K's, Cards, and Things

When creating queries for my seasonal lineup databases, I started creating some different ones just out of curiosity of certain stats.

One of these was the pitchers batting in a lineup spot other than the 9th spot.

Here is the number of occurrences by year:


Here are the totals by League, Team, and Year::

NL:

Team	1897	1898	1899	1900	1901	1902	1903	1904	1907
BLN		10								10
BRO	49		7			17	1	3		77
BSN	1	1				1	1			4
CHN	82	6	1			1				90
CIN					2	19		5		26
CL4	1									1
LS3	1									1
NY1		15	3	1	2					21
PHI		1		1						2
PIT		3				1	1			5
SLN	4		1				2		7	14
WSN	1	11	61							73
Grand Total	139	47	73	2	4	39	5	8	7	324

team	1901	1902	1903	1904	1905	1906	1907	1908
BLA	1	6							7
BOS							1		1
CHA		4			1	1			6
CLE		1							1
DET				9		1			10
NYA			1		1		1		3
PHA				5				4	9
SLA		1				2	2		5
WS1	2	5					1		8
Grand Total	3	17	1	14	2	4	5	4	50

A couple other items worth mentioning -

In 1902, the "all-time" worst hitting non-pitcher, Bill Bergen, hit 9th 18 times.  Surprisingly, he hit 9th only a handful of times the rest of his career.  If anyone was meant to hit 9th, it was Bergen, who was well known in his time for his phenomenal fielding.

Also, in 1898, Cy Seymour, then still primarily a pitcher who walked and struck out a great deal of hitters (for the time), batted outside of the 9th spot as a pitcher 12 times - 2nd - 3 games, 4th - 5 games, 5th - 4 games.   A sign of things to come for this pitcher, then outfielder who nearly had a triple crown in 1905 for the Reds.

In the previous post I mentioned that there were 2 players that were the main "toughest to strike out" in this era.
I profiled Willie Keeler, and now I will profile the other the player, Lave Cross.

Not many times will one associate Cross with this category.  He was mainly known as a solid fine thirdbaseman with the National and American League Philadelphia teams.  Cross was also briefly a member of the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, before he made the mistake of playing too well and was (rescued) recalled to St. Louis.

One can see from the existing B-R data that Cross had a good record in the K category - 7 in 593 at-bats in 1894 and 8 in 589 at-bats in 1895.   He continued this in through the 20th century.

His totals:

1897 - 15 k's in 344 at bats
1898 - 8 k's in 602 at bats
1899 - 3 k's in 557 at bats
1900 - 5 k's in 522 at bats
1901 - 6 k's in 424 at bats
1902 - 4 k's in 559 at bats
1903 - 17 k's in 559 at bats
1904 - 9 k's in 607 at bats
1905 - 12 k's in 587 at bats
1906 - 17 k's in 494 at bats
1907 - 6 k's in 161 at bats


His BK+ numbers show just how

1898 NL - 444 (2nd)
1899 NL - 991 (2nd)
1900 NL - 557 (2nd)
1901 AL - 459 (2nd)
1902 AL - 809 (1st)
1903 AL - 326 (2nd)
1904 AL - 744 (1st)
1905 AL - 517 (1st)
1906 AL - 300 (3rd)

Keeler and Cross were 1-2 (or 2-1) in 1898, 1899, 1900, 1903, 1904, and 1905.  They both led their respective leagues in 1902 (Keeler - NL, Cross - AL)



Here are the leaders for all seasons, 1897-1909:

	Best BK+ [lowest K rate/G, min 100 g] (K's)
	NL		AL
1897	Keeler	595 (5)
1898	Keeler	731 (4)
1899	Keeler	1487 (2)
1900	Keeler	814 (4)
1901	Keeler	1052 (5)	Dungan	786 (4)
1902	Keeler	397 (13)	L Cross	809 (4)
1903	Beckley	325 (13)	Keeler	463 (12)
1904	Wolverton	561 (7)	L Cross	744 (9)
1905	Dobbs	325 (14)	L Cross	517 (12)
1906	Leach	251 (20)	Keeler	1148 (5)
1907	Evers	325 (16)	Elberfeld	599 (8)
1908	Ritchey	308 (13)	T Jones	262 (21)
1909	Bridwell	344 (14)	Lajoie	271 (18)

I have spent most of the recent posts talking about individuals related to high strikeout totals, but I am one who enjoys exploring the extreme ends of the bell curve.   As a result, I want to take this post to talk about a couple of players that showed a great propensity for Not striking out.  

