors, and to fully understand an action it may be important to consider the influence of the previous action(s). A pitcher’s sequential pitch behavior is heavily influenced by their history, and a key factor in deter mining future pitching behavior is the success of previous behaviors within a certain time period such as a single game or a series of previous at-bats against a particular batter. The more success a previous behavior brought a pitcher within a time period, the more likely he will be to use it in certain future situations. This is known in psychology as conditioning. Due to individual differences in both brain functioning and pitching strategies, it is difficult to determine the correct number of occurrences of previous behaviors (a.k.a. the length of the behavior sequence) to consider when quantifying the influences that led to the cur rent behavior. In this paper I will discuss two-pitch sequences, particularly two-pitch location sequence behavior—a behavior sequence containing the strike zone location that a pitch was thrown in, and the location that the following pitch was thrown in.

In the sections below, pitchers will be grouped together according to similarities in their two-pitch location sequence behavior to analyze how these behavior sequences are related to pitching success. The philosophy behind my approach is not unique—grouping players based on the similarities they show in relevant behaviors has been successfully implemented by the titans of sabermetrics. For example, Bill James used his Similarity Scores to define the difference be tween the careers of two players, a method he described in depth in the 1994 book Politics of Glory.1 Similarly, Nate Silver’s PECOTA projection system works on the assumption that players who show similar behavior patterns will, on average, have a comparable amount of success.2 Within this well-explored research philosophy, my approach is unique due to the use of machine learning techniques to analyze specific pitch-by-pitch behavior.

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

The present paper is concerned with the strategic decision-making process that takes place between a pitcher and a batter as they face off throughout an at-bat. I analyze two-pitch sequences of the strike zone locations that pitchers target to investigate how location sequence behavior across a full season relates to performance metrics (batting average against, slugging percentage, etc.).

I present a statistical model to quantify the two-pitch location sequence behavior of pitchers, and subsequently partition them by the similarities they show in their sequential behaviors. Once pitchers are grouped, I test for differences across a range of performance metrics. All topics are discussed in further depth in the following sections.

I am unaware of any other study that does an analysis similar to what is described below. A recent study by Arnav Prasad, presented at the MIT Sloan sports analytics conference, conducted a novel analysis of pitch sequencing using directed graph embeddings to quantify pitcher patterns, after which they group pitcher based on these patterns.3 However, the author did not associate the pitcher groups with performance metrics as the present study does.

METHOD

Pitchers

Pitch-by-pitch data were collected for every pitcher in the American League who threw more than 1,450 pitches in the 2019 MLB season. The pitch count cutoff was set around the edge of less-often-used starting rotation pitchers and often-used bullpen pitchers. Eighty-seven pitchers were included in the analysis (pitch count range=1,466-5,228, M = 2,588.71, SD = 863.14). This was a convenience sample. All data were acquired through Baseball Savant’s Statcast database on MLB.com.4

Data Analysis

Data analysis took the following path: First, each pitcher was defined by a transition matrix derived from their two-pitch location sequence behaviors with a discrete time Markov chain (DTMC). Second, pitchers were partitioned according to similarities in these behaviors using three different cluster analysis algorithms. Lastly, Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) were conducted to test for differences in various performance metrics be tween the pitcher groups created by the cluster analysis. (The method described here is similar to that of Rahman et al., 2018.5)

Markov chains quantify behavioral sequences by accounting for the probability that one state transitions to another state. DTMC’s rely on the assumption that the transition to the next state is solely dependent on the previous state—this is otherwise known as the Markov property. The states in a Markov chain are context dependent. In the current study, the states that pitchers are transitioning between are the strike zone location that the previous pitch was thrown in, and the location of the following pitch. Strike zone locations were coded by the Statcast database at Baseball Savant online. See Figure 1 for a visualization. (Please note that the Statcast database does not include a tenth zone for undisclosed reasons.)

 

 

Pitcher two-pitch location sequence behavior was then defined by a transition matrix containing the probability for each possible state-to-state transition: i.e., the probability of transitioning from location one back to location one, location one to location two, and so on through to location 14 to location 13, and lastly location 14 to location 14. The probability that a pitcher transitioned from location one to location two was equal to the number of times he followed a pitch in location one with a pitch in location two divided by the total number of times he threw a pitch in location one. I added a delimiting state of begin at-bat so that the Markov chain would not attribute the first pitch of an at-bat to the last pitch of the previous at-bat. With 13 strike zone location states and one delimiting state, pitcher behavior was defined across their prob abilities for all 196 possible state-to-state transitions in a 14 x 14 transition matrix.

After pitchers were defined by their two-pitch location sequence behaviors, they were partitioned with an extended cluster analysis approach. Pitchers were clustered through three different cluster analysis algorithms—k-means, hierarchical, and spectral—after which the variation of information method was used to determine the single best clustering. I will avoid dis cussing cluster analysis in much depth. (Please see Kettenring’s 2006 work for a general overview of the approach.6 For an example of cluster analysis in baseball research, see Dvorocsik, Sarris, and Camp’s paper in the spring 2020 issue of the Baseball Research Journal.7)

Traditional k-means clustering employs the use of an elbow plot to determine the number of groups [k] that best fits the data. However, hierarchical and spectral algorithms use other methods. In this method, I use the elbow plot to suggest a range of clusterings from each of the three algorithms. The elbow plot suggested a k range of three to seven, creating fifteen different solutions for grouping pitchers. To determine the best solution, the variation of information technique was used to compare each possible pairing of clusterings and choose the most efficient algorithm/grouping.8

RESULTS

Pitchers were first defined by the 14 x 14 transition matrix containing the probabilities they showed for each possible state transition, after which they were partitioned according to their similarities in the 196 transition variables. Subsequent analyses suggested that the most efficient algorithm was k-means clustering with five groups. See Table 1 for the members of each of the five created pitcher groups.

A series of one-way between-subjects ANOVAs were conducted to test for differences in performance metrics between the created pitcher groups. A total of nineteen ANOVAs were performed. To be economic, I will report the specific statistics for only the significant tests. The ANOVAs each met the assumptions for homogeneity of variance, and post hoc comparison p values were adjusted using the Bonferroni correction to control for false positives.

There were no significant differences found be tween the five pitcher groups for the following performance metrics: Isolated Power (ISO), Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP), Slugging Percentage (SLG), Weighted On-base Average (wOBA), Expected Weighted On-base Average (xwOBA), Walks and Hits Per Inning Pitched (WHIP), O-Swing%, O-Contact%, Z-Swing%, hits, total pitches, and at-bats.

Significant differences were found between pitcher groups in seven performance metrics: spin rate, pitch velocity, batted ball exit velocity, surrendered batting average against (BAA), expected batting average against (xBAA), adjusted earned run average [ERA + ], and Z-Contact%. For all significant test statistics, see Table 2. For the means and standard deviations of each group in each performance metric, see Table 3. See the following paragraphs for the post hoc comparisons, and Table 4 for a visualization.

 

 

Tukey’s post hoc analysis found that the average spin rate of Group One was significantly lower than: Group Three, p = .04, Four, p =.003, and Five, p = 0.012. Group One also showed significantly lower batted ball exit velocity than Group Two, p=.037. Please refer to Table 3 for the means of each group.

Pitcher Group One had significantly lower average pitch velocity than groups: Two, p = .003, Four, p <.001, and Five, p =.004. Additionally, Group Four showed significantly higher average pitch velocity than Group Three, p = .003.

Group Four exhibited significantly lower average BAA compared to Groups One, p=.048, and Two, p = .011. Group Four also showed significantly lower xBAA than Group Two, p = 005. Additionally, Group Four had significantly higher ERA+ than pitcher Group Two, p = .044.

Lastly, Group Four showed the lowest overall Z-Contact% and significantly lower average Z-Contact% than Groups One (p = .029) and Two (p<.001). Additionally, Group Three showed significantly lower Z-Contact% than Group Two (p=.004).

DISCUSSION

Pitchers were defined by their two-pitch location sequence behaviors and subsequently grouped together according to their similarities. Upon their grouping, a range of ANOVAs were performed to test for differences in performance metrics. Significant differences were found in six of the ANOVAs, and post hoc comparisons found that many of the significant effects included pitcher Groups One or Four. It must be highlighted that testing for significance is a methodology that was devised for non-baseball phenomena, and differences in baseball metrics that do not reach significance may still be highly relevant to the game. In this paper I use significance to highlight the metrics in which the groups showed the largest differences, and to set an informal cut-off for which differences to explore in further depth below.

 

 

Many of the performance metrics did not show significant differences between groups. This was expected, as pitchers were classified on a granular level. Given the complexity of baseball strategy, it is unlikely that these low level behaviors would be a major contributor to most metrics of success. Additionally, many of the metrics in which differences were tested for are dependent on several other metrics. For example, the calculation for expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) is especially intricate. As the complexity of performance metrics increases, granular behaviors such as the ones studied presently are likely to have their effects diluted, hindering any significance that may have been revealed in a less complex metric.

Tests of differences between total pitches and at-bats were included to ensure that no group differed significantly in use. Significant differences were not found between the groups for either variable, suggesting the effects that were found were not a result of pitch level sample size differences.

The ANOVAs did reveal significant differences be tween pitcher groups in six performance metrics: spin rate, pitch velocity, batted ball exit velocity, BAA, xBAA, and ERA+. Each test offers insight into how two-pitch location sequence behaviors may be related to pitching success. Differences in spin rate and pitch velocity suggest that pitching mechanics are related to how pitchers transition between strike zone locations. Additionally, significant differences in average batted ball exit velocity may suggest that certain location sequence behavior patterns (i.e., the ones shown by Group Two) are less effective than other patterns in limiting batter contact.

BAA, xBAA, ERA +, and batted ball exit velocity are each important performance metrics. The significant differences found between groups in these metrics suggests that two-pitch location sequence behavior may be directly related to metrics indicative of high performance. It must be noted that pitching behavior was not manipulated, and this model and accompanying analyses cannot be used to make direct causal claims. However, the differences found suggest that successful pitchers on average display different two-pitch location sequence behaviors than pitchers with lower performance. It may be that players who engage in some sequence behavior patterns are also engaging in other actions that are responsible for their success.

It should be noted that pitch location sequence behavior is likely related to the pitch types and movements that pitchers use. Many pitchers favor a specific pitch when the count is favorable for recording an out. For example, pitchers who rely on fastballs are likely to pitch in the higher third of the zone in two strike counts to strike batters out, while pitchers with a re fined sinker may utilize the bottom third of the zone more often.

I will now focus on Groups One and Four in more depth.

Pitcher Group One

Group One performed poorly in relation to the other groups (Tables 1-4). Out of sixty-eight career seasons, members of Group One have appeared in two All-Star Games (2.9%), have thrown one career no-hitter (Wade Miley, 2021), and have received zero Cy Young Awards. They showed significantly lower spin rate in relation to three other groups, lower pitch velocity than three other groups, and a higher batting average against than Group Four. Further analysis showed that of the five groups, Group One showed the lowest probability to use 65 out of the 196 (33.16%) possible state transitions. This suggests that there were many two-pitch location sequence behaviors that the pitchers in Group One very rarely used, likely leaving their pitching patterns more predictable than the other groups.

Pitcher Group Four

Opposite to Group One was Group Four, who showed very high performance compared to the rest of the sample (see Table 5). These pitchers have been elected to 21 All-Star Games out of 124 cumulative career seasons (16.9%). Additionally, 5 out of the 11 pitchers from the 2019 MLB All-Star Game included in this sample belonged to this group. Group Four boasts three Cy Young Awards (Justin Verlander, 2011 and 2019; Rick Porcello, 2016), two future Cy Young Awards (Trevor Bauer, 2020; Justin Verlander, 2022), and two future Reliever of the Year Awards (Liam Hendriks, 2020 and 2021). This group has also thrown four career no-hitters, including two of the previous three at the time of this writing (Justin Verlander, September 1, 2019; Lucas Giolito, August 25, 2020). Group Four has also been well compensated for their success. In 2019, Gerrit Cole signed the largest contract for a pitcher in MLB history ($324 million), and his previous team mate Justin Verlander’s 2023-4 contract is currently tied (Max Scherzer) for the highest average annual value (AAV) in MLB history at $43.3 million.

 

 

The significant differences found through the ANOVAs, along with the distribution of accolades would suggest that the two-pitch location sequence behaviors that pitchers were grouped by are related to pitching success, and perhaps played a role in how pitchers were able to achieve their success. However, the number of transition probabilities offers some challenges when drawing conclusions on how the groups acted differently from each other. With 196 variables to consider, a comprehensive review would be arduous to write, and even more painful to read. This clustering method offers many options for gathering insights, and I will discuss three here: I will address two specific insights that may be drawn, and then end with a case study.

