Fun With Retrosheet: Nelson Cruz Made Me Do It
October 18, 2011 by Tom Ruane · Leave a Comment
Normally, I try to find someone else to blame for suggesting one of these posts, but this silly one is all mine. After noticing that Nelson Cruz had seven RBIs in the eleventh innings of Texas’ playoff series with the Tigers, I wondered what player had the most extra-inning HRs and RBIs in a season from 1948 to 2010. And then I decided I might as well look at who holds the record in each inning. Here are the HR leaders by inning:
INN Player Year Team HR AVG OBP SLG 1 Alex Rodriguez 2001 TEX A 18 .371 .438 .818 2 Willie Mays 1954 NY N 13 .395 .430 .926 Ron Cey 1980 LA N 13 .402 .500 .853 Richard Hidalgo 2000 HOU N 13 .330 .427 .807 3 Roger Maris 1961 NY A 15 .365 .422 1.014 4 Albert Belle 1996 CLE A 13 .431 .494 1.000 Mark McGwire 1998 STL N 13 .471 .571 1.333 Jim Thome 2002 CLE A 13 .377 .478 .948 5 Sammy Sosa 1998 CHI N 12 .344 .382 .938 6 Ryan Howard 2006 PHI N 13 .346 .448 .877 7 Todd Hundley 1996 NY N 11 .290 .357 .871 8 Jim Wynn 1967 HOU N 14 .386 .411 1.014 9 Tony Batista 2000 TOR A 10 .375 .435 .982 EX Charlie Maxwell 1960 DET A 5 .353 .421 1.235 Nelson Cruz 2010 TEX A 5 .667 .700 2.333
Now our data is only 100% complete back to 1956 and the lists above and below will certainly look very different once we extend our reach before 1948, but hopefully this is of some interest despite these limitations.
Once I wrote these words, I realized that we do know at least what inning each home run was hit in, even if we are missing the play-by-play data for the game. So I went and generated the all-time leaders for each inning and only one old-timer replaced an entry above: Jimmie Foxx hit 12 seventh-inning homers back in 1932.
I had assumed that Mays had such a low HR/RBI ratio above was because hit fourth in 1954 and so frequently led off the second inning, but he actually hit sixth more often than any other place that year . And the same goes for Ron Cey in 1980 and Richard Hidalgo in 2000.
Once you get past the first two innings, I think the law of small sample sizes takes over, although it does appear that hitting well in extra-innings isn’t something new for Nelson Cruz. And despite his reputation for hitting well on Sundays, Charlie Maxwell hit his extra-inning home runs in 1960 on Tuesday, Friday (two) and Saturday (two).
And the RBI leaders:
INN Player Year Team RBI AVG OBP SLG 1 Ted Kluszewski 1954 CIN N 44 .412 .490 .863 Juan Gonzalez 2001 CLE A 44 .353 .367 .741 2 Butch Hobson 1977 BOS A 28 .294 .364 .606 3 Jackie Jensen 1954 BOS A 34 .371 .434 .800 4 Manny Ramirez 2005 BOS A 29 .361 .452 .792 5 Albert Pujols 2006 STL N 37 .525 .633 1.148 6 Orlando Cepeda 1961 SF N 31 .333 .367 .762 7 Rafael Palmeiro 1999 TEX A 28 .433 .525 .925 Sammy Sosa 2001 CHI N 28 .433 .535 .970 8 Jim Wynn 1967 HOU N 30 .386 .411 1.014 9 Alex Rodriguez 2007 NY A 21 .452 .549 1.095 EX Tim Wallach 1982 MON N 11 .353 .333 .824 Juan Gonzalez 1991 TEX A 11 .370 .414 .667
Nowadays teams have access to all sorts of arcane data (although probably not quite this arcane), but I wonder if Jim Wynn would have been intentionally walked more than once in the eighth inning during 1967 if anyone had known how well he was hitting in that frame. Sadly, this “talent” was short-lived. In 1968, he hit .233 (with an OPS of .724) in the eighth inning.
I also thought that one of these ninth or extra-innings leaders would have been on the list of players with the most walk-off RBIs in a season, but I was wrong. The following players lead with six each:
Rodney Scott 1979 MON N Cory Snyder 1987 CLE A Wally Joyner 1989 CAL A Andre Ethier 2009 LA N
Rodney Scott knocked in all of 42 runs that year, but six of them ended games. Go figure.
Despite hitting 30 home runs, Hobson often hit eighth for the Red Sox in 1977 and it didn’t hurt that two of the team’s better hitters, Carlton Fisk and George Scott usually hit in the fifth and sixth slots. As a result, the team got their most runs scored out of the sixth place in the batting order .
