Hold on. Did anyone else see that in his age 37 minor league season Marrero had TWENTY-FOUR HBP in just 31 games???? That's triple any of his other seasons!
My favorite Baseball Reference page is Rangers at Royals, June 6th 1991. The game goes 6 and a half hours and 18 innings. Future Hall of Famer George Brett has the best hitting game ever without contributing to the outcome in any way. He went 4-6 with 3 walks while having no runs scored or RBIs.
How the hell is it not helping his team despite getting on base? Is it it his own fault that his own teammates can't bring them in. Hits is still an improtant stat to see whose a good baseball player. Not whatever nerd stat of the month you come up with
@@tylerbennett5282 1. He’s a Hall of Famer so he doesn’t care about this anomalous performance 2. The Royals won the game so he didn’t care, even then 3. I’ve edited my comment to be more concise
@@tylerbennett5282 Agreed. I've been formulating a statistic, tentatively called Share of Runs Scored. If you single, take third on a single and then score on a Sac fly, you're credited with .25 SRS, the guy with the following single gets .5 SRS and the guy who drove you in gets .25.
@@JayTempleI imagine stealing second would give the scorer 0.5, just as a double would. Rickey Henderson's 1989 ALCS performance against the Blue Jays is a good test case for the stat
@@havenharris1793 It wasn’t even Slovakia at that time, it was still the Austro-Hungarian Empire He also had no relation to the other famous Jack Quinn who was a near contemporary
My favorite thing to do is to compare Bonds' pre-Giants years to Alfonso Soriano's first 7 seasons to notice how similar they are, and then wonder how our opinion of Soriano would have changed if he started taking steroids partway through his career like Bonds did
@@SilhouetteLifter Soriano's _peak_ 7 years: 120 OPS+, 26.4 bWAR Bonds first 7 years: 147 OPS+, 50.3 bWAR Soriano was, quite literally, half the ballplayer Bonds every was at any point in either of their careers. which says a lot more about Bonds than Soriano, mind you.
Back in November, I asked Bailey a question on his Patreon a question about the best short pitchers and he brought up Marrero. It's cool to see it become a full video.
I recently discovered another player akin to Franco as part of an exploration on some of the most influential players in MLB history. Nick Altrock played his first MLB game at the age of 21 with the 1898 Louisville Colonels (a team that featured Honus Wagner at first base, as well as 3 guys named Clarke) and while he pitched his last game with the 1924 World Series-winning Washington Senators at 48, he had 1 plate appearance for the Senators in each of the 1929, 1931, and 1933 seasons at the ages of 53, 55, and 57-meaning that over the course of 36 seasons he participated in 19 of them, or just over half, finishing his career with 1,514 innings pitched, an 83-75 record and 2.67 career ERA, a .176 average in 609 career plate appearances, and a 96 ERA+, 40 OPS+, and 9.2 career WAR. His SABR biography (sabr.org/bioproj/person/nick-altrock/) really ties his BR page together.
I would highly recommend the book The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball by Roberto González Echevarría, the history of the game there is fascinating and the book talks about a bunch of really interesting players like Marrero.
I’m partial to King Kelly’s page. First thing that draws your eye is he had an OBP of .483 in 1886, which makes you go “what the heck happened in 1886?” The National League increased the number of balls for a walk from 6 balls to 7 balls, and the guy had the best OBP of his career. It’s interesting to track his career as the number of balls for a walk changed. Didn’t get to the modern 4 balls for a walk until 1889.
Learning about how much the rules of pitching changed in the first few decades of professional baseball makes you wonder how guys managed to stay consistently good when the rules kept changing on them
My favourite stat of all time. If Barry Bonds had retired at 35, he would be tied with 5 other players for most MVPs ever, all having three. Then from 36-39 Bonds won another 4 mvps.
I've certainly heard of Connie Marrero before but it was mostly for his elderly age. Good to know there were other things that made him unique. I love the boxscores that Baseball Reference has on their page, so my favorite B-R page is the box score from the best game that I've witnessed in person: Randy Johnson's 300th win. I just go to the page frequently and relive the fond memories I have of that day.
Elmer Valo. One of only 3 players to appear in MLB born in Slovakia. Spent the first decade of his career on the Philadelphia Athletics and was part of 3 teams that relocated; PHA to KCA, BRO to LAD, and WSH to MIN. Add in missing time due to military service and being a career 115 OPS+ hitter makes for a very interesting trivia answer that no one has heard of.