The first is quite well known for this asset - Wee Willie Keeler.   Keeler's "hit'em where they ain't" approach is legendary, but, for the most part, the data was not there in regards to strikeouts.

Bob Davids compiled a list of Keeler's strikeouts by year a number of years ago.  I was fortunate to get a copy of this a couple of years ago from John Schwartz.  Of course, his numbers lined up well with mine (of course!), and I found a few more (as had the late Mr. Schwartz).

I will give the numbers first and then discuss them:

1897 - 5
1898 - 4
1899 - 2
1900 - 4
1901 - 5
1902 - 13
1903 - 12
1904 - 12
1905 - 13
1906 - 4
1907 - 10
1908 - 10
1909 - 6
(1910 - 1, already documented)

Fortunately, Keeler played in the New York market for most of this time period, and as a result I was able to document well over 95% of his total games (mostly from New York Evening Telegram and New York Evening World play-by-play accounts).

Some of these years just stagger the mind in their "low-ness".  

The 2 strikeouts in 1899, which I wrote about in my BRJ article (#36) on 1899 strikeouts is simply amazing.

To quote myself :) , "Keeler's two strikeouts occurred on April 17 (Brooklyn's 2nd game of the season) at the hands of Boston's rookie sensation, Vic Willis (in his major league debut) and May 6 (Brooklyn's 19th game) against Boston's Kid Nichols.  After that, he did not strike out again for the remainder of the season."  This is with 136 of his 141 games documented (97%).

As a result of this feat, I wanted to figure out a way to show just how incredible this figure was.   I devised a new "stat" which I called "BK+".   It is similar to OPS+ and ERA+ in that it gives an index of how much better or worse a player is from the average (average being 100).  In this case, I used strikeouts per game.

To give you an example, using Keeler's 1899 season, Keeler had 2 strikeouts in 136 documented games, a rate of 1.48%.

The overall individual strikeouts per game average was 21.9% (3,494 documented strikeouts in 15,920 documented player games).

As a result, Keeler's BK+ = (0.219/0.0148) * 100 = 1,487.  

His strikeout rate was 14 TIMES BETTER than the league average. 

Granted that if one was to use at-bats in the calculation, it would be more precise, but my databases are not set up with documented at-bats and I calculate it based on documented information.  Once the data is in a source that has the projected/adjusted strikeouts and actual at-bats, a refined BK+ calculation could certainly be done.

Even in an era of lower strikeout totals, he dominated the BK+ category:


Here is his year by year BK+ with ranking:

1897 - 595 (1st)
1898 - 731 (1st)
1899 - 1,487 (1st)
1900 - 814 (1st)
1901 NL - 1,052 (1st)
1902 NL - 397 (1st)
1903 AL - 463 (1st)
1904 AL - 496 (2nd)
1905 AL - 491 (2nd)
1906 AL - 1,418 (1st)
1907 AL - 412 (2nd)

The leaders were limited to players with 100 games or more.

Keeler's 1901 and 1906 seasons I feel deserves special mention as well. 

In 1901, as has been mentioned previously, the National League implemented the foul strike rule, in essence counting a strike on any ball that was fouled off.  Prior to this, if a player fouled off a pitch, it was, in essence, a non-pitch.   A player could foul off pitches to their heart's content and be no worse in the ball-strike count.
So players who were capable of making contact, could drive a pitcher crazy and not be penalized.   This did not sit well with everyone and especially with those who didn't like the old Baltimore Orioles (my speculation) as 2 of the experts at fouling away pitches happened to be old Orioles (Keeler and John McGraw).  One of my many side projects is to do a more in-depth study of the foul strike rule, the evolution of it coming into being and its impact beyond the stats.

Anyway, the introduction of the foul strike rule in the National League in 1901 had a dramatic impact on strikeouts league-wide:   Total k's went from 2697 to 4241, a 57% increase.   This changed seemed to affect everyone, except one fine Brooklyn individual, our hero, Mr. Keeler. 

