Marinerds, etc.

Well, the rosters are out for the Nippon Series, on the NPB official site: Fighters / Dragons. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except one wonders why Kosuke Fukudome is on the Dragons roster given that he hasn't actually played baseball since mid-July. In reality, most of the people on these rosters aren't going to see THAT much playing time in the Series, though you never know. Ochiai and Hillman were both trying to get enough playing time for various "dare aitsu?" types in the last month.

This week's Shukan Baseball has a gigantic breakdown of their previews and predictions and stats for the Japan Series, so I'm trying to go through my own thoughts and numbers about the entire thing, sort of like what I did last year.

Position Players, Fighters

Starting Lineup, without DH (in this case you platoon Inada and Koyano at 3B batting 7th; with Seguignol as DH, you just have both Koyano and Inada in there playing the corners and batting 7th and 8th, I think. To be honest, since most of Chunichi's starters are righties, and the lefty-hitting Naoto made that fantastic play in CLCS2, I'm betting he's going to get a lot more playing time than one might expect otherwise.)

1. R Hichori Morimoto #1, CF (.300/.355/.372, 31 SB, 91 RS)
2. L Kensuke Tanaka #3, 2B (.255/.321/.344, 27 SB, 58 sacrifices)
3. L Atsunori Inaba #41, RF (.334/.387/.505, 17 HR, 39 2B, 87 RBI)
4. S Fernando Seguignol #5, 1B (.249/.350/.428, 21 HR)
5. R Shinji Takahashi #30, C (.255/.306/.392, 10 HR)
6. L Takahito Kudoh #53, LF (.288/.329/.353, high socks)
7a. L Naoto Inada #54, 3B (.275/.293/.300, fears no cameraman)
7b. R Eiichi Koyano #31, 3B (.253/.289/.332)
8. R Makoto Kaneko #8, SS (.243/.296/.327, team captain)

The Fighters lineup is weird in that rather than there being one or two really big batters that everyone fears, there are just a whole bunch of mediocre batters who come up with big hits at the most bizarre times. Kaneko, for one, is extremely notorious for pulling clutch hits out of nowhere, probably because people never expect it out of him.

But, it is funny looking at our lineup and thinking "Wow, we have exactly one regular on the team this year with an OPS over .800, eh."

As an aside, Kensuke Tanaka hit .538 against Chunichi this year, including going 6-for-7 in the two games at the Nagoya Dome. Just saying. Watch him spend most of the Series bunting his life away anyway.

Bench:

R Shinya Tsuruoka #64, C (starting catcher for most of the 2006 Series games but had a .463 OPS this year and Shinji stole the job back)
R Satoshi Nakajima #32, C (player-coach, probly will not play much)
R Yukio Tanaka #6, IF (hasn't played much since getting his 2000th hit, is retiring after this season, better get a few at-bats)
R Chon-so Yoh #24, IF (mediocre fielder, mediocre bat)
R Yuuji Iiyama #57, IF (decent fielder, mediocre bat, nice speed, quintessential late-inning pinch-runner or defensive replacement, which you can guess because he's been in 105 games and gotten 55 at-bats)
L Tomochika Tsuboi #7, OF (.283/.334/.322, all-around decent but has no power, wears high socks)
L Toshimasa Konta #52, OF (5th outfielder in a swarm of lefty outfielders)

I dunno who else will factor in, if anyone. Keizo Kawashima might see a few at-bats if he's lucky, maybe.

I also realized that describing someone on the Fighters as having a "mediocre bat" is actually the default, and I really ought to pick the people out who DON'T have a mediocre bat instead :)

Pitchers, Fighters

SP1: Yu Darvish #11, RHP (15-5, 1.82; 207.2 IP, 49 BB, 210 K, 9 HR)
SP2: Masaru Takeda #38, LHP (9-4, 2.54; 35 G, 149 IP, 17 BB, 101 K, 18 HR)
SP3: Ryan Glynn #14, RHP (9-8, 2.21; 155 IP, 33 BB, 111 K, 16 HR)
SP4: Brian Sweeney #42, RHP (6-8, 3.70; 109.1 IP, 36 BB, 56 K, 11 HR)

You know, I should probably worry about the fact that there was only one 10-game winner on the Fighters this year, shouldn't I. I guess it's because the starts were really spread out among a wide group, with rookies like Yoshikawa and Kinoshita getting a few starts and guys like Kanamori picking up a bunch of relief wins.

But, I am betting this is the rotation they go with for the series -- it's what they went with for the playoffs, and since Chunichi is so righty-heavy it doesn't make sense to try to put Yagi or Yoshikawa into the mix. But, you never know.

Glynn, who was the best pitcher in the Central League this year (even though he was playing on a Pacific League team) pitched twice against the Dragons and was 1-0 with a 1.17 ERA in 15.1 IP, with 11 strikeouts, his two runs both coming on one Nori Nakamura homer. He was even better against Hanshin (2-0, 0.64 ERA, 14 IP 15 K, his lone run coming on a... Toshihiro Noguchi homer? Are you KIDDING me?)

Bullpen: Micheal Nakamura is obviously the closer. I'm honestly not sure exactly how the rest of the bullpen will shake down, or whether Yagi and Yoshikawa will enter in as lefty relievers. I was trying to figure out exactly why Jun Hagiwara's getting so much play time, too. He's mostly been out there for mop-up, it seems.

But, we still have Hisashi Takeda, who is the best middle reliever EVER, so it can't be all that bad. Until his arm falls off, of course.

CL: Micheal Nakamura #36, RHP (1-1, 2.16, 34 SV; 58.1 IP, 14 BB, 49 K, 4 HR, two recent meltdowns in the PLCS2)
BP1: Hisashi Takeda #21, RHP (7-6, 2.42, 2 SV; 74.1 IP, 16 BB, 53 K, 2 HR, awesome)
BP2: Takayuki Kanamori #59, RHP (4-1, 2.35; 23 IP, 3 BB, 9 K, 0 HR)
BP3: Mitsuo Yoshikawa #34, LHP (4-3, 3.66; 93.1 IP, 46 BB, 52 K, 6 HR)
BP4: Takehiko Oshimoto #61, RHP (2-1, 4.60; 47 IP, 23 BB, 49 K, 7 HR)
BP5: Tomoya Yagi #29, LHP (4-6, 4.54; 85.1 IP, 20 BB, 36 K, 12 HR, was injured)
BP6: Satoru Kanemura #16, RHP (5-6, 4.73; 78 IP, 30 BB, 33 K, 9 HR, was mental)

I'm hoping our lack of a left-handed relief ace like Hideki Okajima this year doesn't come back to bite us. Fortunately, with Kosuke Fukudome injured and not playing in this series, we don't have the same need for an arch-nemesis for him like Okajima was last year. ("Runners on base and Fukudome at the plate? No problem! Just take a Hideki Okajima and call me in the next inning.") In all honesty, the only lefty bat on Chunichi that I *really* worry about is, of course, my Dragonbutt, Masahiko Morino, and he can't do that much damage all by himself. (I hope. Just watch.) I'm going to get a lot of flak for not worrying more about Tatsunami and Lee, I'm sure.

I have this great idea to get a Fighters jersey with "Takeda #2138" on the back, anyway, to cover both awesome Takedas in one jersey. It'd be sort of like having an "Arakibata #26" Chunichi jersey, I'm sure.

Position Players, Dragons

Starting lineup, without DH, assuming a vaguely depressing platoon of Hidenori and Kazuki in RF (with a DH you just throw in LH Kazuyoshi Tatsunami batting 6th or 7th to break up the righties):

1. R Masahiro Araki #2, 2B (.263/.296/.302, 31 SB)
2. R Hirokazu Ibata #6, SS (.296/.368/.393, 23 SB, awesome)
3. L Masahiko Morino #31, LF (.294/.366/.458, 18 HR, 97 RBI, Mr. 3-Run Dragonbutt)
4. R Tyrone Woods #44, 1B (.270/.418/.530, 35 HR, 102 RBI)
5. R Norihiro Nakamura #99, 3B (.293/.359/.477, 20 HR, 79 RBI)
6. R Byung-gyu Lee #7, CF (.262/.295/.370)
7a. R Hidenori Kuramoto #57, RF (.278/.321/.389)
7b. L Kazuki Inoue #9, RF (.292/.352/.427, old)
8. R Motonobu Tanishige #27, C (.236/.347/.322)

Hey, that's not fair. Even without that Kosuke kid in action, they have all of these guys who know how to hit a baseball with a bat!

Bench:
R Kouhei Oda #26, C (Tanishige caught in 133 games out of 144 for a reason. Oda batted .194/.231/.222 in 27 games. Chunichi essentially has no backup catcher.)
L Kazuyoshi Tatsunami #3, DH (Current active Japanese hits leader, .275/.364/.367 as a pinch-hitter all year. Is awesome.)
R Hiroyuki Watanabe #5, IF (Sometimes comes in as a late-inning 1B because Tyrone is slow. Has an annoyingly difficult last name to write. Batted .130 this year.)
R Ryota Arai #25, IF (Little brother! Is adorable. Had a solid year on the farm and did okay in the top league too.)
R Ryousuke Hirata #8, OF (19-year-old kid from Osaka Toin. Still not sure what to think of him.)
R Atsushi Fujii #22, OF (900+ OPS on the farm, sucky in the top league.)
L Yoshinori Ueda #35, OF (Former Fighter)

You know, the Dragons' bench kind of sucks. Yeah, Tatsunami is FANTASTIC but I really don't know what to expect out of the rest of these guys. And god forbid anything happen to Tanishige, or the team's pretty much completely hosed.

