Yanksfan Soxfan

History x 2

It's truly been amazing to see the three terrific pitching performances turned in by the Red Sox this week. Clay Buchholz, Josh Beckett and Jon Lester each recorded a game score of at least 75 -- an impressive feat tempered only by the fact that none was able to receive a win for his efforts.

That's historic in two ways. First, no set of Sox starters since Fergie Jenkins, Rick Wise and Luis Tiant in June 1977 has recorded game scores that high in three consecutive starts. Second, no two Sox starters have ever in the Retrosheet era received losses in back-to-back games with game scores of 75 or greater.

Think about that. In the last 52 years, Red Sox pitchers have recorded a game score of 75+ 792 times [Update: link added]. Only five times now have three of them come consecutively -- and, until this week, none since the advent of modern bullpen usage (the other four: June 1977, July 1972, July 1966 and Sept. 1958).

The flip side: In those 792 games, the starters received a loss only 36 times and a no-decision 40 times -- never consecutively until Clay Buchholz was hung with the L on Monday and again as Lester received the no-decision Tuesday. In all, the Sox have lost a game in which their starter provided such an effort just 59 times in 792 starts (a tidy .925 winning percentage) -- again, never consecutively until this week.

So congratulations to the Sox starters for their impressive streak. And sympathies to the Sox starters for their equally impressive -- though unfortunate -- streak.

Mark It Down

Because it'll probably (hopefully) be relevant at some point in the season, the Boston Red Sox are in first place. April 15 is your date to note.

Of course, this is actually the third day the Sox have gone to bed in first -- they were up by a half-game on March 25, when they were 1-0 and everyone else was idle. Then they were up by a full game April 2, after taking three of four from Oakland. Thirteen days later, here we are.

How does that compare to the Sox' previous first-place seasons (dates are when the Sox took sole control of first without losing it)?

• April 18 -- 2007
• April 28 -- 1946
• May 13 -- 1995*
• May 16 -- 1986
• June 15 -- 1912
• June 23 -- 1903
• July 6 -- 1918, 1975
• Aug. 22 -- 1915
• Sept. 5 -- 1988
• Sept. 19 -- 1916
• Sept. 28 -- 1990
• Oct. 1 -- 1967
• Oct. 8 -- 1904

*1995 was of course a strike-shortened year. May 13 was only the team's 15th game.

So if the Sox can keep and expand their tenuous half-game lead through September, this will be the earliest they've ever taken control of the top of the standings and held it.

Of course, here's the other side, the dates at which Sox teams who were in first on April 15 lost at least a share of the lead for good:

• April 16 -- 1909, 1952, 1969
• April 17 -- 1908
• April 22 -- 1942, 1947
• April 24 -- 1941
• May 9 -- 1994
• May 23 -- 1936
• May 28 -- 1920
• June 28 -- 2002
• July 26 -- 1993*
• Aug. 1 -- 1917
• Aug. 2 -- 2006

*A bit misleading, as the Sox gave up the lead they had on April 24, fell as many as 10 games behind, then rallied to tie for first briefly in late July. Opening Day was not consistently before April 15 until the 1960s, and during the 1940s, April 15 was often Opening Day itself, leading to some of the skewed results we see here.

Of course, several of these teams were simply awful who managed to win a couple games early. But the 1917, 2002 and 2006 clubs -- all within close proximity to World Series champions but just a few pieces short -- are good lessons about how much can go wrong in a long season.

The Price of History: Vol. XIII

Regular readers of this site know we like to keep a jaundiced eye on the proceedings of the memorabilia market; in addition to the typical signed balls and high-value card sets, the occassional gem from the game's history shows up, yours for the taking. The latest Robert Edward auction has a few choice items, including the above commemorative salt print taken at an 1862 reunion of the Knickerbockers, the New York team so instrumental in developing modern baseball. The photograph was recently found in an old cottage on Eastern Long Island. Current bid: $11K. A few more pieces of interest:

Top 50 Sox Seasons: Honorable Mentions and Links

Well, the Top 50 Red Sox seasons are done, culminating some months of work. Thanks again for all the great feedback. Credits go to "Red Sox Century" by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson, which provided many dead-ball era anecdotes, as did the New York Times and Sporting News free archives. Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs, of course, remain indispensable for their ability to sort and disseminate a large array of the statistics on which I based my list.

When I started this whole thing, I began by using the B-R Play Index to determine the Top 20 seasons in about 10 or so categories each for hitters and pitchers -- from batting average to OPS+ to runs created, or ERA to ERA+ to wins for pitchers. That gave me a total of 63 hitting seasons, 58 starting pitching seasons and 28 relief pitching seasons, or 148 in all. I whittled those down to a "final 89," which, as I ranked them, I was able to cut further to 75. I initially was going to write up a Top 75 list, but chose instead (out of laziness or perhaps realization that my time before Opening Day was running out) to write up only the Top 50.

Still, that leaves 75 honorable mentions, which I list below, in chronological order with the other 50. You can tell which are the honorable mentions because they don't have links to their individual posts, like the Top 50 do. Without further ado...

Top 50 Sox Seasons #1: Pedro Martinez, 2000

18-6, 1.74/0.737/.173, 217 IP, 284 K, 32 BB, 11.8 K/9, 1.3 BB/9, 8.9 K/BB, 5.3 H/9, 4 SHO, 291 ERA+
Cy Young, All-Star, Sporting News Pitcher of the Year, MVP -- 5

Some day, as ERA+ and OPS+ become more and more acceptable to the mainstream sports commentariat, 291 will be to pitching what .406 is to hitting. Had Pedro Martinez merely put up a 191 ERA+ in 2000, it would have been tied for the 52nd-best mark of all time. But he exceeded that by 100 points.