How unusual was that? If I may be excused a brief digression here, how often do teams get their most runs scored out of the different spots in the batting order? Since there’s probably no point to doing this without going overboard, I decided to look at how often each team from 1918 to 2010 got the most at-bats, runs, hits and so on, from each spot in the batting order. Here’s the inevitable chart:
POS AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF SB CS - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 464 0 0 0 559 0 208 1 1531 827 637 293 752 45 1 428 42 60 372 55 50 1171 1120 2 381 359 414 312 397 55 8 145 5 38 305 323 105 287 229 3 60 486 561 558 339 535 469 528 285 77 298 28 465 256 118 4 12 267 267 384 157 933 1156 557 418 163 315 12 372 59 45 5 0 40 77 245 132 279 278 171 144 81 211 18 191 64 81 6 0 4 24 108 70 96 59 61 74 64 175 14 76 65 86 7 0 1 4 58 55 35 10 29 62 57 151 17 84 42 57 8 0 0 0 25 55 5 3 64 490 29 120 50 62 22 19 9 0 0 0 1 27 1 0 1 0 1415 37 1467 20 18 21
The first row in the chart (the “-” row) is for the years when that particular stat didn’t exist.
What this chart means, for example, is that during those years, 1531 teams got the most at-bats out the leadoff spot in the batting order; 381 got the most at-bats out of second place, and so on. The surprising thing to me are the 12 teams that got their most at-bats out of the cleanup spot. The last team to do this was the 2009 Anaheim Angels ,
Here are the last (and in some cases only) teams to have had some of the weirder team leaders. If there was a particular player most responsible for the team’s appearance on the list, he is listed in parenthesis.
Year Team 1987 OAK A 7th place hitters led team in runs scored 2006 ARI N 7th place hitters led team in hits 1982 DET A 9th place hitters led team in doubles ( Alan Trammell ) 1918 WAS A 9th place hitters led team in homers 1976 CHI A 8th place hitters led team in RBIs 1977 CHI A 9th place hitters led team in walks ( Jim Essian ) 1987 MIL A 2nd place hitters led team in intentional walks ( Robin Yount )
Admit it. When you noticed that one team got more home runs from their ninth-place hitters than any others, you figured that it had to be from the DH-era. But in 1918, the Senators got half of all their home runs (okay, were only talking about a grand total of four) from their last-place hitters. One was hit by Walter Johnson and the other by Nick Altrock. Altrock’s homer came in the final game of the season and is discussed in some detail in my review of 1918.
Here are the single-season leaders in first-inning intentional walks:
Player Year Team AB BB IBB AVG OBP SLG Barry Bonds 2004 SF N 47 42 24 .319 .645 .574 Willie McCovey 1969 SF N 73 25 11 .342 .510 .603 Barry Bonds 2003 SF N 61 23 11 .344 .529 .557 Willie McCovey 1970 SF N 82 29 10 .280 .465 .585 Barry Bonds 1993 SF N 53 20 9 .283 .480 .547 Barry Bonds 2006 SF N 50 21 9 .340 .554 .660 Barry Bonds 2002 SF N 87 32 8 .379 .557 .759 Willie McCovey 1971 SF N 49 15 7 .306 .455 .469 Ryan Howard 2006 PHI N 66 21 7 .242 .430 .455 Barry Bonds 2007 SF N 53 16 7 .377 .529 .792
I’m seeing a definite pattern here.
And here are the career extra-inning leaders:
Player AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO SB CS Willie Mays 290* 53* 84* 11 6* 20* 42 55 26 40 6 2 Pete Rose 283 43 83 19* 2 2 27 66 30 32 7 1 Frank Robinson 250 45 76 7 1 16 44* 60 23 49 12 5 Barry Bonds 195 48 51 9 3 11 28 90* 42* 38 15 2 Reggie Jackson 202 27 41 8 0 10 21 39 12 68* 6 2 Tim Raines 223 44 76 11 1 3 23 50 24 16 29* 0 Lou Brock 253 33 77 8 2 5 27 35 14 48 15 12*
It turns out that we are missing play-by-play for two of Willie Mays’ extra-inning home runs. So he actually hit 22. This will of course affect his other extra-inning stats as well. And since one of those homers came with a man on, adding those will also bump Frank Robinson out of the top spot in RBIs. The games we are missing were on June 4, 1955 and July 4, 1955 .
Rickey Henderson was second with 27 extra-inning stolen bases and he also had a phenomenal success rate, getting caught only once.
And finally, I showed the single season walk-off RBI leaders above. Here are the career leaders (at least for the period covered by our play-by-play data):
Frank Robinson 27 Dusty Baker 25 Rickey Henderson 22 Roberto Clemente 21 Pete Rose 21 Manny Mota 20 Tony Perez 20 Ted Simmons 20 Andre Dawson 20 Lou Whitaker 20 The above was originally posted by Tom Ruane at Retrosheet.org .