As I have documented above, Keeler only struck out 5 times all season with a BK+ of 1,052.   The second place finisher in BK+ in the 1901 NL was Claude Ritchey with a BK+ of 199 and 28 strikeouts.  Keeler's number "5 Times Better" than the 2nd place finisher.

In 1906, while Billy Maloney was setting fan records across the river in Brooklyn, Keeler was dominating again in BK+.   His BK+ of 1,418 was more than 4 times better than the 2nd place finisher, Nap Lajoie, who recorded a very respectable BK+ of 305 (19 k's)


I will go more into BK+ leaders, both good and bad,  in a subsequent post, but Billy Maloney's record setting 118 strikeouts in 1906 produced a BK+ of 49. 

His doc k's per game rate was 77.5% while the league average was 38%.   His rate was just over twice as bad as the league average thus the number just under 50.

Incidentally, Maloney's BK+ of 49 is not the "record" for the era - that belongs to a well traveled player who, incidentally, would have been perfectly suited for the DH era - Tommy McCreery.

As a follow-up to the post on Billy Maloney, I wanted to post the league leaders in total strikeouts for each season/league for 1897-1909.

	League Leader - Most
	NL		AL
1897	McCreery	72
1898	Gettman & Joyce	60
1899	Holmes	59
1900	J Barrett	63
1901	M Cross	91	J Barrett	62
1902	Flood	70	Howell & Strang	66
1903	Babb	66	Pickering	75
1904	Lumley	105	J Stahl	98
1905	Maloney	83	Hoffman	106
1906	Maloney	118	M Cross	86
1907	Maloney	100	Hoffman	99
1908	T Jordan	75	N Ball	90
1909	Becker	80	J Stahl	91

I should mention at this point that these totals are based on what I term "projected and adjusted" totals.

First,  I calculate the percentage of documented games to actual games played.   Then take the total documented stirkeouts and divide it by the pct of documented games to get a number of projected strikeouts that that hitter "would" have had.   I then make any minor adjustment (by team or league) if the team/league totals are off from the summed projected totals ("tuning in").

As an example, I will use Bill Joyce in 1897.

Joyce played in 110 total games.   Of those 110 games, I have been able to document strikeouts for 103 of those games (including games where he had 0 k's).  I was able to document 36 strikeouts in those 103 games.

As a result,

his pct of documented games/actual games = 103/110 = 93.8%

To calculate his "projected k's", I divide 36/0.938 to get (rounded) 38 strikeouts.

I then calculate an "adjusted" number.   In this case, the 1897 NY Giants projected team total came to 331, off by - 1.2% from the actual documented total of 327.  I multiply the 38 strikeouts by 1 + (-.012) to get the "adjusted total".  In this case, the total remained 38 strikeouts.

While this may not satisfy everyone in regards to "matching up" exactly or not having complete data, with the amount of data I have for most players and the small variances (projected team/league totals from the actual team/league totals being in most cases within 2% if not smaller), I am very comfortable with my method.

One observation I noticed when I was originally putting my leaders together was that in the NL after the foul strike rule went into effect, 1901, there was the predictable spike (represented by Monte Cross's 91 k's and league total of 4241).  The next 2 years, 1902 & 1903, the k's totals in the NL dropped each year (1902 - 3895 and 1903 - 3767). 

I have yet to do any research into what may have caused this, except to casually speculate that hitters "got wise" to the foul strike rule and used a different approach in their hitting league-wide.  Again, I have not done any in depth research on this.

What is interesting is that in 1904, the league strikeout total spikes back up to stay, going up by 510 to 4277.  Again, I am not sure what the cause was - a rule change, more stringent calling of the rule.  I do know that the foul strike rule was not universally loved when it was implemented, but that discussion is for another post.

As a last note, for those Brooklyn fans, you can wallow in one more thing.  A Brooklyn player led the NL in sitrkeouts Every year from 1902 through 1908 (Flood, Babb, Lumley, Maloney, Jordan), with the exception of Maloney in 1905.   Apparently, the Superbas didn't take kindly to a non-Superba (Maloney was with the Cubs in 1905) leading the league in K's, because he was acquired by Brooklyn in time to lead the league and set an new batter strikeout record of 118 in 1906!

I need to take care of this before I post any more. 