First, Group Four showed the highest probability for 61 out of the 196 (31.12%) possible state transitions, the highest of the groups. After Group Four, Group One showed the highest probability for the second highest number of transitions (41/196; 20.91%). This suggests that pitchers in Group Four varied their two-pitch location sequence behaviors more than the other groups, which may have made their behavior less predictable to the batter. Similar trends arise when considering how often each group used each two-pitch sequence. Group One showed a higher probability to transition from lo cation five to the end of the at-bat (43.15%) than any other group’s probability of making any two-pitch sequence. The highest two-pitch sequence probability for the other groups were as follows: Group Two (41.43%), Group Three (38.52%), Group Four (36.20%), and Group Five (37.56%). Thus, Group Four’s highest prob ability for a single transition (i.e., zone location 1 to location 5) was the lowest out of the groups (by a slight margin). In other words, Group Four showed a more equal distribution of two-pitch transitions, and did not rely heavily on any specific sequences.

A closer look at the strike zone locations that pitcher groups most often ended their at-bats with offers additional insight into how Group Four was different from the others. Of the 13 possible transitions of strike zone location that could end an at-bat, Group Four placed last (out of the five groups) in ten, second to last in one, and first in the other two. Not only were they much more likely to end their at-bats by attacking strike zone locations seven and 13 when compared to the other groups, they were much less likely to end their at-bats in the other locations. Considered in light of the previous findings, these results suggest that while the pitchers in Group Four vary their two-pitch location sequence behavior more than the other groups, they show a higher tendency to focus on a small number of locations towards the end of an at-bat.

 

 

CASE STUDY

Justin Verlander’s Third Career No-Hitter

All results presented thus far were concerned with data over a full year. I will end with a brief case study of how this model may be used to analyze smaller sections of data: a single game. On September 1, 2019, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Justin Verlander threw his third career no-hitter. Upon analyzing his two-pitch location sequence behaviors, three trends are immediately apparent. Verlander threw 120 pitches that day, and with 28 added begin at-bat transition variables he showed 148 state transitions. Verlander’s 148 two-pitch sequences were distributed across 83 unique transitions. Notably, 52 out of the 83 (62.65%) two-pitch sequences were only used once, and no sequence was used more than five times. Verlander did very well to avoid pitching predictably, which likely contributed to the Blue Jays’ struggles that night.

However, despite this tactical variance, there were certain situations in which Verlander opted to continue previous behavior trends. Out of the 28 batters faced, the first pitch to 13 of them (46.42%) were in strike zone locations three (four first pitches; three to right handed batters and one to left handed batters), 11 (four first pitches; two to both RHB and LHB), or 12 (five first pitches; two to RHB and three to LHB). Addition ally, 16 of the 28 (57.14%) plate appearances ended with pitches in locations five (five PA endings; three to RHB and two to LHB), nine (six PA endings; one to RHB and five to LHB), or 14 (five PA endings; four to RHB and one to LHB). See Figure 2 for a visualization-shaded locations were often attacked by Verlander to begin at-bats, while striped locations ac counted for over half of the recorded outs.

During his no-hitter on September 1, 2019, Justin Verlander showed situational variance-during certain stages of an at-bat he was tactically unpredictable, using many different unique state transitions through out the game. However, during other stages of the game he remained resolute and continued the behaviors he had success with earlier, e.g., towards the beginning and end of at-bats. These findings continue the trends found in the yearly data-the pitchers in the most successful group showed high variance in their two-pitch location sequence behaviors in some situations, but constrained their behavior in others.

 

 

Limitations and Future Directions

The present study had several limitations. First, I am not as much working in the realm of Big Data as I am in quasi-Big Data. Baseball offers a vast wealth of data to pull from, and only analyzing one variable (lo cation) for one year (2019) does not offer as much insight as could be gleaned from a larger data set. Thus, it cannot be assumed that the pitching behaviors observed here are representative of behaviors dis played by pitchers in other years. Additionally, the year from which the data were collected may be slightly confounding. The 2019 MLB season was marred by a “juiced ball” controversy in which a vocal portion of players and fans believed that the league-issued base balls were doctored to increase the frequency of home runs. Regardless of whether the baseballs had been tampered with, the belief that they were likely had some influence on pitching behaviors.

The relatively large number of ANOVAs that were conducted increased the risk of encountering both Type I and Type II errors, though the Bonferonni correction was used for pairwise comparisons. More data and follow-up tests are required to test the robustness of the revealed effects.

Lastly, Markov models are drastically simplified abstractions of complex pitching behaviors, as they only consider the transition between two states. Future studies should consider employing more robust methods, such as neural networks or graph network analysis. However, due to the exploratory nature of the present study I opted to use a DTMC for its tractability and ease of explanation.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study presented a model for grouping pitchers by their pitch-by-pitch behavior, and results suggested that certain recorded behaviors may con tribute to pitching success. Pitchers in the most successful group showed situational variance, in which they pitched stochastically in some situations and more predictably in others. Trends were revealed at both year-level data and through a single game case study. 

JOHN Z. CLAY is research assistant at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the System Integration and Design Informatics Laboratory, where he conducts research on human creativity, mindfulness, engineering systems thinking and generative design. Mr. Clay has a passion for baseball analytics and encourages interested parties to contact him via email at john.za.clay@gmail.com.

 

Notes

1. Bill James, The Politics of Glory: How Baseball’s Hall of Fame Really Works (Macmillan, 1994), 86-106.

2. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail— But Some Don’t (Penguin, 2012), 74-107. For a description of the approach PECOTA takes see chapter three.

3. Arnav Prasad, “Decoding MLB Pitch Sequencing Strategies via Directed Graph Embeddings,” 15th Annual MIT SLOAN Sports Analytics Conference, 2021.

4. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com.

5. Molla H. Rahman, Michael Gashler, Charles Xie, and Zhenghui Sha, “Automatic clustering of sequential design behaviors,” International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Vol. 51739, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2018.

6. Jon R. Kettenring, “The practice of cluster analysis,” Journal of Classification 23, no. 1 (2006) 3-30.

7. Gregory Dvorocsik, Eno Sarris, and Joseph Camp, “Using Clustering to Find Pitch Subtypes and Effective Pairings,” Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2020.

8. Marina Meilâ, “Comparing clusterings—an information based distance,” Journal of Multivariate Analysis 98, no. 5 (2007): 873-95.

When judging the greatness of a baseball player’s career by whatever metrics one may put stock in, we weigh them from two perspectives:

1. Total Value: How much did they accomplish in their career? How many years did they play at a high level? What career milestones did they achieve?

2. Peak Value: How productive were they in their very best seasons? Were they ever regarded over any statistically meaningful time period as one of the top few players in MLB?

The most exalted players in the Hall of Fame (HoF)—Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter John son, Hank Aaron, Rogers Hornsby, Honus Wagner, Cy Young, etc.—were elite on both counts; one need not overthink their HoF qualifications. But many less exalted players, both inside and outside of the HoF, were elite from one perspective but not the other. At the two extremes, we have “marathoners” like Don Sutton, who compiled elite career totals (324 W, 3,574 SO) in 23 seasons but never came close to winning a Cy Young award, and we have “sprinters” like Sandy Koufax, who won three Cy Young awards and an MVP award in four seasons (1963-66) but pitched only 12 seasons and won only 165 games. Both are worthy Hall of Famers, but they got there by very different paths.

Over the last two decades, the Wins Above Re placement metric (WAR), which combines the contributions of different performance elements, weighted according to their contributions to team wins and adjusted for the environment in which a player’s statistics were accrued, has become the metric of choice for global evaluation of player performance.1,2 WAR is superior to traditional counting stats like HR, RBI, W, and SO because it incorporates many diverse elements of performance that contribute to team wins and adjusts for the environment (league, ballpark, era) in which a given player performed. But while career WAR is a reasonable measure of the total value of a player’s accomplishments, we have not had a good measure of peak value.

Jay Jaffe invented a WAR-based composite score called the Jaffe WAR Score (JAWS), which purports to combine total and peak value into a single global performance metric to assess a player’s qualifications for the HoF.3,4 JAWS is the simple average of career WAR (the total value component) and the combined WAR (WAR7) for the player’s seven best seasons (the peak value component). The problem with this method is that WAR7 is a poor measure of peak value, especially for pitchers. While hitter usage has remained relatively constant since the advent of the 154-game schedule in the 1890s (with the notable exception of the Negro Leagues), seven seasons has a very different meaning for pitchers of different eras.

In the 1870s, teams played only 2-3 games per week, and 90% of the innings were handled by a single pitcher.5 Now, 150 years later, we have 13-man pitching staffs (not counting frequent call-ups of fresh arms from the minor leagues) with relief pitchers taking on an ever increasing share of the workload. Today, few individual pitchers accrue as many as 200 IP per season. So, the 11,633 batters faced (BF) by Cy Young in his best seven seasons is more than double the 5,752 BF by Clayton Kershaw in his best seven sea sons.6 In this context, Kershaw’s 47.7 WAR7 really represents a higher “peak” performance rate per 1,000 BF than Young’s 79.1 WAR7 (8.3 versus 6.8 WAR per 1,000 BF).7 As for relief pitchers, Mariano Rivera faced only 5103 batters in his entire career but still accrued 56.4 WAR—an even better production rate (11.1 WAR per 1000 BF) than Kershaw’s peak. However, comparing production rates over disparate numbers of BF is unfair to Cy Young, because this would require Young to maintain peak effectiveness over twice as many BF as Kershaw. We need a peak value measure that compares like numbers of BF for pitchers and like numbers of PA for hitters.

I will now present a new construct called Standardized Peak WAR (SPW), which is designed to compare peak values of players who received vastly differing annual PA or BF opportunities. SPW is standardized to 3,250 PA for batters and 5,000 BF for pitchers. The former number represents five 650-PA seasons for batters, 650 PA being a typical total for a healthy everyday player hitting near the top of the lineup over 150-160 games. The latter number represents five 1,000-BF seasons, where 1,000 BF represents a typical workload for a regular starting pitcher from 1909-88.8 In the 1880s, pitchers like Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, Pud Galvin, and Tim Keefe among others posted insanely high WAR totals (near 20) while amassing 600 + IP and 2500 + BF. Since 2006, only three pitchers—CC Sabathia (1,023 BF in 2008), Felix Hernandez (1,001 BF in 2010), and David Price (1,009 BF in 2014)—have logged as many as 1000 BF in a season. The detailed calculation of SPW and a comparison of rankings by WAR and SPW are presented below.

METHODOLOGY

The Baseball-Reference.com version of WAR for pitchers and for non-pitchers as of December 2022 is the underlying performance metric used in the calculation of SPW.9 For Negro Leaguers, I have used the comparable WAR values from the Seamheads database, which incorporates statistics from both MLB-certified and uncertified leagues (and thus recognizes the achievements of players of color who played before 1920 and those who played mostly in Cuba and Mexico).10 I have calculated SPW for every player in the HoF and for every MLB player with career batting or pitching WAR ≥ 30. The calculation of SPW is illustrated below for two mid-20th century icons, Sandy Koufax (Table 1) and Mickey Mantle (Table 2).

 

 

One first calculates “standardized WAR” (sWAR) per 1000 BF for pitchers or per 650 PA for hitters for each season and sorts the seasons in descending order. Then one adds up the WAR for each season until reaching 5,000 cumulative BF or 3,250 cumulative PA. SPW is obtained by interpolating between the cumulative WAR values just before and just after the BF or PA threshold is crossed. For pitchers with <5,000 BF or non-pitchers with <3,250 PA, SPW is defined as their career WAR.

Note that the SPW construct cannot combine hit ting and pitching stats for a single player within any single season. For players with significant career value as both hitters and pitchers (e.g., Babe Ruth, Martin Dihigo, Bullet Rogan, Wes Ferrell), I have used the higher of their SPW for hitting and pitching.

One could as easily use the FanGraphs version of WAR or other similar metrics for this purpose.11 Indeed, a similar approach can be applied to any appropriate cumulative (as opposed to rate) stat.

RESULTS: PITCHERS

Values of total pitching WAR and SPW for the 80 pitchers with SPW ≥ 32.0 are listed in Table 3 (opposite). Of the 71 pitchers who have been retired for at least five years, 44 (62%) are in the HoF as of January 2023 (indicated in boldface type). As many as six others (Clemens, Schilling, K. Brown, Cicotte, Finley, and perhaps Pettitte) have been kept out of the HoF by issues unrelated to their accomplishments on the field. (Note that SPW values are not adjusted for alleged PED use.) Seven of the listed pitchers (shown in italics) are still active.

 

 

Two surprising features stand out from this table. First, the all-time SPW leader is reliever Mariano Rivera, who averaged more than 11 WAR per 1,000 BF over his 5103-BF career. SPW does not generally favor relievers over starters, but Rivera was an exceptional case. Rivera is one of only four relievers with SPW ≥ 32 and is the only one who pitched exclusively as a modern closer. Eckersley spent the first half of his career as a starter before becoming a one-inning closer, while Gossage and Wilhelm were multi-inning relievers, who also started 37 and 52 games, respectively, over the course of their careers. While it is easier for a reliever to post a high sWAR in a single 250-BF season than it is for a starter to do so in a 1,000-BF season, Rivera (who totaled only 5,103 BF in his 19-year career) had to produce at an elite level without a single bad season to achieve his 56.4 SPW. No other one-inning reliever has even come close to doing this.