Pitchers, Dragons

Rotation: The Chunichi rotation is actually the alternate identities of the Crazy Ken Band. Only guys named Ken (Kenshin, Kenichi, Kenta) are allowed in, along with some dude named Daisuke.

SP1: Kenshin Kawakami #11, RHP (12-8, 3.55; 167.1 IP, 23 BB, 145 K, 18 HR)
SP2: Kenichi Nakata #20, RHP (14-8, 3.59; 170.1 IP, 81 BB, 177 K, 14 HR)
SP3: Kenta Asakura #14, RHP (12-7, 3.36; 171.2 IP, 50 BB, 105 K, 9 HR)
SP4: Daisuke Yamai #29, RHP (6-4, 3.36; 83 IP, 32 BB, 56 K, 6 HR)
SP5: Takashi Ogasawara #43, LHP (6-6, 2.99; 120.1 IP, 33 BB, 97 K, 10 HR)

I don't actually think Takashi Ogasawara will get a start, but I guess it all depends on how the series is going. Since the Fighters have a relatively balanced standard lineup, it's unclear whether throwing a lefty at them will really make a difference. It was pretty crafty of Ochiai to throw Ogasawara at the Giants when they were expecting Kenshin, though, but that's the Central League for you.

And sadly, as my friend Jeff made the pun: "If you see Yamamoto coming out to the mound, you're going to say 'Masaka?!'"

(Hence, I am not even counting the 42-year-old lefty Masa Yamamoto (2-10, 5.07) in the mix. I feel TERRIBLE about that, since at this time last year he was still kicking butt for the Dragons, but that's just what happens.)

But at least the Dragons had three guys who won 10+ games, unlike the Fighters. Though it's funny to note that Kenichi Nakata had the second-highest strikeout total in the CL (177 to the 180 by Yomiuri's Utsumi), but he by far and away had the highest walk total in the CL (after his 81 the next highest is Hiroshima's Kan Ohtake with 59, which should tell you something). I would also guess that he had more full counts than any baseball player on the planet Earth this year, but I don't have a quick way to check that.

Bullpen: Hitoki Iwase is amazing. Did you know he's pitched in 10 Japan Series games in his career and never gave up a run in any of them?

CL: Hitoki Iwase #13, LHP (2-4, 2.44, 43 SV; 59 IP, 9 BB, 50 K, 3 HR)
BP1: Shinya Okamoto #12, RHP (5-2, 2.89; 56 IP, 21 BB, 44 K, 3 HR)
BP2: Yuuichi Hisamoto #61, LHP (2-1, 3.38; 45.1 IP, 20 BB, 31 K, 2 HR)
BP3: Masafumi Hirai #36, RHP (4-2, 3.29; 41 IP, 10 BB, 30 K, 5 HR)
BP4: Yoshihiro Suzuki #23, RHP (1-1, 3.52; 30.2 IP, 14 BB, 31 K, 3 HR)
BP5: Yuuya Ishii #30, LHP (2-2, 2.95; 18.1 IP, 11 BB, 14 K, 1 HR)

Wow. This is nowhere near the formidable bullpen Chunichi had last year. If nothing else, their walk rates have been ridiculously high.

Okay. Analysis next... we'll see how much I can think of before I fall asleep. I wanted to get this all done before the series but it just might not work out that way, sadly.

I posted this originally to the japanesebaseball.com forums as a reply to "Who's more likely to get the Sawamura award, Yu Darvish or Yoshihisa Naruse?" But, I want to have this around to work with as an article later, so I'm reposting it here.

For those who don't follow the NPB, Darvish is the best Iranian-Japanese pitcher in the history of baseball, and the ace pitcher for the Nippon Ham Fighters. The tall lanky right-hander just turned 22 two months ago, and his line for this year is 15-5 with a 1.82 ERA, 210 strikeouts and 49 walks in 207.2 IP.

Cherub-cheeked Yoshihisa Naruse is The Boy Who Can't Lose for this year's Chiba Lotte Marines. He's a young lefty -- his 23rd birthday is tomorrow -- and his line for this year is 16-1 with a 1.82 ERA, 138 strikeouts and 27 walks in 173.1 IP.

Yes, Darvish and Naruse both have amazing real ERAs, and are tied for the lowest ERA in Japan this year. But for those who also like being sabermetric statheads, there's a statistic called "fielding independent ERA", which you calculate based on things which the pitcher can control -- walks, strikeouts, home runs. I ran the numbers for all pitchers in Japan who logged over 100 innings, and Darvish comes out ahead in that with a 2.64 FIP.

Top 5 FIP (using ((13*HR + 3*(BB+HBP) - 2*K) / IP) + 3.2)

1 NHF  Darvish      2.64
2 CLM  H Kobayashi  2.71
3 OB   Kishida      2.76
4 FSH  Sugiuchi     2.87
5 CLM  Naruse       2.89

In addition to running the FIP numbers, I also examined a statistic called WHIP: Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched. This is basically an indicator of how many baserunners a pitcher is allowing in general. It's important because, after all, if a pitcher doesn't allow a lot of guys on base, then there aren't a lot of guys to score runs. Right? Generally, if a guy posts around a 1.1 or lower, that's great, meaning they allow slightly over one runner per inning. Darvish had a 0.83 WHIP, which is just amazing.

Top 7 WHIP: (everyone under 1.1)

1 NHF Darvish      0.83
2 NHF M Takeda     0.87
3 CLM Naruse       0.92
4 TYS Greisinger   1.03
5 NHF Glynn        1.05
6 CLM S Watanabe   1.06
7 FSH Sugiuchi     1.08

Another way to look at pitchers' strikeouts is in the number of strikeouts per 9 innings they have, not just the total. If a starter is managing to strike out over 1 guy per inning, that's really really good. Usually relievers have higher K/9 ratios because they come out and throw harder for a shorter period of time, but starters have to sustain their ability for a longer outing. Darvish is one of only three pitchers in Japan who logged over 100 innings and managed to strike out over one batter per inning:

Top 5 K/9:

1 RGE Tanaka       9.48
2 CD  Nakata       9.37
3 NHF Darvish      9.12
4 TYS K Ishii      8.83
5 FSH Arakaki      8.67

The only place where Darvish is weak is specifically in walks - his BB/9 and K/BB ratios are a little weaker than Naruse's. Darvish walked 2.13 guys per 9 innings, where Naruse walked 1.40 guys per 9 innings, so Darvish's ratio of strikeouts to walks is only 4.29, where Naruse's is 5.11, just from the lower ratio of walks.

But on the other hand, only three pitchers in Japan logged more than 200 innings: Wakui at 213, Greisinger at 209, and Darvish at 207 2/3. Darvish also has a Japan-leading 12 complete games to Naruse's 6, though Naruse has 4 shutouts to Darvish's 3.

What does this all mean? It basically means that it's pretty difficult to tell who's going to get it. I think there's a good argument for Darvish even on the "normal" stats -- IP, K, ERA, W -- but it's really not clear-cut. The only thing for sure is, if either of the Giants lefty aces get it, then something bizarre has transpired.

When Cha Seung Baek pitched the entirety of Wednesday night's rain-drizzled game against the Tigers, winning 9-2, he finished the first complete game of his career.

And, interestingly, since Felix and J-Rod had pitched complete games as well, that vaulted the Mariners into leading the AL in complete games with 3. Toronto's next with 2, both pitched by Roy Halladay.

