Mains: How many single-game records are held by just one player?
From SABR member Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus on April 26, 2016:
On Patriots Day, April 18, Boston’s Clay Buchholz walked the second Toronto batter he faced, Josh Donaldson. Jose Bautista batted next, and he grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.
In the fourth inning, Donaldson walked again. Bautista followed with a 6-4-3 double play.
In the sixth, Michael Saunders singled, and after Donaldson lined out, Bautista grounded into a 4-3 double play.
Three at bats, three GIDPs. How far was Bautista from a single game record? Pretty close, it turns out. A quick check from Baseball Reference’s Play Index indicates that the record is four, held by Joe Torre, back when he was a Met.
That struck me as odd. Not that Torre held the record—you’d figure it’d be set by a slow right-handed batter–but that it had been achieved only once. There’ve been over 210,000 major league games played since 1876, with 18 or more individual lines for each one of them. More precisely, there have been nearly 176,000 games played since the Retrosheet era, for which we have fairly complete (and Play Index-able) records, began in 1913. And in that time, Joe Torre, on July 21, 1975, is the only player to have had a day like this:
· First inning, following a single by Felix Millan, runner on first with one out: 1-4-3 double play
· Third inning, following a single by Felix Millan, runners on first and second with one out: 6-4-3 double play
· Sixth inning, following a single by Felix Millan, runner on first with no out: 4-6-3 double play
· Eighth inning, following a single by Felix Millan, runners on first and second with no out: 6-4-3 double play
After the game, Torre said, according to Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years, “I’d like to thank Felix Millan for making all of this possible.”
How often does that happen? How many single-game records are held by just one player?
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/a/29005
Originally published: April 26, 2016. Last Updated: April 26, 2016.