Second, and just as strikingly, 12 of the top 16 SPW totals were posted by pitchers who were active in the twenty-first century, including four who were still active in 2022. In that respect, the SPW leaderboard stands in stark contrast to the career leaderboard for pitching WAR, in which only three of the top 16 pitchers (Clemens, R. Johnson, and Maddux) pitched into the twenty-first century and seven (Young, W. Johnson, Nichols, Alexander, Mathewson, Keefe, and Plank) pitched before 1920. This contrast largely reflects the elimination by SPW of the opportunity advantage enjoyed by old-time pitchers. However, the modern practice of protecting starters from pitching past the 6th or 7th inning may also tilt SPW in their favor.

Of the 80 pitchers listed in Table 3, 31 (39%) had <60 career pitching WAR. They fall into the following categories:

1. Three Negro Leaguers: Mendez, Williams, and R. Brown. They were great pitchers, whose career totals—including WAR—underestimate their true body of work, much of which is lost to history.
2. Three active pitchers: deGrom, Sale, and Kluber. Most players (except for late bloomers) come close to attaining their final SPW by their early 30s.
3. Three relievers—Rivera, Gossage, and Wilhelm. It is virtually impossible for any pure reliever— even Rivera—to face enough batters to accrue 60 WAR.
4. The remaining 22 belong to the group I call “sprinters,” who pitched brilliantly over 5,000 BF but were prevented by injury or inconsistency from amassing 60 career WAR. Saberhagen, Koufax, and Santana (with six Cy Young awards and an MVP among them) are illustrative examples. This group of 22 pitchers has not been favored by HoF voters; Koufax and Mordecai Brown are the only Hall of Famers among them.

On the other side of that coin, we find 18 pitchers with SPW < 32 who sustained their value long enough to compile at least 60 WAR. They are listed in ascending order of the ratio of SPW/WAR (expressed as a percent) in Table 4. Two-thirds (12) of these pitchers are in the HoF, and Sabathia will be a strong HoF candidate when he becomes eligible in 2025. While the pitchers at the bottom of this list either barely made the 60-WAR cutoff or barely missed the 32 SPW cutoff, the top 12 pitchers could aptly be considered “marathoners.”

 

 

The contrast between the two prototypes-sprinters and marathoners—is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, which graphically represent the season-by-season accrual of WAR, with seasons ordered by descending WAR per 1000 BF as in Table 1. Figure 1 shows the cumulative WAR accrual trajectories of two Hall of Famers who posted similar career pitching WAR almost 100 years apart, Pedro Martinez (86.1 WAR in 1992-2009) and Eddie Plank (87.5 WAR in 1901-17). Although both men exceeded the 60 WAR threshold, they followed very different tracks to get there. Martinez posted a 53.6 SPW—the best of any starting pitcher—topped by 21.5 WAR in 1,652 BF (265 composite ERA + ) in 1999-2000. Eddie Plank mustered only a 32.3 SPW with 16.4 WAR in 2,383 BF in his two best seasons (1904 and 1908). Yet, while Martinez burned out in his early 30s, Plank pitched effectively to age 41 and eventually accumulated more WAR than Martinez. Both were legitimate Hall of Famers, but Pedro is the one on the short list for the best of all time.

Figure 2, which compares the career WAR accrual trajectories of Mariano Rivera and three HoF starters— career pitching WAR leaders Cy Young and Walter Johnson and classic “marathoner” Don Sutton, illustrates the remarkable fact that Mariano Rivera managed to amass more WAR than anyone else in history in any combination of seasons totaling 5,000 BF. Of course, this does not imply that Rivera had a better overall career than Young or Johnson, who went on to face an additional 24,565 and 18,405 batters, respectively, and amass an additional 124.7 and 102.6 pitching WAR beyond their SPW. Rivera faced only 103 batters beyond 5,000 BF and accrued no additional WAR beyond his SPW. We can never know what Rivera might have done as a starting pitcher with an extra 15,000 BF to work with—not as well as Johnson or Young perhaps, but almost certainly better than “super-compiler” Don Sutton, who faced 16,528 more batters than Rivera with only 12 more WAR to show for it.

Rivera also clearly outshone “sprinter” Sandy Koufax (Table 1), who faced almost twice as many batters (9497) in his career while amassing 3.2 fewer pitching WAR than Rivera. Also, on Rivera’s side of the ledger are his stellar 0.70 ERA and 0.759 WHIP in 527 BF in postseason competition (which do not factor into WAR calculations), which were even better than his in-season 2.209 ERA and 1.0003 WHIP, which in turn rank 13th and 4th, respectively, on the all-time pitching leaderboards. Furthermore, Rivera compiled his stats in the so-called “Steroid Era,” while Young and Johnson each pitched for at least 11 years in the pitcher-friendly Deadball Era.

Finally, there are 15 HoF pitchers with total WAR < 50 and SPW < 30, well beyond striking distance of the 60 WAR and 32 SPW thresholds. They include:

• Three Negro Leaguers: Andy Cooper, Leon Day, Hilton Smith. They each have < 3000 BF on record.
• Four modern relief pitchers: Rollie Fingers (6942 BF), Trevor Hoffman (4388 BF), Lee Smith (5388 BF), Bruce Sutter (4251 BF). Not being Mariano Rivera, none could accrue more than 28 WAR in so few BF.
• Eight others: Charles Bender, Jack Chesbro, Burleigh Grimes, Jesse Haines, Catfish Hunter, Jim Kaat, Rube Marquard, Jack Morris. They simply did not have either the total or peak WAR to make the grade, despite more than ample BF totals.

RESULTS: POSITION PLAYERS (NON-PITCHERS)

The SPW results for non-pitchers are less surprising than those for pitchers, since their WAR values are generally not distorted by huge opportunity disparities across different eras. Still, the SPW leaderboards for non-pitchers with SPW ≥ 32, which are broken down by position in Tables 5-7, give prominence to several nineteenth century players whose stats were diminished by the shorter schedules they played, catchers (who generally receive fewer PA per season than other players), players like Williams and DiMaggio, who missed several prime seasons in wartime military service, and—most significantly— pre-1947 players of color, who were confined to the Negro Leagues. As in Table 3, Hall of Famers as of January 2023 are shown in boldface type, and active players are in italics.

Because there were fewer C and 2B with SPW ≥ 32 than other IF and OF, I have extended the leaderboards for those positions to SPW ≥ 30; the extra players are shaded gray.

Of the 152 non-pitchers with SPW ≥ 32 (unshaded portions of Tables 5-7), 131 players have been retired for at least five years; 100 (76%) of them are in the HoF as of December 2022. Six others (Bonds, A. Rodriguez, J. Jackson, McGwire, Giambi, and Sosa) have been kept out of the HoF by allegations unrelated to their accomplishments on the field. The list of Hall of Famers includes 11 players who were elected as Negro Leaguers, including two—Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson—whose SPW values place them among the top 10 peak hitters in MLB history.

The 52 (34%) of these players with <60 career WAR fall into the following categories:

1. Nine Negro Leaguers: Gibson, Lloyd, Stearnes, Hill, Wilson, Moore, Irvin, Suttles, and Leonard. These were great players, whose career totals—including WAR—underestimate their true body of work, much of which is lost to history. But we have at least 3,250 recorded PA for each of them—enough to earn them a place on the SPW leaderboard. All but Moore are in the HoF.
2. Ten active players: Betts, Judge, Correa, Longoria, Arenado, Goldschmidt, Machado, Donaldson, Harper, J. Ramirez. Most will likely finish with > 60 WAR.
3. Ten catchers: Gibson (who also appears in the first list), Piazza, Bennett, Campanella, Ewing, Mauer, Dickey, Bresnahan, Cochrane, and Schang. Indeed, only four catchers (Bench, Carter, Rodriguez, and Fisk) have ≥ 60 career WAR, since most need frequent rest and many break down in their early 30s. All except Mauer (not yet eligible), Bennett, and Schang are in the HoF.
4. The remaining 24 are the “sprinters,” who played brilliantly over 3,250 PA but were prevented by injury or inconsistency from amassing 60 career WAR. Prominent examples are Gordon, Greenberg, and Keller, whose careers were curtailed by wartime military service, and Kiner, Sisler, Tulowitzki, and Wright, who were derailed by injury in their early 30s. This group of 24 hitters has fared better than their pitching counterparts with HoF voters; nine of the 21 eligible players (41%) are in the HoF.

The SPW tables do show some mildly surprising results. For example, among outfielders Mantle outranks Aaron, Ted Williams outranks Mays, and among infielders Banks outranks Ripken, although the second player in all three pairings has the higher career WAR. However, modern players do not dominate the SPW leaderboard for hitters as they do for pitchers; the lofty historical rank of active mid-career players Trout and Betts is noteworthy but hardly surprising.

There are 28 non-pitchers with career WAR>60 whose SPW falls below 32 (Table 8).

 

(Click images to enlarge)

 

The 10 players at the bottom of this list either barely made the 60 WAR cutoff or barely missed the 32 SPW cutoff. But the top 18, including such luminaries as Pete Rose and Derek Jeter, can be aptly described as marathoners. Sixteen of the 28 players listed (57%) are Hall of Famers, but only Rose, Killebrew, and Suzuki ever won an MVP award. Ichiro will likely be elected when he becomes eligible in 2024, and Rose would be in the HoF already but for his gambling. The HoF candidacies of Ramirez, Palmeiro, and perhaps Sheffield have lost traction due to their PED-related histories. Ramirez, Sheffield, and Abreu remain on the BBWAA HoF ballot; Whitaker and Dwight Evans have received significant recent support from the Veterans Committee.

 

 

Figure 3 (analogous to Figure 1) compares the career WAR accrual trajectories of two hitters with similar career WAR totals—Joe DiMaggio with 79.1 WAR over 7672 PA in a 13-year career shortened by injuries and three years of wartime military service and Pete Rose, who amassed 79.6 WAR in more than twice as many (15,890) PA spread across 24 seasons, the last seven of which were at or below replacement level. Both had legitimate HOF credentials (setting aside Rose’s disqualification), but DiMaggio was far and away the more impactful player in his prime.

Finally, there are 37 HoF non-pitchers with total WAR < 50 and SPW < 30—well beyond striking distance of the 60 WAR and 32 SPW thresholds. They include:

• Five catchers: Ferrell, Lombardi, Mackey, Schalk, Santop. (Mackey and Santop also appear on the Negro League list.) WAR consistently undervalues catchers.
• Six Negro Leaguers: Bell (6747 PA). Brown (2324 PA), Dandridge (2547 PA), Johnson (4345 PA), Mackey (4340 PA) and Santop (1977 PA). The statistical records are skimpy for all except Cool Papa Bell. I have not counted Buck O’Neil (elected largely for his non-playing contributions), nor Bud Fowler or Frank Grant (almost no data).
• Twenty-eight others: Baines, Bottomley, Brock, Combs, Cuyler, Duffy, Evers, Fox, Hafey, Hodges, Kell, Kelly, Lazzeri, Lindstrom, Manush, Maranville, Mazeroski, McCarthy, Oliva, J. Rice, Rizzuto, Roush, Schoendienst, Thompson, Traynor, L. Waner, Ward, Youngs. They simply did not have either the total or peak WAR to make the grade, despite more than ample PA totals.

IMPACT OF PED

I have noted above that the SPW ≥ 32 leaderboards (Tables 3 and 5-7) contain several players who have been implicated as PED users. We do not have reliable time lines of PED usage for most of these players, but the chronologies for Bonds (who allegedly began using PED in 1999) and Clemens (who allegedly began using in either 1997 or 1998) are well documented.12,13 In Figures 4-5, the overall career WAR accrual trajectories for Clemens and Bonds are compared to the truncated trajectories that include only their pre-PED seasons.

Clemens’s SPW fell from fourth (49.4) to eighth (45.1) among all pitchers when his 1997-2007 seasons are excluded. Bonds’s SPW fell from second (55.8) to 14th (46.9) among all non-pitchers after his 1999-2007 seasons, which include his four best seasons (2001-4), are excluded. The “PED years” clearly inflated Bonds’s SPW more than that of Clemens. However, even with out his alleged steroid seasons, Bonds’s SPW still outstrips such luminaries as Eddie Collins, Lou Gehrig, Tris Speaker, Rickey Henderson, Stan Musial, Mike Schmidt, Henry Aaron, Mel Ott, and nearly everyone else who ever played MLB. Like Clemens, Bonds did not need steroids to place him among the greatest players of all time.

 

DISCUSSION

Peak as well as total value has always been considered in the HoF selection process. As Bill James has phrased it, we think of “black ink”—triple crowns, ERA titles, etc.—and major awards. when we anoint our Hall of Famers.14 We esteem the accomplishments of players like Sandy Koufax, who spent a half-decade among the elite players in baseball, even though their career totals may not be especially impressive. However, while WAR has given us a comprehensive (If Imperfect) metric for career value, we have lacked a fair and unbiased quantitative measure of peak value. Jaffe’s WAR7, which he uses to calculate JAWS, is a poor indicator of peak value because the WAR values for a player’s best seven seasons are often based on widely differing numbers of opportunities to produce value, i.e., PA for hitters or BF for pitchers.