I know that complete games have been going extinct over the last 20 years or so as bullpen roles become more defined and teams become less likely to let their starters throw a ton of pitches and risk injuring those multimillion-dollar arms, but it was kind of fun to run the numbers and see how Seattle's complete-game win totals have compared to the rest of the league, and since I generated this for myself, I figured I might as well share it with you all:

Year   AL CG   PCT CG   AVG      Leader             Seattle       Leader           CG  STS   CG PCT    
1977    586    25.9%    41.9     BAL (65, 40.4%)    (18, 11.1%)   Glenn Abbott     7    34   20.6%
1978    645    28.5%    46.1     BAL (65, 40.4%)    (28, 17.5%)   Glenn Abbott     8    28   28.6%
1979    551    24.4%    39.4     MIL (61, 7.9%)     (37, 22.8%)   Mike Parrott     13   30   43.3%
1980    549    24.2%    39.2     OAK (94, 58.0%)    (31, 19.0%)   Rick Honeycutt   9    30   30.0%
1981    334    22.3%    23.9     OAK (60, 55.0%)    (10, 9.1%)    Floyd Bannister  5    20   25.0%
1982    445    19.6%    31.8     DET (45, 27.8%)    (23, 14.2%)   Gaylord Perry    6    32   18.8%
                                                                  Jim Beattie      6    26   23.1%
1983    469    20.7%    33.5     NYY (47, 29.0%)    (25, 15.4%)   Jim Beattie      8    29   27.6%
1984    398    17.5%    28.4     BAL (48, 29.6%)    (26, 16.0%)   Jim Beattie      12   32   37.5%
1985    360    15.9%    25.7     MIN (41, 25.3%)    (23, 14.2%)   Mike Moore       14   34   41.2%
1986    355    15.7%    25.4     MIN (39, 24.1%)    (33, 20.4%)   Mike Moore       11   37   29.7%
1987    372    16.4%    26.6     BOS (47, 29.0%)    (39, 24.1%)   Mark Langston    14   35   40.0%
1988    352    15.6%    25.1     TEX (41, 25.5%)    (28, 17.4%)   Mark Langston    9    35   25.7%
                                                                  Mike Moore       9    32   28.1%
1989    265    11.7%    18.9     ANA (32, 19.8%)    (15, 9.3%)    Brian Holman     6    22   27.3%
1990    229    10.1%    16.4     TEX (25, 15.4%)    (21, 13.0%)   Matt Young       7    33   21.2%
1991    216     9.5%    15.4     CHW (28, 17.3%)    (10, 6.2%)    Brian Holman     5    30   16.7%
1992    242    10.7%    17.3     ANA (26, 16.0%)    (21, 13.0%)   Dave Fleming     7    33   21.2%
1993    209     9.2%    14.9     tie (26, 16.0%)    (22, 13.6%)   Randy Johnson    10   34   29.4%
1994    153     9.6%    10.9     CLE (17, 15.0%)    (13, 11.6%)   Randy Johnson    9    23   39.1%
1995    151     7.5%    10.8     BAL (19, 13.2%)    (9, 6.2%)     Randy Johnson    6    30   20.0%
1996    163     7.2%    11.6     tie (19, 11.7%)    (4, 2.5%)     Bob Wolcott      1    28   3.6%
                                                                  Matt Wagner      1    14   7.1%
                                                                  Bob Wells        1    16   6.3%
                                                                  Salomon Torres   1    7    14.3%
1997    123     5.4%     8.8     TOR (19, 11.7%)    (9, 5.6%)     Randy Johnson    5    29   17.2%
1998    141     6.2%    10.1     NYY (22, 13.6%)    (17, 10.6%)   Jeff Fassero     7    32   21.9%
1999    108     4.8%     7.7     BAL (17, 10.5%)    (7, 4.3%)     Jamie Moyer      4    32   12.5%
2000    107     4.7%     7.6     TOR (15, 9.3%)     (4, 2.5%)     Aaron Sele       2    34   5.9%
2001    103     4.5%     7.4     DET (16, 9.9%)     (8, 4.9%)     Freddy Garcia    4    34   11.8%
2002    115     5.1%     8.2     tie (12, 7.4%)     (8, 4.9%)     Jamie Moyer      4    34   11.8%
2003    110     4.8%     7.9     OAK (16, 9.9%)     (8, 4.9%)     Joel Pineiro     3    32   9.4%
2004    79      3.5%     5.6     OAK (10, 6.2%)     (7, 4.3%)     Ryan Franklin    2    32   6.3%
2005    85      3.7%     6.1     tie (9, 5.6%)      (6, 3.7%)     Ryan Franklin    2    30   6.7%
                                                                  Joel Pineiro     2    30   6.7%
2006    66      2.9%     4.7     CLE (13, 8.0%)     (6, 3.7%)     Felix Hernandez  2    31   6.5%
                                                                  Jamie Moyer      2    25   8.0%

The first three columns show the number of complete games pitched per year in the American League, the percentage of complete games overall, and the average expected number of games per team (ie, the number of complete games divided by 14 teams). The next column shows the team with the most complete games for that year (and the percentage), the next column is Seattle's number of complete games and percentage for that year, and the last part is who led the Mariners in complete games each year, with how many complete games they pitched, how many starts they had total, and the percentage of starts that they pitched complete games in.

I just thought it was kind of interesting that 15 years ago or so, 10 complete games by a pitcher would lead the Mariners, and now 10 complete games by a team would probably lead the American League. Compare that to 1980 and 1981, where the Oakland A's rotation (Langford, Norris, McCatty, Keough, Kingman) pitched complete games in over half of the games the team played!

It's also kind of funny that the Mariners twice had a 43-year-old pitcher tie for the CG team leader, with Perry in 1982 and Moyer in 2006.

In case anyone's wondering, now that Roger Clemens decided to keep playing (I hope you've all heard that by now), he's the active leader in career complete games with 118. Greg Maddux is the only other one over a hundred, with 108. (Randy Johnson clocks in at 98 after that, Schilling at 82, and Mussina at 57.)

Also, there have already been 33 complete games pitched in Japan this season so far, spread among 12 teams. Compare that with the 16 complete games pitched in the MLB this season so far, spread among 30 teams...

The 8am-10am "morning news" in Japan comes out on the web in general between 3pm-5pm here in America, which is great, because our workday is winding down here and I can see what's starting the next day there.

So when I got home tonight, I was reading an article in Japanese about how Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry was saying how glad he was to have Matsuzaka in Boston, and then I realized, rather than reading the Japanese translation of what Perry said, there simply had to be an English transcript of it somewhere. That made me feel awfully silly.

I was led to this "Dice-K" t-shirt via a random Google ad from that last page, and it's just terrible, though that might just be because I'm not particularly fond of the nickname. Perhaps I should make a "松馬鹿" t-shirt design.

Last week, Conor Glassey shared the super-awesome YouTube video of all of Seung-Yeop Lee's 41 home runs this year, and if you watch closely, you'll notice that numbers 38 and 39 were off Kei Igawa on September 7th. Which got me wondering about why several top players in Japan seem to end up with reverse platoon splits, and specifically both Lee and Igawa. By a platoon split, I mean how in general, we expect left-handed hitters to hit right-handed pitching better, and vice versa. A reverse platoon split is a lefty hitting lefties better, and vice versa. Righties Tadahito Iguchi and Kenji Johjima have notably hit better off righties than lefties in the MLB.

I'll admit I have limited data and I'm just playing around with what I do have, but when looking at this year's splits it was interesting that left-handed slugger Seung-Yeop Lee hit .311 with 22 homers against righties in 305 AB, and .338 with 19 homers against lefties in 219 AB. And lefty pitcher Kei "is for strikeout" Igawa gave up 17 home runs this year -- 7 to right-handed batters in 518 AB, and 10 to left-handed batters in 251 AB. Igawa struck out 25% of the righties he faced (K/BB 4.18, avg .205), but only 20% of the lefties he faced (K/BB 3.5, avg .294).

While this can probably be attributed to small sample size, and possibly to the fact that a lot of the current good hitters in Japan tend to hit lefty, it still makes me wonder why lefties were hitting him better this year. Offhand, if you take the top ten batting averages in 2006 in each league, you'll find that 14 out of those 20 guys bat lefty. Out of those, the only one besides Lee to show a reverse platoon split this was -- no joke -- Akinori Iwamura, who hit .354 with 11 HR in 178 AB off lefties, and .291 with 21 HR in 368 AB off righties.

If nothing else, it'll be interesting to see if they exhibit the same tendency in the majors next year. Imagine Iwamura being benched against stronger lefty starters, or Igawa being left in too long to face lefties, only to have the opposite of the expected outcome occur. This is probably all just a case of my overactive imagination, but I'm going to try to hunt down more data anyway.

(Also, just think, if I had chosen to go to Nagoya on 9/6 and Koshien on 9/7, instead of the other way around, I would have seen Luis Martinez get shelled by Yakult and Igawa get roughed up by Lee, rather than dealing with a rainout and seeing Kenshin Kawakami get shelled by Yakult. Man.)

Speaking of Kawakami, he didn't accompany the Dragons on their big trip to Las Vegas, but instead visited a center in the Minato-ku area of Nagoya where they train seeing-eye dogs. He made a personal donation of a million yen to the facility, and ran around playing with the dogs, despite that he was wearing a suit and got it full of dog hair. Being as he's pictured with a white labrador retriever, I bet that was plenty of fun to clean off afterwards! Kawakami said he's really fond of dogs and would love to visit the center again sometime (and bring some Chunichi teammates with him).

While in Las Vegas, apparently Morino, Asakura, and Takahashi decided to go skydiving. This in itself may not be amusing, but the picture in the article of Dragonbutt in skydiving gear is pretty funny, plus the fact that one paragraph at the bottom is about skydiving and 95% of the article text is actually about "the great Morino-Tatsunami Third Base Battle", Dragonbutt's plight in becoming the regular third baseman in place of declining veteran Kazuyoshi Tatsunami. (I didn't think it was really a rivalry, though, especially having seen Tatsu helping him out with his fielding.) Dragonbutt plans to do weight training in the offseason to become stronger for the "battle".