Let me state this unequivocally: Not only did Pedro Martinez in 2000 post the best season by any player in Red Sox history, he posted the best pitching season ever in the history of baseball. His 1.74 ERA, stripped of all context, is still in the top 100. When considering the league-average ERA in 2000 was 5.07, the mind boggles. No hitter has ever bested the league-average OPS by 190 percent – no one’s really ever come close.

Top 50 Sox Seasons #2: Ted Williams, 1941

.406/.553/.735, 1.287 OPS, 606 PA, 185 H, 147 BB, 37 HR, 120 RBI, 335 TOB, 12.3 AB/HR, 235 OPS+
All-Star starter, ML Player of the Year, MVP – 2

.406.

You know what it is. No labels. No context. You don’t even need to be a Red Sox fan or a particularly serious baseball fan. You hear it; you know it. .406. The magic number.

But 1941 was about so much more than just .406; one could say Williams was so good that year, he managed to overshadow even himself.

Top 50 Sox Seasons #3: Pedro Martinez, 1999

23-4, 2.07/0.923/.210, 213.1 IP, 313 K, 37 BB, 13.2 K/9, 1.6 BB/9, 8.5 K/BB, 6.8 H/9, 243 ERA+
Postseason: 3 G, 2-0, 17 IP, 6 BB, 23 K, 0.00/0.647/.089
CY Young, All-Star starter and MVP, MVP – 2

We all as Red Sox fans must have done something right to have been granted the privilege of watching this skinny Dominican throw a baseball.

From the beginning of the season, Pedro was a revelation – proving that his 1997 was no fluke, and that the tastes of dominance he’d shown us the year before were just that: Mere tastes. The main course was so much better. For the first and only time in my life, I remember commentators realistically wondering whether a pitcher could win 30 games. Through 79 games in 1999, Martinez had won 15, and he entered the All-Star game the unquestioned best pitcher in the game.

The Good Book

A few weeks ago, the editors of the Los Angeles Times Book Review asked me to write a short piece on the Baseball Encyclopedia, mythology, and the fragility of the historical record. It's in today's paper. You Could Look It Up. It was a special pleasure to interview David Neft, the Encyclopedia's original editor, whose thoughts about records and typographic qualifications echo my own:

"I don't believe in asterisks. Period. The record is the record. The record is the achievement. You may not like the person who holds the record. You may think he cheated. It doesn't matter. He's got the record."

Top 50 Sox Seasons #4: Carl Yastrzemski, 1967

.326/.418/.622, 1.040 OPS, 680 PA, 189 H, 91 BB, 44 HR, 121 RBI, 360 TB, 79 XBH, 284 TOB, 193 OPS+
MVP, ML Player of Year, All-Star starter and MVP, Gold Glove

There’s a simple reason why this is one of the top two offensive seasons in Red Sox history – most of us are likely Red Sox fans because of it.

We all know the story. A dissatisfied Tom Yawkey, never recognizing the team-building flaws that continually thwarted his efforts to win a championship for Boston, is tired of losing money on the Red Sox. Attendance is sinking – Fenway draws just over 800,000 in 1966, an average of just more than 10,000 fans per game – as is the team, finishing ninth out of 10 AL teams. He begins thinking seriously about moving out of Boston, leaving the Hub of the Universe with no big-league teams.

Then came Yaz.

Top 50 Sox Seasons #5: Cy Young, 1901

33-10, 1.62/0.972/.236, 371.1 IP, 158 K, 37 BB, 7.9 H/9, 3.8 K/9, 0.9 BB/9, 4.3 K/BB, 5 SHO, 216 ERA+

There are plenty of reasons why Cy Young – the first dominant pitcher of the American League – is deserving of so high a rank for his 1901 campaign. The pitching Triple Crown (the first and only time he would manage that), the stratospheric ERA+ (fourth-highest in team history), the silly-low walk rate (which he would actually surpass three times in Boston).

But the real reason is because without Cy Young performing so well, American League baseball may never have survived in Boston. Granted, players like Buck Freeman and Eddie Collins also played roles, but Young was the fan favorite, and his 33 wins equaled 42 percent of the team’s total of 79 (in 2008 terms, that’s 94 wins, and a pitcher would have to win 39 games to equal Young’s percentage, which stood as a big-league record until Steve Carlton broke it in 1972). It should be no surprise that the pitcher whose blazing fastball was partially responsible for moving the mound back 10-and-a-half feet played such an important role in Boston.

Boston scored a coup, making headlines across the country when it signed Young on March 10 – something the Trenton Times called a “clever trick.” He opened the Huntington Avenue Grounds less than two months later with a 12-4 win. In July, he won 12 straight games, including his 300th. He won 20 games by his first start in August and 25 wins before September. Although the Americans slumped in August and fell from the race, Young was the Red Sox’ first superstar, enshrining Boston’s love with its superstar pitchers – those who won or contended for the award named for Young himself, from Lonborg to Clemens to Martinez to Schilling to Beckett.

Key game: Aug. 27. With Boston and Chicago fighting in the first American League pennant race, Young is lights out against Detroit, giving up just a first-inning run. But Roscoe Miller is just as good, allowing Boston to tie in the second but giving nothing more. They match zeroes for another 12 innings before Boston breaks through for a second run in the top of the 15th. Young retires the side in the bottom half, having managed to scatter 11 hits and two walks for his 25th win.