Obviously, WAR systematically undervalues players whose careers were confined to the Negro Leagues. The HoF has been addressing this issue systematically by delegating it to a special committee with appropriate resources and historical expertise. SPW validates most of their selections where sufficient data exist.

The biggest issue for other hitters is the systematic undervaluation of catchers by career WAR (which is only partially addressed by SPW). However, HoF voters have done a pretty good job of using subjective criteria to honor catchers with < 60 WAR who had high peak value. The only glaring omission is nineteenth century catcher Charlie Bennett whose late-career effectiveness was hampered by injuries and who ultimately lost his leg in a train accident. HoF voters have also done a reasonably good job of honoring other worthy high-peak hitters like Greenberg, Sisler, and Kiner, who fell well short of 60 WAR.

The absence of a standardized measure of peak value has been far more problematic for pitchers due to the huge historical disparity in the distribution of BF. Jaffe’s unstandardized WAR7 grossly overestimates the peak value of nineteenth century pitchers (who often pitched 400-650 innings per season) and underestimates the peak value of relief pitchers (who now pitch about 60 innings per season) and modern starters (who now pitch 180-200 innings per season). While HoF voters have recognized the inadequacy of WAR-based metrics for relief pitchers, they have over looked the elite peak performance rates of pitchers like Johan Santana, Bret Saberhagen, Kevin Appier, and David Cone, who did not compile impressive career totals. Jaffe himself has recently introduced a fudge factor to modify the calculation of JAWS to correct for these inequities (s-JAWS and r-JAWS).15 But if we really want a fair and unbiased estimate of peak value, we need to replace the seven-season construct by one based on a standard yardstick of a fixed number of PA or BF. That is what Standardized Peak WAR does.

The specific choices of 3,250 PA and 5,000 BF to be the yardsticks for computing SPW, intended to represent five full-time seasons for the typical mid-twentieth century player, are somewhat arbitrary. They are meant to be a large enough body of work to exclude the “flashes in the pan” who have one or two flukish seasons, but short enough to include great players who received limited opportunities to accrue WAR. If I had chosen 4,550 PA and 7,000 BF to align more closely with Jaffe’s WAR7, Negro Leaguers and relief pitchers would not have fared as well.

When we compare the leaderboards for SPW with those for WAR, we see some striking differences. First, we see the Negro League hitting and pitching stars assume their rightful place among the all-time greats. Josh Gibson’s 51.2 SPW leads all catchers by far, despite his modest 57.0 career WAR. Oscar Charleston’s 54.0 SPW ranks behind only Ruth, Hornsby, and Bonds among all hitters. On the pitching side, Satchel Paige’s 46.0 SPW ranks seventh, behind only Rivera, Martinez, W. Johnson, Clemens, R. Johnson, and Maddux.

Second, we see modern starting pitchers—even active ones like Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer, and Greinke—move to the fore. While their diminished work loads hold back their values of WAR, WAR7, and JAWS, their peak value (as measured by SPW) is probably enhanced by being better rested than their workhorse predecessors. Still, the best of the old-timers—W. Johnson, Young, Grove, Mathewson, Alexander, etc.—hold their own on the SPW leaderboard.

Third, we see 14 catchers with SPW ≥ 32, versus only four with WAR ≥ 60 and five with JAWS ≥ 50. However, I would argue that catchers are still under valued by SPW—just not as badly. I don’t think WAR captures the full defensive value of catchers, who are the only defenders except pitchers who have a hand in every pitch. Yadier Molina is widely predicted to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but his SPW is only 26.4.

Fourth, a relief pitcher, Mariano Rivera, tops the SPW pitching leaderboard. However, even SPW can do little for most modern one-inning relievers. In terms of WAR per 1,000 BF, Billy Wagner (38.6) is the most impressive of any post-1990 closer except Rivera. But this is based on only 27.8 WAR in only 3,600 BF (the equivalent of about 1.3 Hoss Radbourn seasons). Wagner has received significant HoF support, but I am not convinced that his total value is enough to warrant his selection for the HoF.

SPW is not meant to be a stand-alone stat to deter mine who belongs in the HoF. Quantity as well as quality still matters. One could follow in Jaffe’s footsteps and combine WAR and SPW to form a comprehensive JAWS-like statistic. Unfortunately, the contribution of SPW, which ranges only up to 61.4 (for Babe Ruth), would be swamped in a simple average by the contribution of WAR (which exceeds 160 for Bonds, Ruth, and Young). I prefer my own invention, the Gordon Career Value Index (CVI), which begins with WAR and awards extra credit for all seasons in which WAR> 5.0 per 650 PA or 1,000 BF.16 An added advantage of CVI is that, unlike SPW, it incorporates both hitting and pitching value in a single metric and thus gives full credit to two-way players and good-hitting pitchers.

Although WAR is the best comprehensive performance metric we have, it has limitations. The methodology for calculating WAR is opaque and differs across plat forms. Also, since Baseball-Reference.com periodically tweaks their WAR calculations, many of the SPW values in this article may have changed by the time you read it. The positional adjustments and defensive component of WAR for non-pitchers are somewhat arbitrary and do not necessarily reflect the state of the art. I also believe that WAR undervalues the defensive value of catchers and overly penalizes designated hitters for their absence of defensive value.

The key point of this analysis is that the evaluation of any player’s qualifications for the HoF should include the height of their performance peak—not just career totals. JAWS does not do this well because its measure of peak value reflects widely varying numbers of BF or PA. The SPW methodology introduced here standardizes peak WAR to 5,000 BF for pitchers and 3,250 PA for non-pitchers. Thus, one can fairly compare the SPW of players of all eras—those who played 60-game or 162-game schedules, those who played 12 or 24 years, those who lost substantial time to injuries or military service, those who spent much or all of their careers in the Negro Leagues, and pitchers who started 90% or 15% of their team’s games or even those who pitched only in relief.

DAVID J. GORDON, MD, PhD is a retired cardiovascular clinical trialist, formerly with the National Institutes of Health. Since his retirement he has written two books, Baseball Generations and The American Cardiovascular Pandemic: A 100 year History, and has contributed several articles to the Baseball Research Journal.

 

Sources

1. Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained, https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml.

2. Keith Law, Smart Baseball, Harper Collins, 2017, 183-203.

3. Jay Jaffe, Cooperstown Casebook, St. Martin’s Press, 2017, 22-27.

4. Baseball-Reference.com, Jaffe WAR Score System (JAWS), https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/jaws.shtml.

5. David J. Gordon, Baseball Generations, Summer Game Books, 17-38.

6. Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com.

7. Baseball-Reference.com, Starting Pitcher JAWS Leaders, https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml.

8. Baseball-Reference.com, Year-by-Year Top-Tens Leaders & Records for Batters Faced, https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batters_faced_top_ten.shtml.

9. Baseball-Reference.com, Year-by-Year Top-Tens.

10. Seamheads Negro League Database, Wins Above Replacement, 1886-1948, https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/history.php?tab=metrics_at&first=1886&last=1948&lgID=All&lgType=All&bats=All&pos=All&H0F=All&results=100&sort=Tot_a.

11. FanGraphs, https://www.fangraphs.com.

12. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Game of Shadows, Gotham Books, 2006.

13. Frederick C. Bush, SABR Biography of Roger Clemens, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b5a2be2f.

14. Bill James, Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?: Baseball, Cooperstown, and the Politics of Glory, Fireside Books, 1994, 1995.

15. Baseball-Reference.com, Jaffe WAR Score System (JAWS).

16. David J. Gordon, Using Career Value Index (CVI) to Evaluate Hall of Fame Credentials of Negro League Players, Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2022, 51:112-21.B

It has been over 20 years since Baseball Prospectus developed the statistic “Wins Above Replacement Player” (WARP), and 12 years since Sean Smith’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was first posted on Baseball-Reference.com.1 WAR now is widely recognized as a useful metric for assessing a ballplayer’s overall performance.

Several performance-based awards are given to players each year, with three of them based on balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA): the Most Valuable Player Award, the Cy Young Award, and the Rookie of the Year Award.2 If balloters cast their votes for the players with the best statistics (and WAR is a valid measurement of their performances), then the top vote getters should be the non-pitchers with the highest WARs and the pitchers with the highest pitching WARs (pWARs). This paper explores the relationships between WAR and the win ners of the three ballot-based performance awards over the years.

THE MVP AWARD AND WAR

The BBWAA has chosen MVP awards for each league since 1931. Previous incarnations of the MVP award include the Chalmers Award, which was given out from 1911 to 1914, and League Awards, which were given out from 1922 to 1929. The winners of these awards are not included in this study, mainly because previous winners were not eligible to win again, invalidating one of the bases of this study.

The BBWAA does not offer a clear definition of what “most valuable” means, leaving the judgment to the individual voters. Among its official criteria are the player’s “strength of offense and defense,” the number of games played, and the player’s “general character, dis position, loyalty and effort.”

Initially, one BBWAA writer in each city with a team filled out a ten-place ballot, with ten points for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on. The BBWAA began polling three writers in each league city in 1938, and reduced that number to two in 1961. Beginning in 1938 more weight was given to the first-place vote, increasing it from 10 points to 14.

Several previous studies have tried to identify the statistical drivers that correlate well with MVP ballot ing, including Wood (1999), whose dataset also begins in 1931, and Hanrahan (2003), which uses 1938 as its starting date. Silver (2003) was an early study using sabermetrics as its basis, which used WARP3, a derivative of WARP.

This paper assesses the relative weight placed on individual-based statistics, team-based statistics that are not used to determine bWAR, and subjective factors. MVP winners since 1931 are grouped by decade and then by their bWAR ranking. Excluded from this analysis are instances where relievers were named league MVP, because relievers invariably have much lower bWARs than non-pitchers and starting pitchers.3

Figure 1 shows how often the players in the top five in bWAR in their league have been the MVP. In the first 20 years of the modern MVP award, it was quite common for the MVP to be in the top 5 in bWAR. Only MVP winners Frankie Frisch (1931), Mickey Cochrane (1934), Gabby Hartnett (1935) and Marty Marion (1944) were not in the top 5 in bWAR.

 

 

MVP winners with bWARs outside the top 10 became much more common in the 1970s. Table 1 lists the 12 MVP winners since 1970 who finished outside the top 10 in bWAR. Nine of these MVP awardees played for division-winning teams. The three exceptions—Jeff Burroughs, Andre Dawson, and Ryan Howard—led the league in RBIs, a team-dependent statistic not used in calculating bWAR.

MVP winners with relatively low bWAR-related metrics all but disappeared by 2008. In the last 15 seasons, only one MVP winner (Bryce Harper in 2021) failed to finish in the top 5 in bWAR (Harper finished ninth among non-pitchers). Sixteen of the last 28 MVPs led their league in bWAR.

 

 

How have the league leaders in bWAR fared in MVP balloting? Figure 2, which shows how frequently the league leader in bWAR finished in the top 5 in MVP balloting, has many similarities to Figure 1. It shows the same drop in the 1950s, fewer players in the 1960s, and even fewer in the 1980s. The relationship between MVP winners and bWAR leaders has been even more pronounced in the last 12 years than the relationship between top MVP vote-getters and bWAR. All 26 MVP winners dating back to 2010 have been in the top three in bWAR.

Whereas there is an increased preference for players with high bWARs, in certain time periods there was an even higher preference for players with high offensive WARs (oWARs). Figure 3 shows how often players in the top 5 in oWAR for their league have won the MVP award. Voters clearly leaned toward high oWAR in the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s. Since 2011, the difference between bWAR and oWAR in MVP balloting has all but disappeared

In summary, MVP voters have long used offensive statistics to inform their choices for the MVP award (excluding pitchers). In the “Analytical Age” (James 2020), their choices continue to be aligned with offense, although they are more closely aligned with bWAR, which also takes into account defensive metrics and does not take into account team-based statistics. The reason for this change may be the increased awareness and general acceptance of bWAR as a valid statistic for measuring a player’s performance.

 

(Click image to enlarge)

 

THE CY YOUNG AWARD AND pWAR

From 1956 to 1966, the BBWAA issued just one Cy Young Award per year, after which awards were given to one pitcher in each league. In 1956 and 1957, Cy Young Award winners were ineligible to win a second time. Writers voted for only one pitcher until 1970, when each writer was allowed to vote for three pitchers, with the first-place vote worth five points, the second-place vote three points, and the third-place vote one point.

As shown on Figure 4, pitchers who led their league or were close to the league lead in wins, a team-based statistic, usually won the Cy Young Awards for most of the award’s existence (the graph excludes relievers who received the Cy Young Award, since relievers are rarely among the league leaders in wins).4 This dynamic changed in 2010, when Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young Award with just 13 wins. Jacob deGrom in 2018 and 2019 and Corbin Burnes in 2021 won the Award with 10, 11, and 11 wins, respectively, suggesting that the pattern has permanently changed. An exclamation point was added to this dynamic when Kyle Wright, the only 20-game winner in 2022, finished a distant tenth in Cy Young balloting.