Fun pictures: Look! It's Andoh Claus and Fukuhara. And also Hamanaka, Fujimoto, and Nakamura in Singin' in the Rain! Okay, just kidding on that one. You can also see Trey Hillman and his family visiting the area where Lord of the Rings was filmed, as part of the current Fighters victory trip to New Zealand. Kensuke Tanaka is merely enjoying the golf there, as is Brad Thomas, apparently. (I didn't think Thomas would be on the trip since the team released him, but I guess he is from Australia and all, so it's not as far to hop over.)

Most fun mental picture was of Tomoya Yagi meeting yokozuna Asashoryu at a pro sports awards ceremony where Yagi was getting another accolade for being Rookie of the Year. The encounter made quite an impression on the young pitcher, as Yagi was caught by the aura surrounding the sumo champion.

EDIT! Yay, a real picture of Asashoryu and Yagi! I think Asashoryu looks much happier in that shot -- Yagi looks a bit frightened, if anything :) Today's pictures also include Hisashi Takeda in Christchurch and uhhh, Tateishi and Itoh learning how to shear sheep. No, I'm really not making that up.

(Subject line is sort of a tribute to Jeff Shaw.)

"Home run, home run, Hosokawa! Timely, timely, Hosokawa!"

The cheers from the outfield bleachers filled the Invoice Dome on a crisp September night. But what were they cheering for? The shortest home run in history?

Toru Hosokawa, the catcher for the Seibu Lions, was at the plate, squaring away to bunt for the third time that evening. Three times, he'd stood on deck and watched Shogo Akada hit a single, and didn't even need to see the coach's signal to know he should bunt the runner ahead to second base. Three times, he'd come in, ready to unselfishly sacrifice his own at-bat in order to advance his team's cause. Three times, the crowd screamed wildly for him to get a hit, to drive in a run.

He caught the ball with the bat, rolling it along the ground in front of home plate, and took off running as fast as he could. Matoyama's throw to first was in plenty of time for the out. Hosokawa headed back to the dugout to a roar of cheers from the Lions fans, and the words "Mission Accomplished!" flashed on the big screen.

Mission accomplished, indeed.

Sacrifice bunts are as big a symbol of Japanese baseball as Sadaharu Oh or Koshien Stadium. It's well-known that Japanese baseball players are about twice as likely to bunt as their American counterparts. But exactly how effective a strategy is it?

This year the Nippon Ham Fighters won the Japan Series against the Chunichi Dragons. One obvious reason for this is that in the 5 games that the series lasted, the Fighters scored more than twice as many runs as the Dragons did, 20 to 8. However, another significant thing they did twice as often was sacrifice bunt -- 13 times to the Dragons' 6 times. They also capitalized on those bunting opportunities more, as over half of their bunts (7) led to runners scoring, yet the Dragons only scored two runs from their 6 bunts.

Kensuke Tanaka, the Fighters second baseman who led the Pacific League in sacrifice bunts this year with 34, also set a special record in the Japan Series by hitting six successful sacrifice bunts. Even more impressively, five out of the six resulted in Hichori Morimoto scoring a run. The other run-scoring bunts for the Fighters happened in what would become the final game of the Series. Down by one run in the fifth inning, Naoto Inada doubled, Shinya Tsuruoka bunted him to third, and Makoto Kaneko successfully executed a suicide squeeze bunt to tie the game.

Elegant? Perhaps. Effective? Definitely.

The Fighters also grounded into only two double plays compared to the Dragons' six, which could also be a result of having one runner on second more often than one runner on first. Having a speedy and smart baserunner like Morimoto on second also allowed the Fighters to let RBI-men Ogasawara, Seguignol, and Inaba do their jobs more effectively.

The sacrifice bunt, a fundamental part of "small ball" baseball tactics, has been rolling towards a slow death on the MLB side of the Pacific. Sabermetrics have shown that without any other situational knowledge of a game, a sacrifice bunt will generally lower the probability of a run scoring, not raise it. And regardless of whether a manager listens to their inner stathead, most big-league skippers would generally rather play for a big inning than squander their outs, with the exception of pitchers hitting in the National League.

The number of home runs in the MLB and the number of sacrifice bunts didn't change significantly between 2005 and 2006. On average, teams bunted once more (55) and hit 12 more home runs (179) than they did last year. National League teams bunted 1190 times, about two and a half times as many as the American League 461. The World Series teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers, did not bunt significantly more or less than they did last year, although the Cardinals hit 14 more home runs and the Tigers hit 35 more.

Looking at the NPB, however, yields wildly different results.

From 2005 to 2006, Japanese pro baseball saw a 30% increase in sacrifice bunts from 1014 to 1323, but they also saw a 17% decrease in the number of home runs hit, from 1747 to 1453. Only the Yakult Swallows went against the trend, both increasing their home runs and decreasing their sacrifice bunts.

There were two teams that increased their sacrifice bunts far and away more than any other teams in Japan -- none other than the Japan Series contenders, the Nippon Ham Fighters and the Chunichi Dragons, reporting increases of 79 and 73 respectively. The Fighters even went from hitting a Pacific League-low 54 bunts in 2005 to their league-leading 133 in 2006. Bobby Valentine's Chiba Lotte Marines, in comparison, hit exactly one more sacrifice bunt in 2006 than in 2005, their 57 total being the lowest in all of Japan, the Yomiuri Giants' 89 being the second lowest. They also dropped from being Japan Series champions to finishing in fourth place.

Fighters manager Trey Hillman said at spring training that he was willing to listen to his coaches and players and try to play more Japanese-style small ball, rather than going for big innings. The Fighters scored 38 less runs than they did the previous year, but they also won a club record 82 games and their first Japan Series title since 1962. Hillman hoped the new strategy would let the players play better and harder, getting one run on the board first and worrying about the rest later. It worked far better than anyone expected.

Bunts, strong defense, and young pitchers with fighting spirit - ingredients of a classic Japanese recipe.

Or maybe just for the breakfast of champions.


(Data for this article culled from mlb.com and bis.npb.or.jp; my spreadsheets are here and here.)

This post has a few raw edges I'll be trying to smooth over in the next day or two. If you don't know already, I've been a Fighters fan for several years and they're who I'm rooting for in this series, so this may be biased.

Also, I found by random chance a pretty good summary of the futile Fighters history, in a Royals blog of all places.

So the first part: the rosters.

The Fighters 40-man roster and the Dragons 40-man roster have been put up officially on the NPB site, but in reality, most of these guys aren't going to see any game action during the series. Several of the Fighters kids never played a single top-level game at all this year.

Realistically, here's the Fighters lineup I expect to go out there.

Position Players, Fighters

Starting Lineup, without DH (with Seguignol as DH, move Ogasawara to 1B and put in Macias or Inada at 3B batting 7th):

1. R Hichori Morimoto #46, LF   (.285/.343/.413, 13 SB)
2. L Kensuke Tanaka #3, 2B   (.301/.358/.415, 21 SB)
3. L Michihiro Ogasawara #2, 3B   (.313/.397/.573, 32 HR, 100 RBI)
4. S Fernando Seguignol #5, 1B   (.295/.356/.532, 26 HR, 77 RBI)
5. L Atsunori Inaba #41, RF   (.307/.355/.522, 26 HR, 75 RBI)
6. R Tsuyoshi Shinjo #1, CF   (.258/.298/.416, 16 HR, 62 RBI)
7. R Shinya Tsuruoka #64, C   (.241/.251/.340)
8. R Makoto Kaneko #8, SS   (.254/.300/.382, 26 2B)

This lineup's gotten us far, but now that I look at it, we do have the lefties and righties clustered without Macias or Inada batting 7th, eh. Not sure whether they'll mess with it or not though.

Bench:

R Shinji Takahashi #30, C
R Satoshi Nakajima #32, C
R Yukio Tanaka #6, IF (this year's team captain... he'll see some at-bats)
S Jose Macias #9, IF
L Tomoyuki Oda #51, IF
L Naoto Inada #54, IF (more likely to play than Macias)
L Tomochika Tsuboi #7, OF (expected pinch-hitter, been injured)
L Toshimasa Konta #52, OF (likely to play some late-game outfield)

There's a chance some playing time might go to some of the farm kids, Kawashima or Iiyama being the most likely, but I'm not counting them for now. I'm not sure what the deal is with Kuniyuki Kimoto either, come to think of it.

Pitchers, Fighters

Rotation: I'm thinking of a 4-man rotation. Even though they could pull off 3 with the scheduling, it seems unlikely:

SP1: Yu Darvish #11, RHP (12-5, 2.89; 149.2 IP, 64 BB, 115 K, 12 HR)
SP2: Tomoya Yagi #29, LHP (12-8, 2.48; 170.2 IP, 51 BB, 108 K, 12 HR)
SP3: Satoru Kanemura #16, RHP (9-6, 4.48; 134.2 IP, 43 BB, 57 K, 14 HR)
SP4: Masaru Takeda #38, LHP (5-2, 2.04; 29 G, 84 IP, 15 BB, 54 K, 5 HR)

The Kanemura situation is just incredibly stupid. More on that later.

