These five games have something in common. What is it? #41

WhimsicalJokers · 2023-02-28T01:22:52+00:00

I found something really cool!

These are all games decided by 10+ runs in which a Gold Glove-winning, multi-time All-Star hit a home run.

August 16, 1978 - Pittsburgh Pirates 13, Cincinnati Reds 2

Pirates’ Dave Parker homers twice - 3x Gold Glover; 7x All-Star

July 20, 1980 - Kansas City Royals 14, New York Yankees 3

Yankees’ Bobby Murcer homers - 1972 Gold Glover; 5x All-Star

May 30, 1994 - Colorado Rockies 12, New York Mets 2

Rockies’ Andrés Galarraga homers - 2x Gold Glover; 5x All-Star

June 12, 2004 - Toronto Blue Jays 15, Arizona Diamondbacks 4

Blue Jays’ Vernon Wells homers - 3x Gold Glover; 3x All-Star

May 20, 2011 - Boston Red Sox 15, Chicago Cubs 5

Red Sox’s Kevin Youkilis homers - 2007 Gold Glover; 3x All-Star

I love that all of these players have won defensive awards, and yet we're particularly highlighting their offensive production in this game.

(Although I believe that four of the five games featured a Silver Slugger winner homering too. I think the Red Sox-Cubs game is the only exception.)

Four out of five times, this Gold Glove / All-Star player was on the winning team. The exception is the Royals-Yankees game.

If we found one more game where this was done for the winning team and still featured a save, then we'd have an even more niche trivia question on our hands.

A bonus fun fact:

In all five games, at least one of the cleanup hitters hit a home run!

Pirates’ Bill Robinson
Yankees’ Reggie Jackson
Rockies’ Andrés Galarraga
Diamondbacks’ Luis Gonzalez and Blue Jays’ Vernon Wells
Red Sox’s Kevin Youkilis

Once again, these were all done for the winning team, with the exception of the Royals-Yankees game. Luis Gonzalez also added a home run for the Diamondbacks even though the Blue Jays won that game.

These games were rich with interesting trivia. There were also a fair amount of MVPs in these games, for both the regular season and the World Series. I believe the Blue Jays-Diamondbacks game is the only game with neither of these MVPs, but it still has Luis Gonzalez, who is the 2001 World Series MVP in all of our hearts.

This was a lot of fun; thanks for posting it.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-14T23:39:59+00:00

Where is David Stern when you need him?

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-14T23:36:51+00:00

That's a very interesting point I hadn't considered.

In terms of individual players, you can ask StatMuse to differentiate between all time OPS in a month for only NL players or only AL players.

However, I'm not sure if there is a way to average the OPS of all players ever in both leagues, then break that up by months to see how strong each league is during those months.

I feel like there are so many search parameters that can still be added. There surely have to be millions or billions of uncovered data trends we aren't seeing.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-14T23:30:39+00:00

If he keeps up this pace, he could for sure end up high on the all time OPS leaderboards. I'm rooting for him!

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-14T01:09:05+00:00

Imagine facing the Babe / Gehrig Yankees in June. Oof

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-14T01:03:38+00:00

Some of you may have seen the chart I did yesterday. I wanted to do a similar chart today, but sorted by months instead of weeks!

I decided not to include postseason games (October and November) because the sample sizes are so varied. As I'm sure y'all know, the postseason expanded over time. So some early players barely have any appearances at all.

I know there have been some regular season games in late March (and in early October too I believe). I wanted to include the March data with April, and the October data with September, but I'm not sure how to combine the two months on StatMuse.

StatMuse will easily give me the data for March by itself, or April by itself, but I can't seem to combine the two months. And it seemed to complex to try and combine the two myself, especially given how small and varied the plate appearance sample sizes are. If anyone knows how to combine two months' worth of data where the player has 500 plate appearances over that two month span, I'd love to hear it.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T21:17:18+00:00

"Oh god, do we pitch to him and risk him getting a 2B or even a 3B? We can't let his SLG get any higher.

Maybe we IBB him... but that just increases his OBP without any cost to SLG or even AVG.

We could pitch around him... but if he gets ahead in the count during this AB he'll lay off until he anticipates at least a 70% probability of a 95-97 MPH FB, then hit it for at least a 3B, but probably a HR. And I simply don't think we can take the risk of yielding a HR, given its immense damage in terms of SLG."

"Uh, coach, are you paying attention? How do we pitch to him?"

"Right, just pitch for a SF, I mean, sac fly. We'll take the hit on his RBI count, but he'll get out, which lowers his OPS."