Conversely, starting in the mid-1980s (long before the Analytical Age), there has been a pronounced in crease in the alignment between Cy Young balloting and the metrics that are used to calculate pWAR, as shown on Figure 5. In the last five years, five of the ten Cy Young award winners (deGrom in 2018 and 2019, Burnes in 2021, as well as Trevor Bauer in 2020 and Sandy Alcantara in 2022) have not finished in the top 5 in wins. Wins and pWAR are clearly going in different directions.

 

 

THE ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AWARD AND bWAR

The BBWAA has selected Rookies of the Year since 1947. In the first two years of the award, only one player was chosen from both leagues. Starting in 1949, ROY awards have been given in each league. Until 1957, the term “rookie” was undefined, and voters were given discretion regarding who qualified as a rookie. In 1971, rookies were defined as players with fewer than 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched, or 45 days on the active roster of a major league club (excluding time in military service or on the injury list) before September 1. Since 1980, voters have named three rookies on their ballots, with five points going to their first-place choice, three points to their second-place choice, and one point to their third-place choice.

How do the ROY winners shape up with regard to bWAR? Since the number of rookies receiving votes has varied widely and there is no handy list of players who are rookies in a given year, the ROY winners are compared only with the other rookies who received votes that year.

Table 2 shows the percentage of ROY winners who had the highest bWAR among vote-getters. From 1949 to 1981 and from 1992 to 2001, roughly half the ROY winners had the highest bWAR among vote-getters. Of particular note is the huge jump in ROY winners with the highest bWAR since 2010.

 

 

Table 3 shows the difference between the bWAR of the ROY winner and the vote-getter with the highest bWAR (excluding years in which vote-getter with the highest bWAR won). As with Table 2, Table 3 shows a drastic decrease in the difference between vote-getters with the highest bWAR and the bWAR of the seven ROY winners from 2011 to 2022 who didn’t have the highest bWAR.

 

 

In conclusion, rookies with relatively high bWARs fared far better in ROY balloting in the past twelve years than in the previous 62 years. As in the case of the MVP award, this change aligns with the increased awareness and general acceptance of bWAR as a valid statistic for measuring a player’s performance.

CONCLUSIONS

In the last 12 years, votes for the MVP and Rookie of the Year awards have become closely aligned with performance as measured by modern sabermetrics, specifically by bWAR and pWAR. These alignments correspond to the date when bWAR was first posted on Baseball-Reference.com. The Cy Young Award, which has been aligned with the metrics taken into account by pWAR since the mid-1980s, has since 2010 shown a decreased alignment with a pitcher’s win total, a team-based statistic that is not used in calculating pWAR. The timing of these changes with the increased availability of bWAR statistics is most likely causational. 

BENJAMIN ALTER published an article in the Fall 2022 Baseball Research Journal. Last summer, he co-delivered a paper at SABR’s annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference. Prior to retiring in 2021, he was a principal with an environmental consulting firm, authored a textbook on environmental consulting, and was an adjunct professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). When not pursuing his passion for baseball, Mr. Alter pursues his many other passions, including music, fitness, history, and geology.

 

Sources

Baseball Almanac. 2008. Rookie of the Year Award/Jackie Robinson Award.

Baseball-Reference.com. Last accessed on November 16, 2022.

Baseball-Reference.com. WAR Comparison Chart, accessed on October 26, 2022.

Baseball-Reference.com. WAR Explained, accessed on October 26, 2022.

Baseball Writers Association of America website: bbwaa.com, accessed on October 26, 2022.

Cely, Monte (2007). “The Cy Young Award: Individual or team recognition?” Baseball Research Journal No. 35, 48-51.

Gillette, Gary and Pete Palmer, 2007. The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia (Fourth ed.). New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1763.

Hanrahan, Tom, 2003. An MVP voting model (Part I). By the Numbers, Vol. 13 No. 3, 18-28.

James, Bill, 2020. “Three looks at the MVPs.”

billjamesonline.com/three_looks_at_the_mvps/, accessed on October 29, 2022.

Kepner, Tyler. 2011. “Where Do You Find Value? Discussing the M.V.P Criteria.” The New York Times, SP3.

Silver, Nate, 2003. “Lies, Damned Lies: WARPed MVP voting.” Baseball Prospectus.

Vass, George, 1998. “History of the rookie award filled with controversy.” Baseball Digest. 57 (7): 26.

Wood, Rob, 1999. What drives MVP voting? By the Numbers, Vol. 9 No. 1, 12-17. [10].

 

The major league baseball clubs of Cleveland and Cincinnati have much in common. They call the same state home. Both have established a proud tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century, and have enjoyed success and endured failure. They are mid-market teams who can afford to compete when managing resources wisely, but can’t afford to buy their way out of their mistakes.

In the 1960s both teams traded away popular home grown slugging outfielders. The Indians traded away Rocky Colavito, and the Reds traded away Frank Robin son. In both cases the fan base reacted negatively. Both players thrived for their new teams while their old teams continued to struggle. And both trades are still ubiquitous today on lists of “worst trades of all time.”

Yet within a short period of time after these two trades were consummated, the fates of these two clubs diverged. The Cincinnati Reds bounced back to enjoy a dominant decade of success as the Big Red Machine. The Cleveland Indians descended into a pattern of futility that lasted 35 years. Veteran Cleveland sports-writer Terry Pluto even wrote a book about it, titled The Curse of Rocky Colavito.1

But the “common wisdom” in baseball isn’t always the whole truth. Using the tools of modern-day saber-metrics, such as Wins Above Replacement, we take a fresh look at the fates of the two ballclubs in the wake of the trades and demonstrate how and why they diverged. We will begin with the Colavito trade, then the second Colavito trade, followed by the Robinson trade. From there we will examine some other management decisions that shaped the outcome in surprising ways. It will reveal new insights about how the business of baseball and the sport of baseball intersect, not only back then, but what it portends for the present day.

COLAVITO I: “THEY WON’T COMPLAIN IF WE WIN”

In 1959 the Cleveland Indians made a surprisingly strong run for the American League pennant. Although the team fell five games short behind the champion Chicago White Sox, they put on a great show that captured the hearts of Cleveland fans. Nearly 1.5 million of them paid their way into Municipal Stadium, reversing a four-year trend of declining attendance and ending speculation about a franchise relocation to Minneapolis.

Credit for the resurgence went to general manager Frank Lane, known as “Frantic Frank” and “Trader Lane” because of his obsession with trading players. In fact, many of the players Lane brought into Cleveland via trades contributed to the team’s 1959 success.2 Rather than rest on his laurels, Lane engaged in an other trading frenzy to improve the club for the 1960 season. Gone were the team’s best all-around player (Minnie Minoso), its winningest pitcher (Cal McLish), and its most promising rookie (Gordy Coleman). But the trade that rocked the fan base most occurred just before opening day when Lane shipped AL 1959 home-run champ Rocky Colavito to Detroit for AL 1959 batting champ Harvey Kuenn.

Rocky Colavito had been a Cleveland Indian since he was signed in 1951. He showed consistent power while working his way through the farm system. He put up good power numbers as a part-time outfielder in 1956 and as a starter in 125 of 153 games in 1957. After manager Joe Gordon installed him as the regular right fielder in 1958, he blossomed. He batted .303 with 41 home runs and 113 RBIs. His On Base Plus Slugging of 1.024 ranked him third in the American League behind only future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle.

His popularity among the Tribe faithful grew accordingly. A handsome young man with a modest demeanor, he attracted a loyal following among young people.3 During the 1959 pennant run, he had tied Harmon Killebrew for the league lead in homers with 42 and was one shy of Jackie Jensen for the lead in RBIs with 111. He cemented his hold on Cleveland fans on a muggy June night in Baltimore when he became only the second American League player to hit four home runs in a nine inning game. The other was Lou Gehrig.4

All this made his Topps baseball card the most valuable piece of cardboard in Northeast Ohio in the summer of 1959. But while Colavito’s power numbers stayed strong in 1959, his batting average dropped from .303 to .257. Lane said he wanted the team to be more balanced and less dependent on home runs. He traded Colavito to Detroit for Harvey Kuenn on April 17, 1960. The fans objected. “They won’t holler if we win,” Lane retorted.5

But they didn’t win. Many of the players Lane traded for didn’t produce: young pitchers didn’t come through and the team lacked punch. They finished fourth in 1960 at a disappointing 76-78, 21 games out. Attendance plummeted by more than 500,000.

Then in December of 1960, Lane traded away Harvey Kuenn to the Giants for pitcher Johnny Antonelli and right fielder Willie Kirkland. Kirkland was even more of a home-run-or-nothing player than Colavito. That was too much for Indians ownership and when Lane asked for a contract extension they refused. Lane left Cleveland to work for a kindred spirit, Charlie Fin ley in Kansas City. Meanwhile Colavito thrived in Detroit, while Antonelli and Kirkland flopped in Cleveland. Kirkland was himself traded away for aging outfielder Al Smith in 1963.

Table 1 documents the ugly outcome of this trade using Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as calculated by Baseball Reference6. It covers the period 1960-64. The results of this trade are unambiguous. Colavito contributed 21 WAR for Detroit and Kansas City over that five-year period.

 

 

The players Cleveland received in exchange man aged to contribute a total of only four, thus this trade cost the team a net of 17 wins over five years. And even that number is distorted by Colavito’s off season in 1960, which was probably driven by him pressing too hard after the trade.

As lopsided as this trade looks, it’s important to keep it in context. Between 1960 and 1964 the Cleveland Indians finished with a cumulative record of 392-409, a total of 113 games out of first. So, a switch of 17 games would have been nice, but would not have turned a perpetual also-ran into a contender on its own. But unfortunately for Cleveland fans, this would not be the worst of the fallout from this trade.

COLAVITO II: TRADE FROM HELL ON STEROIDS

Gabe Paul took over the reins as Cleveland’s general manager just before the start of the 1961 season. In ten years as Cincinnati’s GM, he had rebuilt their farm system and gained a reputation as a solid baseball executive. He was credited with building the Reds team that went on to win the National League pennant in 1961. But he would struggle to achieve success with Cleveland.7

Paul decided the team had endured enough turmoil with Lane’s constant shuffling of players, so he decided to stay with the team Lane had put together for the 1961 season They fared no better, finishing fifth, 30 games out. To make matters worse, players Lane had traded away made very visible contributions to their new teams. Rocky Colavito had a near MVP season in Detroit, and former Indians Norm Cash, Don Mossi, Hank Aguirre, and Dick Brown helped the Tigers make a serious run for the pennant.

The only team standing between Detroit and the championship was the New York Yankees. The Bronx Bombers featured former Tribe farmhand Roger Maris, who proceeded to beat Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. Meanwhile, former Tribe prospect Gordy Coleman provided a big bat that helped Gabe Paul’s former team capture the National League flag.

Embittered Indians fans continued to show their disgust. Home attendance dropped by another 225,000 in 1961 to a weak 726,000. While Paul changed managers twice (from Jimmy Dykes to Mel McGaha in 1962 and McGaha to Birdie Tebbetts in 1963) and shuffled players, his team couldn’t break .500. Attendance continued to fade. In 1963 it dropped yet again to a dismal 563,000, second to last in the major leagues, behind only the perennially pathetic Washington Senators.

In 1964 the Indians finished sixth, 20 games out. Attendance ticked up slightly to 653,000, but the team was losing money, and unhappy investors started looking at moving the team to greener pastures like Seattle, Oakland, or Dallas.8 Paul decided the best chance to stabilize the franchise was to bring back Rocky Colavito. Colavito had been traded by Detroit to Kansas City after the 1963 season and had done well there. Kansas City was not interested in trading with Cleveland, but Chicago was. So, Paul engineered a three-way deal where Kansas City shipped Colavito to Cleveland on January 20, 1965, while Cleveland shipped veteran catcher John Romano and two promising but untried rookies—outfielder Tommie Agee and pitcher Tommy John—to Chicago.

At first the trade paid off. In 1965 Colavito batted .287 with 26 home runs and a league-leading 108 RBIs. His presence seemed to energize the hitters around him, many of whom had career years, or near career years. Combined with a corps of young pitchers, the Indians improved to 87-75 (their first winning season since 1959), only 15 games out of first. That brought 935,000 fans back to the ballpark, the best results in five years.

The resurgent Tribe then started off 1966 with a great deal of excitement, but it would not last. Colavito hit 30 home runs, but his batting average dropped 49 points to .231 and he knocked in only 72 runs. The next year after 191 at-bats he was batting only .241 with five home runs and 21 RBIs, and was traded to Chicago on July 29. The Tribe floundered, finished fifth in 1966 and eighth in 1967. Attendance fell again, to 903,00 in 1966 and 663,00 in 1967.

Meanwhile, once again the players Cleveland had traded away blossomed. John Romano had two decent years as a part-time player for Chicago, then was traded to St. Louis where he played very little, then retired. Tommy John would go 14-7 in 1965 on his way to a stellar 26-year career with 288 lifetime wins and 62 WAR. Tommie Agee won the 1966 American League Rookie of the Year with an incredible season where he batted .273, scored 98 runs, hit 22 home runs, knocked in 86 runs, and stole 44 bases. Chicago later traded him to the Mets where he helped the 1969 Miracle Mets get to the World Series and finished sixth in NL MVP voting. Overall, his 12-year career netted 25 WAR.