Bullpen: Micheal Nakamura is obviously the closer. In a longer series and with Kanemura out there I'm expecting more bullpen use than in the playoffs, and these are my best guesses of which guys will matter, in order:

CL: Micheal Nakamura #36, RHP (5-1, 2.19, 39 SV; 65.2 IP, 20 BB, 67 K, 5 HR)
BP1: Hisashi Takeda #21, RHP (5-3, 2.09, 3 SV; 81.2 IP, 8 BB, 61 K, 1 HR)
BP2: Naoyuki Tateishi #25, RHP (3-2, 2.72; 49.2 IP, 15 BB, 26 K, 3 HR)
BP3: Hideki Okajima #40, LHP (2-2, 2.14, 4 SV; 54.2 IP, 14 BB, 63 K, 5 HR)
BP4: Takehiko Oshimoto #61, RHP (5-0, 1.50; 36 IP, 16 BB, 30 K, 0 HR)
BP5: Yoshinori Tateyama #22, RHP (3-3, 3.06; 47 IP, 10 BB, 30 K, 6 HR)
BP6: Brad Thomas #17, LHP (4-1, 3.74; 45.2 IP, 23 BB, 43 K, 2 HR)

I'm not quite sure where Ejiri, Hashimoto, Shimizu, etc will fit in if at all. Quite frankly, if the Fighters have a lead after 7 and the starter's tired, Hisashi Takeda and Micheal Nakamura are lights-out, pretty much. A lot of the Dragons regulars are righty-hitting, but their likely DH is a lefty, which may change things around a bit. On the other hand, while Takeda's had a typical split, he's still been mostly unhittable regardless of which side of the plate you're flailing your bat from.

Now, as for the Dragons, I'm less familiar with them on the whole, though I did see them in person twice last month. So here's what I think they'll be throwing out at us:

Position Players, Dragons

Starting lineup without DH (I'm guessing that with DH, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami just gets thrown in there somewhere, probably 6th or 7th):

1. R Masahiro Araki #2, 2B   (.300/.338/.358, 30 SB)
2. R Hirokazu Ibata #6, SS   (.283/.355/.365, 17 SB)
3. L Kosuke Fukudome #1, RF   (.351/.438/.653, 31 HR, 104 RBI, 11 SB)
4. R Tyrone Woods #44, 1B   (.310/.402/.635, 47 HR, 144 RBI)
5. L Masahiko Morino #31, 3B   (.280/.321/.395)
6. R Alex Ochoa #4, CF   (.273/.341/.421, 15 HR, 77 RBI)
7. L Kazuki Inoue #9, LF   (.311/.340/.476)
8. R Motonobu Tanishige #27, C   (.234/.347/.353)

Tyrone Woods is a beast and Kosuke Fukudome is the CL batting champ by a long shot. Ugh.

Bench:
R Kouhei Oda #40, C
L Kazuyoshi Tatsunami #3, IF (Current active Japanese hits leader)
R Hiroyuki Watanabe #5, IF
R Masahiro Kawai #7, IF (will undoubtedly come in for a sac bunt before he retires, heh heh)
R Ryota Arai #25, IF (little brother!)
R Hiroshi Narahara #95, IF (former Fighter, traded to the Dragons mid-season)
L Yoshinori Ueda #35, OF (another former Fighter grrrr)
R Hidenori #57, OF

I know nothing about Hiromitsu Ochiai's tendencies in bench management, honestly, but since he's a CL manager I'm sure he's more used to the whole pitcher-pinchhitter management than Hillman is right now.

Pitchers, Dragons

Rotation: In typical CL style they won't say anything about it. I'm guessing a 4-man here as well:

SP1: Kenshin Kawakami #11, RHP (17-7, 2.51; 215 IP, 39 BB, 194 K, 22 HR)
SP2: Masa Yamamoto #34, LHP (11-7, 3.32; 170.2 IP, 36 BB, 124 K, 11 HR)
SP3: Kenta Asakura #14, RHP (13-6, 2.79; 154.2 IP, 33 BB, 107 K, 12 HR)
SP4: Kenichi Nakata #20, RHP (7-4, 3.91; 112.2 IP, 36 BB, 111 K, 16 HR)

I'm wearing a Kawakami #11 t-shirt RIGHT NOW, which I wore to volleyball tonight and we proceeded to lose FOUR STRAIGHT GAMES. I hope it's an omen. More on these guys later (Yamamoto in particular's a fun one to talk about).

Bullpen: Iwase. Sigh. He's going to own us.

CL: Hitoki Iwase #13, LHP (2-2, 1.30, 40 SV; 55.1 IP, 8 BB, 44 K, 3 HR)
BP1: Masafumi Hirai #36, RHP (5-3, 2.29; 63 IP, 16 BB, 44 K, 5 HR)
BP2: Shinya Okamoto #12, RHP (4-1, 3.40; 53 IP, 21 BB, 56 K, 5 HR)
BP3: Yuuichi Hisamoto #61, LHP (2-2, 1.76; 30.2 IP, 12 BB, 19 K, 0 HR)
BP4: Yuuya Ishii #30, LHP (2-1, 4.01; 24.2 IP, 10 BB, 24 K, 1 HR)
BP5: Yoshihiro Suzuki #23, RHP (1-0, 1.70; 53 IP, 15 BB, 54 K, 2 HR)
BP6: Mitsuru Sato #16, RHP (9-4, 2.65; 129 IP, 24 BB, 83 K, 9 HR)
BP7: Denney Tomori #46, RHP (0-1, 3.10; 20.1 IP, 4 BB, 11 K, 2 HR)

Luis Martinez is on the postseason roster but I'm wondering whether he'll actually get used. But this is one hella scary bullpen (fortunately light on lefties though).

Over on USSM today, Derek pointed out an article on the Hardball Times by Craig Burley called Phranklin, which is an interesting read, regardless of whether you're a Mariners or Phillies fan, or just like to read people discussing whether a particular pitcher is bad or seems bad.

The upshot of the THT article is that "Pat Gillick claims if you just remove Ryan Franklin's four awful starts, he really wasn't that bad a pitcher" -- and Burley sets out to prove that no, really, he still was that bad a pitcher. Which makes you wonder whether it's a valid claim at all, and contrariwise, how much worse would a good pitcher be if you just took out a few of their good starts?

Well, because I just finished tallying up the 1940 game log for Hughie Mulcahy tonight (though, sadly, my numbers, the NYT season numbers, and baseball-reference's numbers don't agree -- I have him at 91 walks and 81 strikeouts, NYT had him at 90 and 81, and b-ref has him at 92 and 81; I'm going to check the Baseball Encyclopedia tomorrow), let's see if I can do this four-worst and four-best thing on him. Since, after all, my original thought was that he wasn't such a bad pitcher either, but was just cursed by run support and by being on the 1930's Phillies. This is a guy who got named to the 1940 All-Star team despite a 7-10 record at the break, who would work his way to a 12-10 record before dropping 12 straight decisions to go 13-22 for the season.

Here's Hugh Mulcahy in 1940, with all his games, and then adjusted to remove his four worst starts - I'm using baseball-reference's numbers for now; I added in FIP and WHIP to Craig Burley's numbers:

          GS  W-L    IP      H   R   ER  HR  BB  SO  ERA   FIP   WHIP
Real      36  13-22  280    283 141  112 12  91  82  3.60  4.15  1.336
Adjusted  32  13-18  263.7  253 111  83  9   80  77  2.83  3.97  1.263

For the day, Mulcahy really wasn't so bad a pitcher, if you think about it. In 1940, you could lead the NL in K/9 with less than 5 (as opposed to today's near-10s), could lead in K/BB in the mid-2's... of course, there weren't really relief pitchers back then, either, at least not as we know them today. (The guys leading the leagues in saves had 7.) The AL had slightly higher numbers to lead their pitchers that year - well, higher K/9 but lower K/BB and such.

Yes, a guy with a 2.83 ERA still would have lost 18 games. Why? Because the Phillies that year suuuuuuuuuucked. This is a team that scored 494 runs, allowed 750 (87 of which were unearned -- Bobby Bragan alone made 49 errors that year in 132 games) and averaged 3.23 runs scored per game. As I calculated it, the team scored 115 runs of support while Mulcahy was on the mound, and he allowed 141 runs total, 112 of which were actually earned.

If you calculate the Pythagorean expected W/L on his games, real and adjusted for removing the 4 worst:

             RA    RS     PW-PL          ER      RS      PW-PL
Real        141   115     14-21          112    115      18-18
Adjusted    111   109     16-16           83    109      20-12

Ahh, and there he is, a 20-game winner, if not for all those damn errors and those four bad outings! The funniest part is, there was an article in the July 31, 1940 New York Times actually saying "Will Mulcahy be the first 20-game winner the Phillies have had in the last 24 years?" Naturally, that was right before his 12-game losing streak.