My favorite page is Nate Berkenstock. the oldest player ever on BBref, born on September 17 1832. He played one game for the Philiadelphia Athletics, the team he co founded, for their last game of the first season of the National Association. at 39 years old, he struck out 3 times and ended 0-4. According to his bullpen page, he’s also believed to be one of the first jewish players in MLB. my favorite part, the FAQ for his page claims that he both “had hits over his career” and “had home runs over his career”, presumably failing to insert the 0 that belongs there. that or we’re missing the 5th at bat we all know went over the wall. who knows.
Gene Tenace is my favorite Baseball Reference page. His walk rate and overall production with such low batting averages even by today’s standards amazes me. Averaged 5.7 bWAR per 650 PAs during his prime from ‘73 to ‘80
My favorite page is the home page, because I like to see how many random guys I can name as well as some of their stat highlights. My best is 9 for 14, but I can usually name a couple.
August 27, 2002 Toronto Blue Jays vs Chicago White Sox it was the first baseball game I ever attended. I was 5. But it’s remarkable for so many other reasons. The game featured Roy Halladay in his first All star season and my favorite pitcher and legendary speed runner Mark Buehrle. Halladay went 8 innings of 2 run ball and Buehrle went for 9 innings and gave up 4 runs. The game would have gone sub 2 if not for Joe Crede hitting a game tying 2 run home run off of Kelvim Escobar. In the bottom of the 10th Joe Crede hit a walk off grand slam to win the game 8-4 in 10. It would be his only career grand slam. Bonus points for Shannon Stewart hitting a home run right at me in the 2nd inning while my dad was getting lemon chills. That I fell in love with the game this day and is my oldest fondest memory. I’m glad baseball reference gives me the chance to relive and validate these memories.
Joe Hietpas. This man only played in one single game. And one single inning. And it was the final game of the Expos in 2004. Never got an at bat. Just played a single inning and it ended a franchise lol
My favorite is Buster Brown. He was an effective pitcher for the Dodgers, Phillies, and Cardinals. His first MLB start he throws 6 innings striking out 11 and allowing no earned runs and ended up with the loss (all 8 runs were unearned lol). In 1910 he had a 9-23 season yet had a ERA+ of 123. He had an unremarkable career but there was a lot of weird going on there 😂
@@007Hutchingsppl make a big deal because ted williams was a war hero but what about the guys who didnt slack off during the war? Imagine fighting the nazis AND playing games.
I’m lobbying for an asterisk next to Connie Marrero’s name on the MLB centenarian list. He had the unfair advantage of Cuban healthcare, which most MLB players could never have.
I showed this video to a couple of my friends and asked them what their favourite page was, but the whole thing left them cold. They’re the type of guys who waste their time talking to girls, going to parties, socialising and building healthy real-world relationships with other people. Poor suckers, I really feel sorry for them sometimes. One of them couldn’t even tell me something basic, like how many 40HR seasons Darryl Strawberry had (zero, duh!). Poor dude even said, “yeah, well you’re 22, have you ever even kissed a girl before?” Like I have time for that nonsense! Girls indeed! I only just learned how many times Pud Galvin lead the league in FIP and WHIP (zero again! Who knew!). Most girls don’t even keep a screenshot of the first 8 years of Mike Trout’s BR page on their phone in case they need to look at it when they can’t get internet. Crazy broads! Anyhow, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for my friends I suppose. They’ll come around one day.
For some reason, Ricardo Torres' page has always fascinated me. He was the first Latin-born player in the major leagues, as a catcher and first baseman for the Washington Senators in 1920-1922. Plus, he and I share a birthday! (He was born 73 years to the day before me!)
The two individual seasons i look at the most on bref are Kris Medlen in 2012 and Ranger Suarez in 2021 because they're such fascinating outliers of pitchers being dominant as both a starter and reliever in the same year
My favorite just for me as a Mariners fan is the 2021 Mariners bref page, where it lists them as having "Run Differential: -51 • Fun Differential: +90" based on a Scott Servais quote from that season.
Eddie Joost had some funny numbers-in 1947 he hit .206…with 114 walks, 110 strikeouts. In 1948 he upped his average to .250 and walks to 119 and struck out 87 times. In 1949 he had his best season at age 33, this time reaching .263 with *149 walks* and 80 K’s. He kept walking 110 times a year for several more seasons but never led the league because he was playing against Ted Williams. Another second baseman for the Philadelphia Athletics (albeit some 20-30 years beforehand) named Max Bishop had 1216 hits in his career and 1156 walks.
I go back to Josh Gibson sometimes, because it’s truly remarkable to see how he absolutely tore the league up. His rate stats are obviously insane, but some of his counting stats are eye-popping when you consider he was never playing 70 games a season. I think my favorite part of his page is that in 1943 he hit for a .466 batting average (50 points higher than his previous best) and yet he didn’t even have the highest for that season (The leader was Tetelo Vargas with a .471).