If you add all these up, Cleveland traded away 92 WAR over the next 25 years and received a meager 5.5 in return—certainly a disaster that belongs in the Worst Trades of All Time pantheon. That said, the comparison might be a little unfair. No one could have foreseen Tommy John’s long career and the revolutionary reconstructive ligament surgery that prolonged it. Another way to look at this would be to assess the trade over its first five years to make it com parable to the first Colavito trade as shown in Table 2.

 

 

Compared to Colavito I, which cost Cleveland a net of 17 games over five years, Colavito II cost 32. The Frank Robinson trade completed a year later would produce yet another contrast.

ROBINSON: “NOT A YOUNG 30”

Frank Robinson debuted in left field with the Cincinnati Reds in 1956, the same year Colavito arrived in Cleveland. The 20-year-old hit 38 home runs, drove in 83 and batted .290 to capture the National League Rookie of the Year award. His OPS that year trailed only future Hall of Famer Duke Snider among all National League regulars and exceed that of future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. He went on to produce Hall of Fame numbers over the next nine years. In 1961 he bashed 37 home runs, drove in 124 and batted .323 while leading the Reds to the National League pennant and capturing the MVP award.

Robinson continued to produce after the 1961 sea son, but the Reds failed to repeat as champs. Owner and general manager Bill DeWitt decided the Reds’ Achilles Heel was poor pitching, so he traded Robin son to Baltimore for pitcher Milt Pappas and two other players after the end of the season on December 9, 1965. The fans were not pleased. DeWitt later described Robinson as “not a young 30,” his age at the time of the trade, a statement he would live to regret.9 Robinson responded, at age 30 in 1966, by winning the American League Triple Crown, the MVP award, and leading the Baltimore Orioles to a World Championship.

That finished Bill DeWitt in Cincinnati (the Reds with Milt Pappas finished seventh, 18 games out in 1966). He sold the team and went on to greener pastures. Ironically, it was DeWitt who as GM of the Detroit Tigers fleeced Frank Lane for Rocky Colavito in exchange for Harvey Kuenn.

Meanwhile Robinson continued to perform at a high level for the Orioles until they traded him in 1971. In 1975 he made history as major league baseball’s first Black manager—with the Cleveland Indians. In 1982 Frank Robinson was elected to the Hall of Fame. All this helped cement this trade as one of the worst trades in history.

William Schneider argues in an article written for the 2020 Baltimore issue of The National Pastime that this trade is not as lopsided as it seems.10 Using WAR similar to the comparison involving Colavito, Table 3 tracks the trade over the six years until Robinson was traded by the Orioles. While Robinson did in fact have a strong six years in Baltimore ( + 32.4 WAR), the players Cincinnati received in exchange accumulated + 24.5 WAR over the same period.

Milt Pappas contributed 5.7 WAR before he was traded by new GM Bob Howsam as part of a multiplayer deal that included reliever Clay Carroll. Carroll contributed 7.7 WAR over the next four years. Howsam also traded outfielder Dick Simpson, who came over in the Pappas deal, for Alex Johnson, who contributed 6.5 WAR before being traded for Jim McGlothlin, who contributed 4.6. and Pedro Borbon, who didn’t contribute much in 1969 or 1970, but would in future years. Over all, the players traded for Robinson contributed only 8.5 WAR less than Robinson over six seasons.

 

 

BOTTOM LINE

Table 4 displays the WAR of the players the trading team received in exchange for Robinson and Colavito in the first column. The second column shows what Robinson and Colavito produced for their new teams. The third column shows the net over the life of the trade. The final column shows the net on an annualized basis.

 

 

This comparison shows the trades hurt both clubs, but the impact of the Colavito trade(s) hurt Cleveland more, particularly the second one. One has to wonder if Cleveland was in fact cursed. When Robinson was traded to Baltimore, he was supposedly an “old” 30. He went on to give Baltimore six great seasons (32 WAR) and then went on to play for five more seasons to age 40 (11 more WAR). Colavito was 31 when he returned to Cleveland. He didn’t smoke, drink, or carouse and never missed significant playing time due to injury or ill health, which should have made him a “young” 31. He only lasted two more years with Cleveland before being washed up at 33.

Still, even this difference is not enough to explain the diverging path of these two clubs. In the first four years after the second Colavito trade (1965-68), the Cleveland club won an average of 82 games a year and drew an average of 840,000 fans. In the four years after the Frank Robinson trade (1966-69), the Cincinnati Reds averaged 84 wins a year and drew an average of 860,00 fans annually. But over the next four-year period, the fortunes of the two clubs diverged. The Indians dropped to 67.5 wins a year between 1969 and 1972 and average ticket sales fell to 640,000 annually. The Reds racked up 94 wins a year from 1970 to 1973 and drew an average of 1,730,000 fans a year. Cincinnati continued to do well the remainder of the decade, while Cleveland stumbled through two more decades of lackluster performance and became the laughingstock of the league. What was going on?

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

In the mid-1950s the Cleveland Indians had stood at the summit of the baseball world. Powered by general manager Hank Greenberg’s rich farm system, between 1950 and 1956 they won more games than any other team in either league except for the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers. They drew more fans than any team other than the Yankees. And they made more money than any other team but the Yankees and Dodgers. That made their owners, a consortium of local businesspeople, very happy.11

In 1954 they beat the Yankees to the American League Championship by winning a record 111 games. The upcoming talent in their farm system promised a bright future. But beginning with the 1954 World Series, their fortunes began to slump. They lost four straight to the New York Giants. They missed out on returning to the World Series in 1955 when a late season slump cost them the pennant. In 1956 they finished second again to the Yankees, but this time by nine games. The fans seemed bored with a slow and aging team that was becoming less competitive. Atten dance fell below one million for the first time since the end of World War II.

Since 1949 the team had been owned by a consortium of local businesspeople. At the end of the 1956 season, the club was still profitable and still owned by local investors, but some of the members of the consortium decided to cash out. One of those who decided to stay in was investment banker William Daley, who became the single largest shareholder with 55% of the outstanding stock. Initially Daley and the remaining owners stressed continuity. For example, they kept GM Hank Greenberg in charge and made him a minority partner. But after a disastrous 1957 season where the team fell to sixth place, 21.5 games out, and home attendance dropped for the third year in a row to a miserable 722,000, Daley and the others had a change of heart.12

They forced out Greenberg and turned to Frank Lane, who had just orchestrated a rebound for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals had finished seventh with a home attendance of 850,000 in 1955, the year Lane took over. Two years later, after a flurry of trades, the Cardinals soared to second and drew 1.2 million fans. But Lane’s relationship with Cardinals president Gussie Busch had deteriorated over Busch’s worries that Lane’s win-now philosophy was trading away too many of the team’s top prospects. That made Lane both eager and available. The Indians’ owners jumped on it, promising him what Gussie Busch wouldn’t, a free hand in player moves.13

As discussed previously, this strategy appeared to work in the short run as attendance rebounded in 1959. But Lane wore out his welcome after trading Colavito and Gabe Paul succeeded him but was unable to show improvement on the field or at the gate. The owners re structured financially in 1962. They sold Paul a 20% ownership share, but that didn’t change anything.

After four years of declining attendance, Daley and the others pressed Paul to cut expenses as a way of protecting their investment.14 Paul did this in a number of ways and a big axe fell on player development. This reached a fever pitch in the 1963 and 1964 seasons. Paul’s trade to bring back Rocky Colavito temporarily reversed the attendance slide, but underlying structural problems remained.

During the 1966 season the Daley consortium decided it was time to sell the team. Cleveland businessman Vern Stouffer, himself a member of the consortium since 1962, stepped up. Stouffer made his money in the food business, including a very popular line of frozen TV dinners.

Stouffer promised to rebuild the team’s decaying farm system and put the franchise back on a winning track. He immediately began to put money back into scouting and player development. To finance his purchase of the team, he sold his food company to Litton Industries, a California conglomerate that made— among other things—the microwave ovens used to heat his TV dinners. Instead of taking the proceeds in cash, Stouffer took it in Litton stock. After all, that stock had increased in value the last 13 years in a row, so he would have the best of both worlds: a baseball team to own and a separate source of growing income.

But three years later, Litton fell on hard times: the stock crashed and took Stouffer’s fortune with it. Stouffer in turn pressed management to cut costs and the farm system took another financial hit. In 1972 Stouffer ended up selling the team to Nick Mileti—also local but also under-financed—and the Indians’ woes continued.15

The arc of this sad story is clearly revealed in Table 5. It compares the number of minor league affiliates in this period between the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds, according to Baseball Reference.

 

 

The number of farm clubs is by itself not a perfect measure of a given team’s player development, which also includes scouting, coaching etc., but in the absence of more complete data it should be a pretty good indicator. At the beginning of the sixties both Cleveland and Cincinnati maintained eight teams, which put them in the top third of all 16 major league franchises.

Most major league teams, including Cleveland and Cincinnati, reduced the number of affiliates early in that decade for both financial reasons and in response to expansion from 16 major league teams to 20. But the most significant inflection points come in 1964 and 1971. In 1964 Cleveland winnowed its system down to five teams as a result of pressure from the owners’ consortium to cut costs. Then in 1971 they dropped to four with a second round of cuts in response to an edict from new owner Vernon Stouffer. Indians farm director Hank Peters warned Stouffer that cuts in player development were a form of extended suicide; the results wouldn’t show up immediately, but would with a vengeance in three to five years. In fact the more severe downward spiral in Cleveland’s fortunes began in 1969, five years after the first permanent round of cuts ordered by the Indians’ owners.16

Cincinnati, on the other hand, remained relatively stable at around six affiliates from 1963 on. This was not by accident. Even though the Reds endured some lean years at the gate after the Robinson trade, the ownership maintained a strong player development system. Bill DeWitt kept intact the productive farm system Gabe Paul had developed during his time as owner-general manager 1960-66. When Bob Howsam took over as GM after DeWitt sold the club in 1966, he put even more money into scouting and player development.17

During the time frame 1963-70, the Reds farm system produced the likes of Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Lee May, Gary Nolan, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion, and Don Gullett, all of whom became part of the highly successful Big Red Machine of the seventies. That extraordinary collection of talent captured six di vision titles, four National League Championships and two World Series 1970-79.

The Cleveland farm system produced a number of good players in the first half of the sixties, including future All-Stars Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Tommy John, Sonny Siebert, Steve Hargan, Tommie Agee, Max Alvis, and Vic Davalillo. Unfortunately for the Indians, once the 1964-65 cost reductions set in, the pipeline started to dry up. The only All-Star caliber players produced by the Cleveland farm system to debut be tween 1967 and 1970 were catcher Ray Fosse and outfielder Richie Scheinblum. Over the next decade, the farm system produced a handful of star players like Chris Chambliss, Buddy Bell, and Dennis Eckersley, but came nowhere close to what was needed.

If you trade for a star player and he produces, that’s still just one player. But if you have a strong farm system, it can produce multiple players. The advantage of a strong stream of rookies is their cumulative effect. For example, the Indians’ home grown All Stars that came up to the majors between 1962 and 1964 added an average of 16 WAR annually between 1964 and 1966—and that’s without Agee and John, who were developed by Cleveland but traded. Running the same calculation for the Cincinnati Reds rookie classes of 1965-68 (Perez, May, Nolan and Bench) shows an average of 18 WAR annually from 1969 to 1971, and that’s without Pete Rose, who came up in 1963. This suggests a strong farm system can produce at least an additional 16-18 WAR annually, much more than any one star.

More than any other factor, the starving of the farm system explains Cleveland’s lean years after the 1960 Rocky Colavito trade. These reductions were justified at the time as necessary because of lack of fan sup port at the box office. It would stay that way until the Jacobs brothers bought the team in 1986 and started rebuilding the player development operation.18

The financial side of major league baseball teams has always been notoriously opaque, because the teams are generally privately owned and free of financial reporting requirements. Yet a significant amount of evidence has emerged since then that raises the question as to whether the cutbacks in the 1960s were really necessary.

A FINANCIAL SHELL GAME

In 1956 the Daley consortium bought the Cleveland Indians for nearly $4.0 million. In 1966 they sold it for $8 million, doubling their money.19 This translates to an annual return of 7.2% when inflation averaged less than two percent annually.20 Quite a good deal if you can get it!

What is missing from this calculation, though, are year-to-year operating results. For example, if the team keeps losing money due to low attendance, investors may have to put in additional cash just to pay the bills. In the example above, if the team lost a million dollars a year for four years, the investment return would be zero, even if the investors could sell the team for four million more than they paid initially. This is what the investors claimed happened to them in the low attendance years like 1963 and 1964 where losses of more than a million dollars a year forced them to cut player development expenses and think about moving the team.21

A baseball team is ultimately a business, not a charity, so it can’t absorb losses indefinitely. But what we do know now is the definition of “losses” is some what elastic and likely exaggerated. In his excellent 1995 study, former sports reporter Jack Torry used publicly available information to put these figures into context. He documented how baseball teams in this era, including the Indians, got IRS approval for a tax writeoff to offset depreciation of their players. Once this is taken into account, the so-called losses are much less.