Now, I'm going to do this the other way, taking out his four best starts (I'm going on earned runs to pick them -- he had three shutouts, and I'm including what I thought was his best start outside them -- a 13-inning complete game on May 23 where he gave up 15 hits, walked none, struck out 10, and of course, the game-losing run came in on Chuck Klein's error):

          GS  W-L    IP    H   R   ER  HR  BB  SO  ERA   FIP   WHIP
Real      36  13-22  280  283 141 112  12  91  82  3.60  4.15  1.336
Adjusted  32  10-21  240  250 137 109  11  85  67  4.08  4.30  1.396

             RA    RS     PW-PL          ER      RS      PW-PL
Real        141   115     14-21          112    115      18-18
Adjusted    137    99     11-21          109     99      15-17

Hmm. Yeah. Still bad, of course, but really not as atrociously bad as one would expect a guy to be to win a moniker like "Losing Pitcher". And if he'd been playing on a team like the Pirates where they were averaging 5.19 runs scored per game, he might have even had a .500 record.

You can't compare Losing Pitcher Franklin and Losing Pitcher Mulcahy easily, to be honest, but I'm working on it. They both definitely had one thing in common: they went out there and threw a metric crapload of innings for a pathetically bad team (albeit one with a much better defense, that's for sure) and came out looking much the worse for the wear.

I wanted to make this post yesterday, but I spent three hours banging my head against this and didn't have an answer then. I still don't exactly, but I figured, hey, let me unleash my latest thing upon the world and maybe they'll have some input for me.

This is probably too dorky/nerdy/geeky/whatever for almost anyone reading this, but hey, this isn't Seattle MariNERDS for nothing.

Anyway, as some of you know, I like puzzle games a lot. I participate in events like Microsoft Puzzle Hunt and play an inordinate amount of puzzle video games and such. I like to solve puzzles for the heck of it, and I'm usually pretty determined to figure things out.

So, in the midst of attempting to calculate some game-by-game breakdowns for my latest baseball history obsession/project (which I'm almost dubbing "The Truth About Losing Pitcher Mulcahy" in my mind, sort of like my Jack Nabors thing a few weeks ago), I've been reading box scores from the New York Times from the Phillies 1940 season, trying to get Mulcahy's game-by-game log, which means figuring out his earned and unearned runs per game. Sometimes this is really easy, like if (as he often did) he pitched 9 innings and nobody made any errors. Sometimes it's not that simple but the flavor text in the article gives it away by saying when the errors were made.

And sometimes it's nigh impossible to reconstruct the game events at all.

In other words, I've stumbled across a boundless set of baseball logic puzzles. This is both beautiful and frightening.

Currently, I'm puzzling over the box score from a game between the Giants and the Phillies on July 5, 1940 (PDF file, copied from the New York Times archive, I hope I'm not going to hell for this). My goal is to figure out: when did Mulcahy get taken out of the game, and how many earned runs were assigned to him?

Let's see what we know, shall we? I'm going to retype the box score just because I know some of the numbers are hard to read on the original scan, and I'll include the relevant text from the bottom (the fact that there were 4702 paid patrons and 5532 ladies since it was Ladies' Day is irrelevant, I think):

Philadelphia                        New York
                AB  R  H PO  A  E                    AB  R  H PO  A  E 
Schulte, 2b      5  0  1  0  4  0   Whitehead, 3b     6  1  3  2  1  1
Mueller, rf      3  0  0  1  0  0   Rucker, cf        4  1  1  2  0  0
Marty, cf        4  0  0  0  0  0   Moore, lf         5  2  2  3  0  0
Rizzo, lf        4  1  1  3  0  0   Young, 1b         5  2  2  7  1  0
May, 3b          3  1  1  1  3  0   Danning, c        4  0  1  6  1  0
Bragan, ss       1  0  0  0  0  0   O'Dea, c          1  0  0  1  0  0
Monchak, ss      3  0  1  3  0  0   Ott, rf           4  2  1  3  0  0
Mahan, 1b        4  0  2  8  3  0   Cuccinello, 2b    4  2  2  1  0  0
Millies, c       0  0  0  1  0  0   Witek, ss         4  3  2  1  1  0
Warren, c        4  0  1  4  0  0   Melton, p         5  2  3  1  4  0
Mulcahy, p       0  0  0  0  1  0   
L. Brown, p      3  0  0  3  0  1        TOTAL       42 15 17 27  8  1
Atwood ph        0  0  0  0  0  0

       TOTAL    34  2  7 24 11  1

Philadelphia      0  1  0    1  0  0    0  0  0      2
New York          2  8  0    3  0  2    0  0  x      15  

Runs batted in - Young 3, May, Melton 2, Whitehead 5, Moore 2, Danning, 
Ott, Cuccinello, Mahan.  Two-base hits - Danning, Whitehead.  Three-base 
hit - Whitehead.  Home runs - Young, May.  Left on bases - New York 7, 
Philadelphia 8.  Bases on balls - Off Mulcahy 2, Melton 3,  L.Brown 2.  
Struck out - By Melton 7, L.Brown 4.  Hits - Off Mulcahy 6 in 1 1-3 
innings, L.Brown 11 in 6 2-3.  Wild pitches - Melton, L.Brown.  

Relevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young opened fire with a two-run homer in the first inning"
[in the second inning] "Two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy. Three more hits greeted Brown which, with an error, made the Giant total for the inning eight."
"A cluster of three runs came in the fourth, a triple by Burgess Whitehead banging in these three. Whitey also drove two more tallies across in the sixth with a double, his third blow of the day."
"When Brown, along with his catcher, Benny Warren, entered the game in the second..."

Irrelevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young was so elated over his homer, his third of the year, that on rounding first he tripped and went sprawling inelegantly right in front of all of the ladies."

So, much like a logic puzzle, let's gather facts and try to piece together this crazy second inning and see if we can figure out the earned runs per pitcher. Welcome to my brain, ladies and gentlemen -- it's going to be a bumpy ride, so hang on to your hats!

Firstly, Burgess Whitehead hit in 5 runs -- three in the fourth inning and two in the sixth inning, which we found out in the text. Babe Young hit in 3 runs total, and 2 of them were in the first inning off his home run. If you're looking at the inning-by-inning count of runs... Every other run batted in by a Giant batter happened in the second inning. Namely, RBIs were collected in that inning as such: Moore and Melton both got 2, and Young, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello each got one.

Secondly, as far as I can tell, no plate appearance counts for two outs. In order for Whitehead to have gotten 6 at-bats, there must have been at least 46 plate appearances by the Giants -- 5 times around the order is 45, and thus his 6th at-bat was a 46th. Well, in 8 innings the Giants were put out 24 times, plus they got 17 hits, plus there was one error, plus there were 4 walks (2 by Mulcahy, 2 by Brown) given them. If you add up 24 + 17 + 1 + 4, you actually get EXACTLY 46. Meaning that the very last at-bat of the 8th inning was Whitehead and he made an out somehow. (He couldn't get a hit then because the double in the 6th inning was described as "his third blow of the day" and the box score shows he only got 3 hits.) They DO list Hit-by-Pitch and Double Plays AND sacrifices and such generally in these box scores, so there just weren't any HBP, Sacs, etc.

Taking that, you know that the four men who walked were Rucker, Ott, Cuccinello, and Witek, because they don't have 5 at-bats each. (Ken O'Dea came in to replace Harry Danning at the plate during the seventh inning or so and managed to get an at-bat.)

Now, let's piece together the first inning to figure out who led off the second inning. Now, here's something interesting. If you make a grid and start filling in frames like a scorecard, you'll see that Moore had to be the batter driven in on Young's two-run homer in the first inning. Why? Because he scored two runs during the game, and there's no way the No. 1 hitter Whitehead could have driven him in during the 4th or 6th inning; it's simply impossible. Therefore, he scored one in the first inning and one in the second. (He can't have scored two in the second. With eight runs scored and three outs, even with three men left on base, that's a maximum of fourteen possible at-bats, which wouldn't get all the way back around to him.)

Okay, so in the first inning, Whitehead made an out, Johnny Rucker made an out, Jo-Jo Moore singled, Babe Young hit a home run. Harry Danning made an out. We know this because Whitehead and Rucker couldn't have also gotten on base or it would have been more than a two-run homer. Harry Danning also made an out -- we know this because he had exactly one hit all game, and he drove in a run -- meaning that hit HAD to come in the second inning. Therefore Mel Ott led off the second inning.

Mulcahy was taken out after 7 batters in the second inning. We know this because he is listed as pitching 1 and a third innings, so there must have been one out credited to him. The text in the article says "two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy." Therefore he definitely had to come out before Danning's double. If Ott led off the second inning, then Mulcahy faced Ott, Cuccinello, Witek, Melton, Whitehead, Rucker, and Moore.

Now the question is... how many earned runs were charged to him? And what exactly transpired in that second inning?

The easy answer to the first part is that 8 earned runs were charged to him total. 2 for the first inning, and 6 for all of the runners in the second (since 8 runs were scored, it stands to reason that all of his runners scored). But it's possible otherwise, especially in trying to figure out how that first out happened and also when Brown's error occurred.

And this is sort of where I'm stuck right now. I can't quite reconstruct a plausible second inning. I'm close, but I don't think it's quite right.