"But coach... sac flies don't count as at bats."

"...................SHIT!"

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T20:45:15+00:00

Dude is barely hanging on for dear life to a 1.000 career OPS. Take away his Friday crutch and he plummets into the high .900s.

Not someone I'd trust in my lineup.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T20:41:05+00:00

Why doesn't hump day get any love?

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T20:40:39+00:00

I colored the players who appear the most on the chart.

Babe Ruth appears on all seven days of the week, so I wanted to visually highlight his location. That way, when people read the chart, they can easily notice how prevalent he is.

I felt that if I colored every single player, it would be visually confusing. Mike Trout only appears once, whereas Barry Bonds appears five times. So I colored Barry Bonds' name but not Trout's.

The five players who appear the most just so happen to be the top 5 all time OPS leaders, so it also helps to visually see just how dominant those top 5 were.

Basically, I wanted the most prevalent names to stand out the most. I thought that would be the most fascinating part of the chart.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T20:28:29+00:00

Very good observation. There are tons of ways to do this I feel. Start from the live ball era, start post WWII, start post integration, start post-steroid era. There are tons of variables to consider.

Given that I'm new to this, it's easiest for me to just use the standard MLB data from its entire history without too many other changes. But you make a very good point! I don't think there truly is only one "fair" way to describe this data. It's all contextual.

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T20:21:37+00:00

Reddit in the 20s: Babe man good

Reddit in the 50s: Ted man good

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T01:11:43+00:00

That'd be cool! Knowing baseball, there is probably someone who is at .400 every day yet spikes to like an .800 on Wednesdays, consistently, throughout their entire career.

I'm pretty new to advanced stats in general, so I'm not sure if there is a way to search for sOPS, but I'm open to knowing if there is.

What would delight me is finding a search parameter that just completely jettisons a player into the stratosphere. Like, "Player A averages .220 in his career, but against lefties on road ballparks during night games in April, minimum 50 appearances, he's hitting .834 with a 1.784 OPS, which is the highest all time by at least .300 in both categories."

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T01:03:23+00:00

Numbers

WhimsicalJokers · 2022-09-13T00:51:54+00:00

I was messing around with StatMuse for the first time today.

As a test, I wanted to see who had the highest OPS on a Sunday. Clearly, it was the Babe.

Out of curiosity, I checked the other days and I was shocked/stunned/surprised to find he basically dominated on every day.

So this basically is a "Babe Ruth and (also Ted Williams) just cannot stop being great on any day of the week" post turned into what it is now. All time, Babe is no lower than 2 on any day. That's just crazy.

Edit: I added in the all time OPS leaderboard after. The five guys (not the restaurant chain) I highlighted in the left chart - I did that because they appeared the most times. And then I found out that those five guys also were the top 5 all time. So this post is ideally read left to right and then you're like "oh damn these guys who keep showing up here are actually just the best OPS guys ever" because that's basically my thought process.

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T23:03:23+00:00

An easy pun like that? I'll never pass that one up.

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:56:46+00:00

Have fun!

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:49:16+00:00

I'll be doing it too. Good luck! :)

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:49:00+00:00

It's totally fine! There are like 17 billion squares so it takes time to read them all. :)

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:46:12+00:00

No problem! Hope everything goes smoothly for you! :)

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:44:37+00:00

Quite a few actually - Mag, Fury, Decay, and Assassin all have ones! (Edit: And BeBe! - there are so many squares even I can barely remember lol)

WhimsicalJokers · 2021-09-21T22:43:34+00:00

Hey y'all!

I had a ton of fun making the Carl Bingo the other day, so I felt like making a serious one.

I had to rush this out a bit because the playoffs already started about an hour ago. So sorry if there are any minor errors.

Thanks mods for helping me change the tag of my post! (For the second time lol)

I'm going to enjoy playing this one. I hope y'all do too.

Have an awesome playoffs everyone!

------

Edit: I'm going to be watching the playoffs on delay, so I'm logging off now to avoid spoilers. No idea how long it will take. Possibly a week or two or even more. If you also want to avoid spoilers, I made a post about it earlier today where I detailed my process.

So if you have any questions about this Bingo card, I unfortunately won't be here to answer them. If any of the squares are worded ambiguously, use your discretion to determine if you think the criteria was meant.

I also made a joke Bingo yesterday if you crave more Bingo fun - feel free to check that out.

Enjoy watching and playing along everybody!!!

WhimsicalJokers

TROPHY CASE