This research, by no means, has been a solo project.   I have had the help of many people in many cities - running copies/scans for me, documenting batter strikeouts in boxscores, and the most thankless task of them all, reading game accounts and pulling batter strikeout references for me.  Special kudos go to Dave Smith/Tom Ruane of Retrosheet for sharing "unproofed" play-by-play from many seasons, Ed Morton for his tireless work going through the 6 or 7 Philly papers running scans and documenting those in game accounts as well, and Bob Richardson, who did a similar thing for me in Boston.

A special thank you goes to Paul Wendt, who greatly encouraged me at the beginning of this journey and supplied me with the MS Access template which I have used to enter all of my lineups and batter strikeouts.

And lastly to Pete Palmer, who I have had the great pleasure to work with.  He has encouraged me, made suggestions, corrections, and is helping me "mainstream" my data.

To all, a tremendous thank you.

Baltimore	Bill Wagner
Boston	Bob Richardson	Lee Panas	Bill Nowlin
Brooklyn	Cliff Blau
Chicago	Walt Wilson
Cincinnati	Cincinnati Public Library	Jim Farmer	Tom Chase	Rick Huhn	Esta Day	Chris Eckes
Cleveland	Peter Garver	Rick Huhn
Detroit	Me
Louisville	Esta Day (UKy)
Milwaukee	Dennis Pajot
New York	Cliff Blau
Philadelphia	Ed Morton
Pittsburgh	Carnegie Public Library
St. Louis	St. Louis Public Library	Keith Carlson	Mary Hegel	Dwayne Ispring

As I have started into 1910, I have come upon Walter Johnson's 1st great year - 25-17, 1.36 ERA, and 313 strikeouts.   As I mentioned a few posts ago, it seems as if the Washington Post changed the format of their boxscores around the beginning of July, eliminating batter strikeouts from the boxscores.  But what recently caught my eye was a reference in the Chicago Tribune mentioning that Johnson had past Rube Waddell's AL record of 301 strikeouts in a season.  Well, a easy look at any current encyclopedia or Baseball Reference.com site will show that Waddell's top K total was 349 in 1904.   Apparently, either they forgot about 1904 (citing 1903) or had their 1904 totals wrong.   Pete Palmer or John Schwartz sent me an article from a 1946 Sporting News issue in which Cliff Kachline had corrected the error of how many K's Waddell had.in 1904  page 2 has a mention of the article. 

Rube Waddell was a phenomenon in the early 20th century - a brilliant and fearsome pitcher who was just (if not moreso) erratic.  But when he was on, he was on.  

While this blog entry is going to concentrate on 1903 and a subsequent one on 1904, one could make a case for his 1902 season in which he struck out 210 (6.8 per 9 ip).  Why?   1902 was the year before the implemenation of the foul strike rule in the American League.  Waddell's previous season, 1901, when he struck out 172 in 251 1/3 innings was the first year of the foul strike rule in the National League.

In 1902, Waddell, his 1st year in the AL,  led the AL in strikeouts by 50 (Cy Young was 2nd with 160), but more remarkable was how much he led by in k's per 9 innings - Waddell's 6.8 nearly DOUBLED Jack Powell's 2nd place number of 3.7 k's per 9.   But as for raw numbers, 1902 was just a warmup.  Once the foul strike rule was implemented, strikeouts as a rule went up in the AL (as they did in the NL in 1901), and Rube Waddell enjoyed 2 of the most dominating (in terms as versus the rest of the league) strikeout seasons.

In 1903, in 324 innings, Waddell struck out 302 (I counted 301).
In 1904, in 383 innings, he struck out 349 (I counted 350).

In 1903, he had 11 games with 10 or more strikeouts - George Mullin was second with 3 games

A couple of years ago, the late Mr. Schwartz sent me a list that he had compiled of all of Walter Johnson's strikeouts by batter for his rookie season of 1907 - it was complete except maybe 5.  His research corrected an error in Johnson's 1907 total.

This inspired me about a year ago to do the same with Waddell's 1903 and 1904 seasons.

I was able to find the batter for 288 of the 301whiffs (95%).   11 batter strikeouts from 4 games in Stl Louis and 2 k's from 2 games in DC are still unaccounted for.

Now the stats!

In 1903, here are Waddell's game by game totals:

One thing that you will notice really quickly is that there are No Games After August 21st.   So his 301 (302) strikeouts came with more than a month and half left in the season!
 