I mean, what we know is that in the second inning, Young, Melton, Moore, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello had RBIs (and also importantly, Witek and Whitehead and Rucker did NOT). And we can also deduce who HAD to score in the second inning:
-- Whitehead, because he is credited with a run but could not possibly score in another inning (he batted in all the runs after the 2nd without a homer -- and he could not have scored on a wild pitch because all the runs are accounted for with RBIs)
-- Rucker, for the same reason. Batting AFTER Whitehead, he could not be batted in during a later inning, and is credited with a run, so it had to come here
-- Moore, same reason as Rucker but credited with 2 runs, one of which happened in the first inning
-- Young, same reason as Moore
-- Witek, because he scored 3 runs, meaning he was batted in this inning and twice by Whitehead's later hits
-- Ott, credited with two runs, could not have scored both of them behind Whitehead's triple and double (do the math, with Cucc, Witek, and Melton scoring 7 runs between them total but only 5 runs batted in by Whitehead in those later innings, even if you gave them all runs in the 2nd that still accounts for 4 out of the 5 runs Whitehead batted in, so only that fifth could have been taken by Ott)

Also, curiously, Danning did NOT score in the second inning, according to the box score. I wonder if the box score was just wrong -- because THAT is the trickiest wrench to deduce.

So, here's the sequence I'm working with right now:

Ott - out
Cuccinello - walk
Witek - walk, Cuccinello to second
Melton - single, batted in Cuccinello and Witek (2 runs so far)
Whitehead - single, Melton to second
Rucker - single, Whitehead to second, Melton to third
Moore - single, batted in Whitehead and Melton, Rucker to second (4 runs)
Pitching change : Lloyd Brown replaces Hugh Mulcahy.
Young - single, batted in Rucker, Moore to second (5 runs)
Danning - double, batted in Moore, Young to third (6 runs)

This works out fine so far -- Moore was Mulcahy's last batter and he's scored. Great. Now here's where I run into problems. Danning somehow has to get out before crossing the plate, but Cuccinello has to get an RBI, as does Ott -- but DANNING CANNOT SCORE. So I *think* the following is possible, assuming Ott would get an RBI for a fielder's choice. This also assumes the error didn't actually lead to a run being scored.

Ott - Fielder's choice, Danning out at third, Young scores, Ott to second on the throw home. (7 runs)
Cuccinello - singles, Ott scores. (8 runs)
Witek - reaches base on error, Cuccinello to second.
Melton - makes an out. Inning over.

I think this works for the other innings --

Third inning - Whitehead, out 1. Rucker, walked. Moore, out 2. Young, out 3.
Fourth inning - Danning, out 1. Ott, singles. Cuccinello, singles, Ott to second. Witek, singles, Ott to third, Cuccinello to second. Melton, out 2. Whitehead, triples, bats in Ott, Cuccinello, Witek. Rucker, out 3.
Fifth inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. Danning, out 3.
Sixth inning - Ott, out 1. Cuccinello, out 2. Witek, singles. Melton, singles, Witek to second. Whitehead, doubles, bats in Witek and Melton. Rucker, out 3.
Seventh inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. O'Dea, out 3.
Eighth inning - Ott, walked. Cuccinello, out 1. Witek, out 2. Melton singles, Ott to second. Whitehead, out 3.

To sum up:
Whitehead - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: out. 4th: 3-RBI triple. 6th: 2-RBI double. 8th: out. 6 AB, 1 R, 3 H, 5 RBI
Rucker - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: walk. 4th: out. 6th: out. 4 AB, 1 R, 1 H, 0 RBI
Moore - 1st: single, run. 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 2 RBI.
Young - 1st: 2-RBI home run. 2nd: RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 3 RBI.
Danning - 1st: out. 2nd: RBI double. 4th: out. 5th: out. 4 AB, 0 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
O'Dea - 7th: out. 1 AB, 0 anything.
Ott - 2nd: out. 2nd: RBI FC, run. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: walk. 4 AB, 2 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
Cuccinello - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: RBI single. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: out. 4 AB, 2 R, 2 H, 1 RBI.
Witek - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: Error. 4th: single, run. 6th: single, run. 8th: out. 4 AB, 3 R, 2 H, 0 RBI.
Melton: 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 2nd: out. 4th: out. 6th: single, run. 8th: single. 5 AB, 2 R, 3 H, 2 RBI.

Mulcahy 1.1 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR.
Brown 6.2 IP, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 0 HR.

So, um, if you happen to have access to play-by-play data from this game and want to back me up on my reconstruction of the game, [Lumbergh]that'd be greeeeeeeeeeat[/Lumbergh]. For now, I'm going to sleep, because I've been thinking about this too much. I may or may not edit this down in the morning; I really just wanted to do a brain dump of it all, because dang, my brain's about to explode.

I walked out of the Seattle Public Library this morning, grinning gleefully and clutching a printout in my grubby little hands, secure in the knowledge that I was right, and several authors (and assumedly, their fact-checkers) were wrong.

The printout was of a baseball box score article titled "Champions Capture Two", detailing a double-header that the Red Sox played against the Athletics on June 24, 1916. The Sox won both games, which is not surprising, given that this was the year the Philadelphia Athletics managed to lose 117 games while only winning 36, and the Red Sox had won the World Series in 1915 and were on their way to winning it a second straight time in 1916.

Infact, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics easily stand as one of the worst baseball teams of all time. Their 117 losses was an American League record until the 2003 Detroit Tigers managed to lose 119 -- and even they had a higher winning percentage, being 43-119 and .265 to the Athletics' .235. This is a team that finished 40 games out... of seventh place. It almost takes talent to be that bad.

The most hapless of the happy was a pitcher named Jack Nabors. Look him up if you don't believe me -- this man has a lifetime pitching W-L record of 1-25. Nabors had a W-L record of 1-1 after the A's won a game against the Red Sox on April 22, 1916 -- and after that, he dropped 19 straight decisions, giving him a record of 1-20 for the year. His roomate, Tom Sheehan, had a record of 1-16, making the pair of them a combined 2-36, despite their vaguely respectable ERAs of 3.47 and 3.69.

Nabors was not a good pitcher by most ways of counting it. The man made 13 errors in 1916 for a fielding percentage of .827. Unlike other pitchers with hard luck, he didn't help his case with the bat either, going .101/.139/.101 and scoring one run himself all year. In 212 innings, he gave up 206 hits, walked 95 and struck out 74. Still, according to one article about him, he was partially a victim of bad luck and lousy run support to some extent -- he lost five games by one run, another five by two -- on fourteen occasions, the A's scored two or fewer runs for him, and in five of those occasions, they were shut out. I'm sure if he'd played for another team, he might have won as many as five or six games that year!

Anyway, a quite amusing story that is often told about Jack Nabors is about one of his particularly stunning losses. I've read this story in at least three places, all told with varying details, but the final score is always cited the same:

From On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place:

   Tom Sheehan told a story: "Once we go to Boston for a series. I pitch the opener and give up one hit, by Doc Hoblitzell. But it happens to follow a walk and an error by Witt [one of 78 errors he made that year] and I lose, 1-0.
   Now Nabors pitches the second game and he is leading, 1-0, going into the ninth. He gets the first man. Witt boots one and the next guy walks. Hooper is up next, I think, and he singles to left and the guy on second tries to score.
   Well, Schang has a good arm and he throws one in that had the runner cold by fifteen feet. But we have one of those green catchers. I'll never forget his name, Mike Murphy. The ball bounces out of his glove, the run scores, the other runner takes third, and it is 1-1.
   Nabors winds up and throws the next pitch 20 feet over the hitter's head into the grandstand, the man on third scores, and we lose another, 2-1.
   Later I asked Nabors why he threw that one away.
   "Look," he said, "I know those guys wouldn't get me another run, and if you think I'm going to throw nine more innings on a hot day like this, you're crazy."

And the way I originally read this story was in The Baseball Hall of Shame's Warped Record Book:

   On his way to a record 19 straight defeats in 1916, hard-luck pitcher Jack Nabors became resigned to losing.
   Although he pitched his heart out and recorded a decent 3.47 ERA in over 200 innings, he won only one game and lost 20 with the last-place A's - a weak-hitting club that won only 36 games all year.
   Nabors's frustration was never more evident than during the no-hitter he was pitching against the Boston Red Sox. Holding on to a 1-0 lead, Nabors got the first out in the ninth inning before walking the next batter.
   Shortstop Whitey Witt then booted a potential game-ending double-play grounder, putting runners on first and second. A moment later, the heartsick Nabors lost his no-hitter on a single to center.
   But there was still hope of victory. Centerfielder Wally Schang scooped up the ball and fired home to head off the run. The throw was perfect. But catcher Billy Meyer got tangled up in his own feet and the ball caromed off the heel of his glove as the runner scored the tying tally. The other runners moved up an extra base on the play at the plate and now were perched on second and third with one out.
   Nabors surveyed the situation. He looked at the runner on third, took a deep breath... and deliberately hurled the next pitch high off the backstop, allowing the winning run to trot across the plate.
   "What did you do that for?" Meyer asked Nabors.
   "Listen," the weary pitcher said grimly. "I knew we'd never get another run. If you think I'm gonna pitch eight more hitless innings in this hot sun, you're nuts."