Just catching this one - I'll give you a hint as to what my favorite BRef page is: We both said "Game Score" at the same time when you went to his game log. There's a game score wizard that I love looking at on Stathead.
Steve Dalkowski. He threw one of the hardest fastballs of all time, was completely unhittable, but was wilder than any pitcher ever and never made it to the major leagues. Look at his K/9 and BB/9... just ridiculous also "Buried: Cremated" on a bbref page is crazy
Lots of good ones out there. Ken Griffey Jr. is one of my faves. Frank Thomas from 1990-1997 is unreal. Ruth and Bonds go without saying. So does Cy Young. Trout's first few years where he was seemingly leading his league in something new every year. Walter Johnson's 1910-1919 run (if you add his hitting he was worth like 116bWAR in the decade. Jim Kaat has a most peculiar 1965 that is barely above replacement level, despite looking like a near top 10 in Cy Young voting type year from certain aspects. Josh Gibson is always ridiculous. Bill Bergen is also ridiculous. The doubles totals in the 1930's (Webb, Greenberg, Waner). The triples totals pre-1920. Aaron Nola's big year. Roy Campanella in odd numbered years in the early-mid 1950's. Stan Musial and Willie Mays have particularly satisfying pages. Finding my former neighbor's son and my friends uncle show up in the database (both never reached the majors) was cool.
My favorite page is Eric Cammack's. He gave up the 3-run HR to Brian Jordan in Top 8th to put the Braves up 8-1 before the Mets put up 10 in the bottom of the inning capped off by a 3-run HR by Piazza on June 30, 2000. Cammack's only career at bat came a couple days later against the Marlins on July 5, 2000, and hit a triple. I've been waiting for someone to upload that game for a long time. Someone finally uploaded Daryl Boston's 13th inning walkoff HBP to win 1-0.
Just wondering if this is a thing?… OPS+AVG+BABIP+ISO+BB% minus SO%=OOW or Overall Offensive Worth. So for example….Ronald Acuna Jr has a 1.840 OOW…..highest in baseball. So take a player in the top five or ten in OPS(above .900) with a batting average in the top five or ten(above .300) with enough at bats(top ten in baseball) so add OPS with AVG plus BABIP plus ISO plus BB%…then subtract SO% that will bring you to a players Overall Offensive Worth. OPS+AVG+BABIP+ISO+BV%… Minus SO%=OOW
my favorite page is Deacon White, I’m not even a hardcore baseball fan I just noticed they ordered players debuts and went on a mad hunt to find the first one, and voila
Barry bonds situational hitting stats in 2004 season. .800 OBP with two out and RISP Roger maris splits 1961 season Any Colorado Rockies sluggers OPS compared to their OPS+ Also Rockies stars OPS decline but OPS stability after leaving Colorado (holiday, arenado) OPS ans OPS+ leaders for hitter unfriendly 1968 season Juan Pierre’s ten most similar players: all white guys from deadball era Dick Allen’s HOF stats
I played with a dude that was a legit 5'5" LHP in junior college and he got a scholarship to a D3 school and went on to lead break their school record for ERA and Ks in a season. He threw fireballs but his changeup made Bugs Bunny jealous and he could throw it for strikes 99% of the time so dude threw it on 3-0, 3-1, 2-0 and 2-1 counts and you could literally watch hitters go straight tits up underwater as he feathered it in 3x in a row. Probably the best pitcher Ive ever seen and if he was 6 ft or taller he easily gets drafted.
I just can't get over the fact that the page states: Burial status: cremated. Why is that information available? Is that information in all the pages, if the player has passed away? That is so funny.
Those 10 years in the amateur leagues there were only 30-ish games a season if it's Sundays March-September, which if he started all of them is a normal SP workload but I wonder whether he did start them all or not
My favorite page is actually from a defunct site named The Baseball Gauge, and it allowed me to rank all games, series, and plate appearances ever by Championship Leverage Index and Championship Win Probability Added. Like what you discussed in the video about Hal Smith's 1960 home run. Does Stathead have an equivalent to those pages? If so, I seriously might buy it.
It’s easy to forget how absolutely bonkers the Babe was, especially against his contemporaries-he regularly led the league in homers with twice as many as the runner-up
Tony Horton has a very interesting page. Above league average hitter at such a young age despite playing the pitching dominated late 60s (and in an offensively lacking Indians lineup). Had to leave to game early due to declining mental health following a suicide attempt.