Using information presented in 1957 and 1958 Congressional hearings on baseball’s antitrust exemption, Torry pointed out that in 1956, instead of the team losing $167,000 as it claimed, the team was able to write off $700,000 in depreciation which meant a $167,000 paper loss was actually a $500,000 profit. Torry also calculated the team’s paper loss of $1.2 million in 1963 was more like $300,000 after tax adjustments.22

A loss is still a loss, but these losses can also be offset in years when the team makes a profit. For ex ample, the team did acknowledge a profit of $609,000 when it drew 935,000 fans in 1965.23 Indians’ management never publicly discussed how much profit they made from the 1959 attendance surge of 1.5 million fans, but it must have been substantial.

We don’t know what the real break-even point was for the Indians ballclub in this period, but we do know that in 1957 the team signed Frank Lane to a contract that guaranteed him a bonus for every fan over 800,000.24 Presumably the Indians’ business savvy owners would not have shared profits with Frank Lane or anyone else if there were not profits. That suggests a break-even point of about 800,000. That number is consistent with the report of a $609,000 profit from an attendance figure of 935,000 described above.

If we examine the home attendance figures for the entire eleven years of the Daley Syndicate’s ownership, it shows some fluctuations, but attendance for those eleven years averages out to 824,000 annually, or just about break-even. The 1956-66 syndicate included some of the wealthiest men in Cleveland with an estimated net worth of over $100 million. And some of them, including Daley, had already pocketed significant profits from their earlier holdings.25 And when Vern Stouffer sold the Indians in 1972, he got back $10 million, two million more than he paid six years earlier.26 This was less than the return the previous investors enjoyed, but still a lot better than return on investment from his Litton stock.

So instead of trying to wring every penny of profit out of a struggling franchise, the Indians owners could have decided to protect the talent pipeline and accept more risk and less profit for themselves, which is what Bill DeWitt and Bob Howsam did in Cincinnati. We don’t know the details about the Reds’ internal finances in this period, but we do know owner/general manager DeWitt bought the team for $4.6 million in 1962 and sold it to a local consortium for $7.0 million in December 1966.27 By comparison the Cleveland Indians sold for $8 million in August 1966 as described above, which means at least in the eyes of its new owner, Cleveland was an even better investment than the Cincinnati Reds. But it was the Reds’ management that understood what it took to nurture that investment.

CONCLUSION

In this document we used the tools of sabermetrics, particularly Wins Above Replacement (WAR), to ex amine two trades that are regarded as two of the worst ever: Cleveland’s trade of Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn in 1960 and Cincinnati’s trade of Frank Robin son for Milt Pappas and others in 1966. Both trades triggered significant blowback from their fan bases at the time, but the eventual impact on both teams was quite different.

Colavito for Kuenn: This trade deserves the scorn heaped upon it, but more for the second trade than the first. The first cost the Indians 3.5 games annually over the five years of its life. In a desperate attempt to undo the damage, Cleveland brought Colavito back in an even worse trade that cost the team 6.5 victories annually over six years and even more thereafter.

Robinson for Pappas et al: The fan base scorned this deal as well. Frank Robinson did turn in some Hall of Fame worthy seasons in his six years with Baltimore, but the cost to the Reds was mitigated to a large degree be cause they received enough talent in return to limit the loss to less than two victories annually for six years.

After the first Colavito trade, the Indians fell into a slump that lasted 35 years. Cincinnati rebounded within four years of the Robinson trade to establish a legendary team in terms of the Big Red Machine. It is tempting to attribute this to the differing outcomes of these two series of trades. But they alone are not sufficient to explain the divergent outcome of these two teams.

What explains this outcome better are the different paths chosen by the teams’ senior leadership. Money troubles, actual and imagined, prompted Cleveland’s ownership to direct management to systematically dis-invest in what had been a productive farm system. Cincinnati’s ownership and management worked together to protect, then enhance, their player development system. This difference can easily account for 16-18 wins annually over multiple years, or the difference between Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and decades of frustration in Cleveland.

Baseball has changed a lot since the 1960s, with more expansion, free agency and multiple layers of postseason playoffs, but a fundamental truth remains. The surest path to sustained success is a foundation built on players you sign, develop, and advance. Few have been better at it in recent years than the Cleveland Guardians. 

WILLIAM SHKURTI (“Bill”) is retired after serving twenty years as the Chief Financial Officer for Ohio State University. He holds a BA in Economics and a Masters in Public Policy from that institution. He has written several books and articles about Ohio history. He is a Vietnam veteran and a lifelong (and long-suffering) Cleveland Guardians fan.

 

Notes

1. Terry Pluto, The Curse of Rocky Colavito (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).

2. For more about Lane’s stormy tenure in Cleveland see Warren Corbett, “Frank Lane,” SABR Biography Project, accessed October 17, 2022. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/frank-lane-2.

3. For a good description of Colavito’s rise and the fans’ growing attachment to him see Pluto, 39-42.

4. David Nemec and Scott Flatow, Great Baseball Feats, Facts, Figures (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 258.

5. Hal Lebovitz, “Swaps Leave Fearless Frankie on Spot,” The Sporting News, April 27, 1960, 3.

6. These figures posted online as of March 23, 2023.

7. Warren Corbett, “Gabe Paul,” SABR Bio Project, accessed October 18, 2022. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/gabe-paul.

8. David Bohmer, Cleveland Guardians team ownership history, SABR Team Ownership Project, accessed October 18, 2022. https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/cleveland-guardians-team-ownership-history.

9. Rob Neyer, Rob Neyer’s Book of Baseball Blunders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006),140.

10. William Schneider, “Frank Robinson and the Trade that Ignited Two(!) Dynasties,” The National Pastime: A Bird’s Eye View of Baltimore (Phoenix, SABR, 2020). Online version accessed October 18, 2022. https://sabr.org/journal/article/frank-robinson-and-the-trade-that-ignited-two-dynasties.

11. “Franchise Page” at Baseball-reference.com and Bohmer.

12. Bohmer.

13. Hal Lebovitz, “Tribe Fans Whoop Over New Chief Lane,” The Sporting News, November 20, 1957, 3.

14. Bohmer.

15. Bohmer.

16. Pluto, 189-90.

17. Mark Armour, “Bob Howsam,” SABR Bio Project. Accessed October 23, 2022. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bob-howsam.

18. Bohmer.

19. Bohmer.

20. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI Inflation Calculator, accessed Octo ber 24, 2022. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

21. Bohmer.

22. Jack Torry, Endless Summers: The Fall and Rise of the Cleveland Indians (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1995), 70, 94.

23. Torry, 103.

24. Bohmer.

25. Torry, 69, 93.

26. Bohmer.

27. “DeWitt Sold Reds to 13-member Cincinnati Group,” Official 1967 Baseball Guide, (St. Louis, Sporting News,1967), 172-73.

Over the past generation, sabermetricians have expended a great amount of time and energy studying the effects of free agency and long term contracts on player performance (Maxcy, Fort, and Krautmann 2002; Krautmann and Solow 2009; Krautmann and Donley 2009; Hakes and Turner 2011; Martin et al. 2011; O’Neill 2014; Paulsen 2020). How ever, they have spent far less time studying the effect of big offseason contract extensions on performance the following season. Here, an “offseason contract ex tension” is defined as any new contract signed during the offseason that adds additional years to a player’s contract with his current team.

Over the past decade, this line of inquiry has become increasingly important, as more contract ex tensions are being made and increasing amounts of money are being dedicated to these agreements. In the 2019-20 offseason alone, pre-free agency player ex tensions amounted to an enormous $1.7 billion (Sawchik 2019). Since 2020, many young stars including Wander Franco (21), Fernando Tatis Jr. (22), and Francisco Lindor (27) have foregone free agency to sign long-term deals with their clubs in excess of $200 million (MLBTR 2022). Yet a data deficiency regarding the short-term effects of these deals creates a sub optimal information environment that handicaps both teams and agents during negotiations.1 Agents, players, and teams have thus negotiated many recent mega extensions without large-N empirical data on their short-term performance effects. Given the billions of dollars at stake, there is an urgent need to address this dearth of empirical data.

We explore this topic through the lens of two competing hypotheses: that (H1) signing a pre-free agency offseason contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency will hurt a player’s performance in the following season, and that (H2) signing a pre-free agency offseason contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency will benefit a player’s performance in the following season. These hypotheses are mutually exclusive and derived from unique theoretical foundations. H1, which we refer to as the Negative Performance Hypothesis, derives from the concepts of shirking and stress-impairment.2 H2, which we call the Positive Performance Hypothesis, takes its inspiration from the psychological concept of positive reinforcement.3

We test these two hypotheses using a data set of all pre-free agency offseason contract extensions that bought out at least one year of free agency since September 2001 (N=182). Notably, the offseason criterion excludes those extensions signed in-season. We choose to exclude these in-season extensions because (1) they make up less than ten percent of all extensions, and (2) they have their own unique characteristics since the season played after and before the extension is signed is the same. We first treat the timing of a contract extension as a random occurrence and consider ex-ante and ex-post wins above replacement (WAR) and games played (G).4 We next run a second set of model specifications using WAR per game (WAR/G) in lieu of WAR to account for the possibility of injuries. Finally, we weaken the as-if random assumption and run two new model specifications—one comparing WAR, G, and WAR/G post-extension to a player’s averages over the previous three seasons, and another comparing a player’s performance post-extension to their performance two years before the extension. The idea here is to remove from the equation the player’s choice as to the timing of when to negotiate an extension.5

THEORY

Much of the literature regarding long-term contracts hints at the role of shirking in poor production from players. “Shirking” here is not meant in a pejorative or layman’s sense; teams often encourage shirking as an economically rational form of asset protection for players who they have just signed to long-term deals. Significant evidence supports the notion that shirking in this non-pejorative sense may impact player performance. O’Neill (2014) finds that hitters generally boost their performances during contract years before performing worse when under a long-term contract. Work by Maxcy, Fort, and Krautmann (2002) demonstrates a nearly identical phenomenon at play among pitchers. It shows that pitchers with nagging injuries may be more likely to be placed on the injured list while under long-term contract. The study by Martin, Eggleston, Seymour and Lecrom (2011) similarly evokes the idea of the contract-year phenomenon as evidence of economically strategic behavior that may be attributed to shirking.

More recently, Paulsen (2020) goes beyond merely hinting at the role of shirking in causing poor player performance. By using a player fixed-effects estimation strategy, Paulsen (2020) eliminates much of the uncertainty caused by multi-collinearity concerns in existing player data.6 Paulsen (2020) also addresses alternative explanations for the observed shirking, such as teams signing improving players to multiyear contracts or players facing an adjustment process when joining a new team. Even when alternative explanations are considered, Paulsen (2020) still finds that shirking behavior principally drives the generally inverse association between years left on a contract and a player’s performance.

Still, a disconnect exists between scholars’ findings and the testimony of players. Players rarely cite shirking as the cause of their down seasons. Rather, they commonly attribute negative performances following extensions to the increased psychological stress that comes with money and job security. As Jason Kipnis explained to reporters in 2014:

I might have taken [my extension] the wrong way. There’s one of two ways to go about it. There’s ‘Hey, I have the security and the money now I can go out and just play the game of baseball.’ I took the way, where, ‘I’ve got this money, I’ve got to live up to it.’ So I might have pressed at the beginning and tried to do too much. In hindsight that could have hurt me and played a little part of [my down] season.

(Gleeman 2014)

Kipnis’s logic, while not supported by research, makes intuitive sense. One would expect large contracts to increase stress levels for already well-paid professionals. According to both physicians and psychologists, stress-distracted athletes generally suffer more injuries than their undistracted counterparts and require more time off as a result (Schultz and Schultz 2015, 265-66; Reardon et al. 2019). They may also feel pressured to perform well, causing them to counterproductively try too hard—what Kipnis calls “pressing”—creating sub optimal outcomes on the field. Yet irrespective of whether the cause is stress or shirking, both point to worse performance following an offseason contract extension. This brings us to Hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 1—Negative Performance: Signing a pre-free agency offseason contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency will hurt a player’s performance in the following season.

Conversely, there is at least one reason to believe that an offseason contract extension may benefit a player’s performance in the following season. A con tract extension coming off a good season could serve as a form of positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement refers to the introduction of a desirable or pleasant stimulus after a behavior where the desirable stimulus reinforces the behavior, making it more likely that the behavior will reoccur (Doggett and Koegel 2012). Money qualifies as a positive stimulus, and ob servers often assume that when organizations extend players, buying out several years of free agency, they are expressing faith in or rewarding their previous performance.7 This brings us to our second hypothesis.

Hypothesis 2—Positive Performance: Signing a pre-free agency offseason contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency will benefit a player’s performance in the following season.

Finally, we also offer the caveat that neither H1 nor H2 may be valid. Signing a pre-free agency offseason contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency may simply not affect player performance in the following season. While we do not expect this, we must account for the possibility and label this out come our null hypothesis.