The story's also in Baseball Anecdotes, where they list Witt as getting 70 errors that year (he had 78) and the rest of the story is the same as Sheehan's quote.

Here's the thing. I really do think this is a hilarious anecdote and very descriptive of the 1916 Philadelphia Pathetics, but the facts just didn't seem right to me. For one, I completely doubted that there was any way in heck that Nabors possibly had a no-hitter going. And when I looked at the 1916 Athletics Game Log on Retrosheet, the only game that Nabors started and the A's lost to the Red Sox 1-2 was the opening game, Nabors pitching vs. Babe Ruth. So I was starting to think that this might have just been a crazy story told by an old man whose memory was failing him, not a set of actual events from an actual game. The details of the story as written suggested that the Wild Pitch game happened against the Red Sox sometime when it was hot out. Well, the A's played in Boston in April, June, and October. Tom Sheehan did infact pitch and lose a 1-0 game on June 23, 1916, the day before Jack Nabors pitched and lost the second game of the series on June 24, 1916. Thing is -- that game was lost by a score of 2-3, not 1-2.

So, either the details of the story were wrong, or Retrosheet was wrong. The lesson to be learned here is: Never doubt Retrosheet.

I've got the printout of the New York Times box score and article from the June 24, 1916 games. The text summary for the first game reads as follows:

   BOSTON, June 24.-- The Red Sox took a double-header from the Athletics today, the score of the first game being 3 to 2 and of the second being 7 to 3. Hooper stole home in the first inning of the opener, his single being the only hit off Nabors up to the ninth, when singles by Hooper and Janvrin, errors by Nabors and Murphy, a wild pitch, and a fly to Schang let in the needed two runs.

And here's the boxscore (the Assists column is too blurry on the Philly side):

      BOSTON.                         PHILADELPHIA.
                AB R H P A                   AB R H Po
Hooper, rf       4 2 2 2 0    Witt, ss        4 0 1 5
Janvrin, 2b, ss  3 1 1 0 2    King, 3b        4 0 2 0
Lewis, lf        4 0 0 4 0    Strunk, cf      4 0 1 2
Hoblitzel, 1b    4 0 0 9 1    Schang, lf      5 0 1 3
Walker, cf       3 0 0 1 0    Lajoie, 2b      4 1 0 0
Gardner, 3b      3 0 0 0 0    McInnis, 1b     3 0 1 13
Scott, ss        1 0 0 3 3    Walsh, rf       3 1 2 2
McNally, 2b      0 0 0 0 1    Murphy, c       3 0 0 1
Carrigan, c      2 0 0 8 1    Nabors, p       3 0 0 0
Agnew, c         0 0 0 0 0
Leonard, p       2 0 0 0 2          TOTAL....33 2 8 26*
Mays, p          0 0 0 0 0  (* 2 out when winning run scored)
a Henriksen      0 0 0 0 0
b Thomas         1 0 0 0 0
c Ruth           1 0 0 0 0

       TOTAL....28 3 3 27 10

a-Batted for Scott in eighth inning
b-Batted for Carrigan in eighth inning
c-Batted for Leonard in eighth inning
Errors-Scott, Witt, Murphy, Nabors.

What are the errors in the stories as told, assuming this box score is correct?

• The score was 1-0 and his wild pitch let in a run to lose it 2-1. No. The box score confirms that the score was 2-1 A's going into the ninth, with a Boston run in the 1st and 2 Athletics runs in the fourth, and the two runs for Boston in the ninth made it 3-2. Retrosheet confirms the 3-2 score as well.
  
  
• It was a no-hitter. No. It was a one-hitter, though.
  
  
• He got the first guy in the ninth inning out. At the bottom of the Red Sox lineup is listed Henriksen, Thomas, and Ruth, batting for Scott, Carrigan, and Leonard in the eighth inning, the 7-8-9 batters. Henriksen is not credited with an AB, so I do believe he walked. Now, due to the article text listing "singles by Hooper and Janvrin in the ninth", we know that Hooper got a hit in the ninth inning. Since Ruth batted in the 9-slot in the eighth inning, it stands to reason that Hooper, in the 1-slot, led off the ninth inning. Since Hooper and Janvrin are also listed as scoring runs in the 9th, Hooper can't have gotten out.
  
  
• Schang was the center fielder. The box has Strunk listed as the CF for both games of the doubleheader, with Schang playing LF the first game and catching the second.
  
  
• Billy Meyer was the catcher. No, Sheehan at least had it right that Mike Murphy was the catcher, and that he made an error in the ninth inning. Murphy played in 14 games that year, 15 in his entire MLB career, and that one error, his only ever, gave him a career .973 FP. My guess is his career was cut short more by his batting (.111/.143/.111 in 27 AB) and that he was cursed by the 1916 Athletics.
  
  Billy Meyer, as a matter of fact, was only the team's regular catcher that year because Wally Schang injured his hand on opening day and spent most of the season in the outfield. Meyer ended up missing half the season due to appendicitis, and in 1917 became a true backup to Schang. He never panned out in the majors as a player again, although he later had a stint as a beloved manager in Pittsburgh in the late 40's and early 50's.
  
  
• The sequence of the 9th inning was 'out, walk/boot, boot/walk, single, wild pitch'. While I'm not following the text of the article as if it's the literal order in which things happened, take a look at the box score again. It says (in the notes I didn't type in) that there were no doubles hit for the Sox, and only Hooper stole a base (in the first inning), and Boston only got first base on one error. My guess is that in the first inning, Hooper singled, Janvrin walked, Lewis reached on a fielder's choice, moving Hooper to third but Janvrin was out at second, and Hooper stole home.
  
  To me, it seems like what may have happened in the ninth is: Hooper singled. Janvrin singled, advancing Hooper to second. (He probably grounded to Witt, who couldn't quite get his hands on the ball in time to make a double play, and instead it was ruled an infield single.) In the next play, Hooper and Janvrin advanced to second and third, while somehow Lewis was out and Nabors made an error. Hoblitzel comes up and pops the ball up to short left field. Schang catches it for the second out, and fires the ball home to try to catch Hooper. Murphy bobbles the play badly, and Hooper scores and Janvrin moves to third. With Walker at bat and the score now tied, Nabors throws the legendary wild pitch that ends it 3-2.
  
  Or maybe the box score is wrong too. Or, it's possible the "error" Nabors was charged with was the deliberate wild pitch.
  
  
• Did he even throw the wild pitch to end the game? Wouldn't you expect the article to mention that the game ended on a wild pitch if it had actually happened that way? I have been trying to reconstruct the ninth inning to sync with the story, but it's quite possible that the wild pitch happened before a sac fly to Schang.
  
  
• Where did he throw the wild pitch to? I have to admit that throwing it into the grandstand is a more entertaining notion than throwing it into the backstop. Who knows.
  

Other notes about the game: Carl Mays pitched the last inning of the first game of the doubleheader and then also pitched a complete game for the second game of the doubleheader.

Pitching lines for the first game:
Nabors: 8.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
Leonard: 8 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 0 HR
Mays: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR

Yeah, he actually had a one-hitter going against the first-place team without being able to strike anyone out AND with a team that made 312 errors all year (in a league where the rest of the teams averaged out to 218 errors). The mind boggles.

Believe it or not, Nabors's story gets even sadder after this. He contracted the Spanish Flu that swept the world in 1918-1919, and pretty much spent the last three years of his life bedridden until his heart and lungs gave out in 1923, a few weeks short of his 36th birthday.

By the way, if anyone has any further information about the game, or access to Philly or Boston newspapers of the time that may have actual play-by-play information, or any suggestions for other places I can research this, it's gladly taken. I love looking into little details like this, though I'm amused that the Periodicals aide at the library didn't even blink when I specifically said, verbatim, "I need to access a newspaper that would have the box score of a baseball game played between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics on June 24, 1916. Can you help me?" I guess they get bizarre requests all the time.

Anyway, today is Connie Mack's 143rd birthday, so I suppose it's only fair to be knocking one of the worst teams he ever managed. Baseball history is great this way -- I originally intended to write an article about Losing Pitcher Mulcahy, to honor Ryan Franklin's non-tender, but then when looking through books about lousy Philadelphia pitchers, came across the Nabors discrepancy instead. God, I love this stuff.

(Did anyone actually read this far? Is it interesting at all for me to share my research into historical quirks like this?)

As an aside, and here's your trivia question for the day: In 1916, there were four pitchers in the AL who lost 20 games or more. Three of them were on the horrible Philadelphia Athletics -- Elmer Myers (14-23, 3.66 ERA, 4.83 RA), Joe Bush (15-24, 2.57 ERA, 3.42 RA), and the aforementioned Hard Luck Nabors (1-20, 3.47 ERA, 4.65 RA) . Can you name the fourth (without looking it up)? Trust me when I tell you it's not someone you'd usually associate with *losing* 20 games in a season.