To quote from his BIOPROJ page:  "....even though his season ended prematurely on August 25 when he failed to appear for his scheduled start in Cleveland. Mack, weary of Rube's frequent unexcused absences, suspended him for the remainder of the season."

A nice brief bio can be found at the SABR BIOPROJ website:  Rube Waddell's BIOPROJ page

Date                                  Strikeouts

20-Apr	9
22-Apr	9
25-Apr	11
28-Apr	7
8-May	9
11-May	13
14-May	1
15-May	13
19-May	4
23-May	6
26-May	8
30-May	11
1-Jun	6
4-Jun	1
5-Jun	6
9-Jun	7
12-Jun	14
16-Jun	4
19-Jun	3
24-Jun	6
27-Jun	8
30-Jun	5
4-Jul	9
6-Jul	6
11-Jul	7
14-Jul	14
17-Jul	12
23-Jul	6
25-Jul	8
27-Jul	6
30-Jul	4
1-Aug	13
5-Aug	11
11-Aug	6
14-Aug	6
16-Aug	7
18-Aug	12
21-Aug	13
Grand Total	301

The following is a breakdown of which batters struck out the most against Waddell that year, by game.

Emmett Heidrick leads the pack with 12 Gus Hill acts (late 19th century whiff term) in 6 games vs. Waddell, including 4 times on July 17th.  Frank Isbell was second with 10 whiffs in 4 games.