METHODOLOGY

To arbitrate between the two hypotheses and their null, we create an original data set (N=182) of all pre-free agency offseason extensions signed between January 2000 and June 2022 that bought out one or more years of free agency. We begin with an open-source data set from MLB Trade Rumors (2022), which includes all contract extensions signed during the period in question. We then hard-code whether each extension occurred during the regular season and add data on the number of years of free agency bought out, including potential options years.8 Finally, we permute our data set by adding open-source data on player performance from Baseball Reference (2022a, 2022b).

In particular, we collect data on WAR, games played, and WAR/G as critical measures of performance. WAR sums up a player’s performance holistically in a single summary statistic, making it ideal for parsimonious statistical analyses.9 Games played measure a player’s ability to stay healthy and speaks to their psychological state,10 since research shows that shirking and/or stress-distracted athletes generally take more time off with injuries (and suffer more injuries) than their motivated and undistracted counterparts (Schultz and Schultz 2015, 265-66; Reardon et al. 2019).11 Finally, WAR/G allows us to evaluate performance using an “injuries as random” assumption. While scholars have found little evidence to support the notion that injuries occur randomly (e.g. Timmer man 2007), athletes often speak about injuries as products of chance (Sawchik 2019). WAR/G thus allows us to consider that “baseball players have accidents,” and that “stuff happens in life, and sometimes people get hurt and there is not always a reason for it” (Schultz and Schultz 2015, 265).

We also measure the independent and dependent variables—ex-ante and ex-post performance, respectively—in different model specifications using the three measures of play quality outlined. In each model specification, the season following the signing of the contract extension is used to measure short-term ex post performance. Yet it is less obvious how ex-ante performance should be measured when contract extensions are signed. We therefore model the independent variable (IV) using three different specifications for the sake of transparency.

To begin with, we measure ex-ante performance (the IV) in terms of the season preceding the extension. We prefer this measure of the IV because the comparison makes the most casual and intuitive sense. Under this scenario, the timing of an extension is taken to be as-if random in relation to player performance. This permits us to conceptualize the signing of a contract as a treatment effect occurring within a natural experiment. Yet the as-if random assumption requires further justification, since “the plausibility of as-if random assignment stands logically prior to the analysis of data from a natural experiment.” (Dunning 2012, 235)

We therefore seek here to justify the as-if random assumption on two grounds: observations from agents and players and previous research. While extensions of players following good seasons may receive positive press coverage—creating the perception that extensions generally serve as rewards for positive performances— there is surprisingly little large-N data to support this notion. Former MVP Shohei Ohtani, for instance, signed a two-year contract following a -0.4 WAR season in 2020. Similarly, Francisco Lindor signed a $341 million deal following a .750 OPS season in 2020, and in 2011, the Reds inked Nick Masset to a 2-year extension following a down season in which he posted his lowest single-season ERA since 2008. There is thus little reason observationally, in the absence of large-N data, to expect that contract extensions would solely follow good or bad seasons.

One agent described teams’ willingness to negotiate extensions at almost any point in a player’s career as bordering on predatory:

Every time the teams see a seam in the defense [resistance to signing an extension], they exploit the shit out of it… . The teams have scouting reports on agents… . They have heat maps. They know our tendencies, they know who will go to arbitration, who won’t, whose business is failing and [who] need[s] to vest their fees.

(Sawchik 2019)

Previous research (Krautmann 2018) also provides passing credence to the logical and observational in tuition that performance and extension timing are unrelated. Based on previous statistical analysis, players are most likely to be extended when they have one year remaining on their existing contract (Krautmann 2018). Notably, that is not a performance-based selection effect. While that means that contracts are not offered entirely randomly, they are likely offered on an as-if random basis relative to performance. Essentially, while contract timing may involve much ruminating on a case-by-case basis, on average it is statistically as-if random vis-à-vis performance.

In the interest of transparency, we test our theory with a weakened as-if random assumption by considering a three-year average of previous performances, along with performance in the season two years before the extension.12 Players who did not have a two- or three-year history in the majors were excluded from these analyses. We break our data into three groups: hitters, all pitchers, and starting pitchers.13,14 Displaying our data this way allows consideration of heterogeneous effects. Finally, controls are collected for and included in the dataset.15

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the difference-in-means results for player performance in the seasons before and after an extension was signed. We observe nontrivial statistical evidence at the 95 % level for the Negative Performance Hypothesis across most measures of performance irrespective of position. Players commonly perform at a lower level following the signing of an offseason ex tension. We thus reject the Positive Performance Hypothesis and the null hypothesis, given our strong belief that the timing of extensions is as-if random with regards to performance and our preference for the IV measure used in Table 1.

 

 

There is a notable post-extension drop-off in WAR, games played, and WAR/G. However, the level of drop-off varies by position. WAR shows the least heterogeneity, with extensions causing players of all stripes to be worth (on average) about one win less (batters’ coefficient: – 1.265; pitchers’ coefficient: -1.146; starters’ coefficient: – 1.232). In terms of games played, there is a large amount of variance be tween positions. Pitchers are much more likely to miss starts due to injury in the season following the signing of an extension (coefficient: – 2.857, p < 0.0280). Re lief pitchers show an even greater drop-off, although the sample size is small and their usage is heavily situation-dependent.16

We suggest three possible reasons for the drop-off in games among pitchers. First, pitching is a high-stress activity that can cause permanent damage to the body. It follows that financially secure pitchers might rationally shirk more to protect their long-term health, and that management may have a significant part in actively encouraging such shirking as a form of long term asset protection. Second, pitchers appear much less frequently than hitters and may therefore be under greater stress when they do come into the game. Greater stress correlates directly to heightened injury risk and longer injury recovery time (Schultz and Schultz 2015, 265-66; Reardon et al. 2019). Finally, the possibility of regression to the mean must be acknowledged here with regards to health. While contract extension timing may be reasonably assumed to be as-if random with regards to performance, far less research has been done on its relation to health. Pitchers may simply be more likely to be extended coming off of a healthy season creating unforeseen selection effects.

To address this concern, for our third specific measure of performance, we utilize WAR on a per game basis. The WAR/G difference-in-means metrics measure whether there is still a drop-off if we treat injuries as random events rather than products of a player’s psychological state. As can be seen clearly, the WAR/G metric reveals evidence of a drop-off similar to the previous two. The – 0.009 per game drop in batters’ average performance comes out to – 1.458 wins lost over the full course of a full season. Similarly, the – 0.038 lost by pitchers per start comes out to – 1.254 WAR over the course of thirty-three starts. Essentially, even if all injuries were caused by uncontrolled misfortune, healthy players would still play noticeably worse the season after receiving a contract extension.

All three metrics support the Negative Performance Hypothesis when the baseline for ex-ante performance is considered as performance in the season preceding the extension. However, while we strongly believe in the as-if random assumption that this finding relies on, others may be more skeptical. What happens when we remove the as-if random assumption by using longer-term baselines for measuring ex-ante performance?

Table 2 indicates that there is no statistically significant correlation between pre-extension and post-extension performance according to most meas ures of performance. The one exception is games played by batters, which seem to increase. We attribute this to a number of players in the sample who were rookies in year one of their three-year averages. We next turn to performance in the season two years be fore the extension.

The results in Tables 2 and 3 are almost identical. Games played increases significantly for batters once again, this time with an even more significant p-value (p <0.0053). Removing all rookies from the data con firms that they are driving this finding. The p-value (p <0.2154) is now no longer significant. Players of all stripes play similarly after receiving an offseason extension and in the season two years beforehand.

The findings in Tables 2 and 3 are noteworthy. While we stand by our as-if random assumption, if future studies show it to be false, then our findings would instead support the null hypothesis. This adds a significant wrinkle to what would otherwise be a decisive finding in support of the Negative Performance Hypothesis.

 

 

CONCLUSION

This article demonstrates that on average-contingent on performance and extension timing being uncorrelated-signing an offseason extension that buys out one or more years of free agency causes a substantial drop in player performance the following season. The underlying theory is that by simultaneously facilitating shirking and ramping up stress, extensions hurt short term ex-post performance.

However, there is an important caveat to this finding. Using performance from the three-year average, and the season two years before the contract extension, the results demonstrate that the Negative Performance Hypothesis is not robust enough to with stand weakening of the as-if random assumption. If player performance were to determine extension timing, this paper would support the null hypothesis rather than the Negative Performance Hypothesis. We therefore encourage further research into the relation ship between performance and extension timing.

These findings also suggest other areas for future research. First, our dataset excludes players who sign in-season extensions in order to minimize selection effects.17 Future research could examine in-season extensions more closely as an uncommon but financially lucrative subset of extension.18 Second, the results for pitchers and hitters vary substantially. Although we offer several possible explanations, future saber-metricians should examine the potential causes of this discrepancy in more detail to elucidate further contract-response differences between pitchers and hitters. Third, we recommend that researchers examine the possibility that players’ performances may improve in the second year following a new contract extension. While players may generally see a decrease in performance one year after signing a new contract extension, regression to some performance-based mean may be more likely by year two of a new con tract extension. Current projections systems certainly assume such regression. We thus suggest that the value of extensions beyond the first year be tabbed for further investigation. Finally, researchers should consider expanding our sample size to include players who were extended but whose free agent years were not bought out. Given the increasing frequency of extensions that buy out arbitration years, this could provide valuable data to front offices on whom to go to arbitration with and whom to extend. This study thus points to a broader research agenda with the potential to have a significant real-world impact. 

MUYUAN LI works at Blizzard Entertainment where she manages several data teams. She is an avid fan of both real and fantasy baseball and frequently drives down the road to watch Shohei Ohtani make history and drop bombs. She holds a B.B.A. in Applied Information Management Systems from Loyola Marymount University. If you have feedback or would like to request replication data please email her at muli@blizzard.com.

GREG PLITHIDES recently joined SABR as a new member in summer 2022. An engineer by training, he has a particular love for fantasy baseball and a natural proclivity for Sabermetrics. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University.

MAX PLITHIDES is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Loyola Marymount University.

 

Sources

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____. 2022b. “Daily Updated Pitching WAR Data (in CSV).” Baseball-Reference.com, V2.2. Accessed July 23, 2022. https://www.baseball-reference.com/data/war_daily_pitch.txt.

Doggett, Rebecca, and Lynn Koegel. 2012. “Positive Reinforcement.” In Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, edited by Fred R. Volkmar, 2299. New York, NY: Springer.

Dunning, Thad. 2012. Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gleeman, Aaron. 2014. “Jason Kipnis Thinks Pressure of Contract Extension Led to Poor Season.” NBC Sports. https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2014/09/11/jason-kipnis-thinks-pressure-of-contract-extension-led-to-poor-season.

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Krautmann, Anthony C. 2018. “Contract Extensions: The Case of Major League Baseball.” Journal of Sports Economics 19 (3): 299-314.

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MLB Trade Rumors. 2022. “Extension Tracker.” MLB Trade Rumors. Accessed July 23, 2022. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/extensiontracker.

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Notes

1. Sub-optimal information environments benefit nobody. See Tomlinson and Lewicki (2015).

2. Rational shirking is derived from rational choice theory and behavioral economics. Stress-impairment is grounded in neuropsychology and medicine.

3. Positive reinforcement is rooted in behavioral psychology.

4. An event is considered “as-if random” when its occurrence is unassociated with some variable of interest. In this case, we posit that extension timing is uncorrelated with a player’s performance in the preceding season. Contract extensions are obviously not a completely as-if random occurrence in a player’s career, but we begin with strong simplifying assumptions before relaxing them later.

5. We discuss at length why we believe the timing of extensions to be uncorrelated with performance in the methods section, but more research is needed in this area.

6. A fixed-effects model refers to a regression model in which group means are fixed (non-random). In Sabermetrics, this type of model is valuable for analyzing data that includes multiple seasons from a single player.

7. See, for instance, Fansided staff writer Scott Rogust’s description of Fernando Tatis’s recent extension as a “reward” for an “incredible 2020 season” (Rogust 2022).

8. The coding process was generally straightforward with two exceptions. First, extensions signed on the first and last days of the season are coded as “offseason,” due to the inability to collect down-to-the-minute data. Second, extensions signed after opening days in other countries but before opening days in North America are also coded as “offseason,” since overseas opening days involve only two teams and often occur far in advance of their North American counterparts.

9. WAR is pro-rated in our data set for the shortened 2020 season.

10. Games played are pro-rated in our data set for the shortened 2020 season.

11. For relief pitchers, games played are also largely a product of managerial decisions.

12. Faith in the as-if random assumption is decisive in determining how one should interpret our results. We still include our null alternative specification results, however, because we believe in the value of research transparency.

13. We classify Shohei Ohtani as a hitter.

14. We classify a player as a starter if he made fewer than thirty-six appearances in a regular season and started at least one game.

15. Controls are not used in our in-paper analysis to avoid introducing statistical bias into our natural experiment’s difference-in-means results. That said, controls were collected, and the full dataset with controls is available upon request.

16. Relief pitchers are not shown on their own in the data, but the drop-off can be inferred from the difference between the games played difference-in-means results between starting pitchers and “pitchers” generally.

17. Pre-season preparation, after all, cannot be undone by signing a contract.

18. In-season extensions can be very large. Jose Ramirez, for instance, just signed a 5-year $124 million extension in-season.