Heidrick	12
StL	12
15-May	2
16-Jun	1
24-Jun	1
17-Jul	4
16-Aug	1
18-Aug	3
Isbell	10
Chi	10
11-May	2
9-Jun	1
14-Jul	4
14-Aug	3
Donovan	8
Det	8
5-Jun	3
27-Jun	1
4-Jul	2
21-Aug	2
Freeman	7
Bos	7
20-Apr	1
22-Apr	2
25-Apr	1
5-Aug	2
11-Aug	1
Ferris	7
Bos	7
20-Apr	2
22-Apr	2
25-Apr	2
11-Aug	1
Lush	6
Det	6
27-Jun	2
4-Jul	1
21-Aug	3
Bradley	6
Clev	6
23-May	1
26-May	1
12-Jun	2
11-Jul	2
Coughlin	6
Wash	6
8-May	1
25-Jul	3
27-Jul	2
Barrett	6
Det	6
27-Jun	1
4-Jul	1
6-Jul	2
21-Aug	2
Flick	6
Clev	6
26-May	2
12-Jun	2
30-Jun	1
11-Jul	1
LaChance	6
Bos	6
20-Apr	1
22-Apr	1
25-Apr	3
5-Aug	1
Friel	5
StL	5
15-May	3
17-Jul	2
Gochnaur	5
Clev	5
23-May	2
12-Jun	2
30-Jun	1
Lee	5
Wash	5
23-Jul	1
25-Jul	2
27-Jul	1
30-Jul	1
Green	5
Chi	5
11-May	1
9-Jun	1
14-Jul	1
14-Aug	2
Hickman	5
Clev	5
26-May	2
12-Jun	3
Hughes	5
Bos	5
25-Apr	3
11-Aug	2
Bernhard	5
Clev	5
30-Jun	2
11-Jul	3
Wolfe	5
NY	5
28-Apr	2
30-May	3
Martin	4
StL	4
17-Jul	3
18-Aug	1
Selbach	4
Wash	4
1-Jun	2
23-Jul	1
27-Jul	1
Wallace	4
StL	4
15-May	1
24-Jun	2
18-Aug	1
Hallman	4
Chi	4
11-May	3
9-Jun	1
G Smith	4
Det	4
27-Jun	2
4-Jul	1
6-Jul	1
White	4
Chi	4
11-May	3
14-Jul	1
Crawford	4
Det	4
5-Jun	1
27-Jun	1
4-Jul	1
6-Jul	1
McCormick	4
StL	1
15-May	1
Wash	3
23-Jul	1
27-Jul	2
Williams	4
NY	4
30-May	1
1-Aug	3
Dinneen	4
Bos	4
22-Apr	2
5-Aug	2
Ganzel	3
NY	3
28-Apr	1
1-Aug	2
Callahan	3
Chi	3
14-May	1
14-Jul	1
14-Aug	1
Dunkle	3
Wash	3
25-Jul	3
O'Brien	3
Bos	3
25-Apr	1
5-Aug	2
Siever	3
StL	3
15-May	2
16-Jun	1
Bay	3
Clev	3
26-May	1
12-Jun	2
F Jones	3
Chi	3
14-Jul	3
DeMontreville	3
Wash	3
8-May	3
Long	3
Det	2
27-Jun	1
21-Aug	1
NY	1
30-May	1
Conroy	3
NY	3
28-Apr	1
30-May	1
1-Aug	1
Dougherty	3
Bos	3
20-Apr	1
22-Apr	2
Joss	3
Clev	3
23-May	2
12-Jun	1
D Holmes	3
Chi	3
19-Jun	1
14-Jul	2
McCarthy	3
Clev	3
23-May	1
26-May	1
11-Jul	1
Wright	3
StL	3
18-Aug	3
L Tannehill	3
Chi	3
11-May	2
14-Jul	1
Carr	3
Det	3
4-Jul	2
6-Jul	1
C Stahl	3
Bos	3
5-Aug	1
11-Aug	2
Drill	3
Wash	3
8-May	1
23-Jul	2
Keeler	3
NY	3
30-May	1
1-Aug	2
Sugden	3
StL	3
15-May	1
17-Jul	1
18-Aug	1
Criger	2
Bos	2
5-Aug	2
Chesbro	2
NY	2
1-Aug	2
A Davis	2
NY	2
30-May	2
Courtney	2
NY	2
28-Apr	2
Lajoie	2
Clev	2
12-Jun	2
O'Connor	2
NY	2
28-Apr	1
1-Aug	1
Sudhoff	2
StL	2
15-May	1
16-Aug	1
McGuire	2
Det	2
4-Jul	1
21-Aug	1
Hemphill	2
StL	2
15-May	1
16-Jun	1
McAllister	2
Det	2
5-Jun	1
21-Aug	1
Evans	2
StL	2
17-Jul	2
Carey	2
Wash	2
8-May	1
1-Jun	1
Buelow	2
Det	2
21-Aug	2
Owen	2
Chi	2
9-Jun	2
Kahoe	2
StL	2
15-May	1
24-Jun	1
Wilson	2
Wash	2
8-May	2
Powell	2
StL	2
19-May	2
Magoon	2
Chi	2
19-Jun	1
14-Jul	1
Dolan	2
Chi	2
11-May	2
Parent	2
Bos	2
20-Apr	1
5-Aug	1
H McFarland	1
NY	1
1-Aug	1
Orth	1
Wash	1
30-Jul	1
Moran	1
Wash	1
30-Jul	1
Burkett	1
StL	1
16-Jun	1
Fultz	1
NY	1
1-Aug	1
T Daly	1
Chi	1
9-Jun	1
Townsend	1
Wash	1
1-Jun	1
Slattery	1
Chi	1
9-Jun	1
Gessler	1
Det	1
5-Jun	1
Collins	1
Bos	1
20-Apr	1
Robinson	1
Wash	1
8-May	1
Farrell	1
Bos	1
25-Apr	1
Kittridge	1
Wash	1
30-Jul	1
H Smith	1
Det	1
4-Jun	1
Skopec	1
Det	1
21-Aug	1
Gleason	1
Bos	1
20-Apr	1
Howell	1
NY	1
30-May	1
Yeager	1
Det	1
6-Jul	1
Delahanty	1
Wash	1
1-Jun	1
McFarland	1
NY	1
30-May	1
Hill	1
StL	1
18-Aug	1
Patterson	1
Chi	1
19-Jun	1
Domer	1
Clev	1
26-May	1
Abbott	1
Clev	1
30-Jun	1
Winter	1
Bos	1
20-Apr	1

I pulled the 288 strikeouts from a variety of sources, both from the box scores/play-by-play and game write-ups:

paper	k 's cited from
phi public ledger	118
ny evening telegram	31
chicago tribune	23
detroit free press	21
cleveland leader	15
st. louis republic	10
phil north amer	10
boston post	9
wash times	9
st. l globe dem	9
wash post	8
phil even telegram	7
boston herald	6
phil  record	5
st. l post dispatch	5
phil press	1
st. l chronicle	1
Grand Total	288

If anyone wants the game-by-game list, please let me know.

That's it for Waddell's 1903 season.