A Baseball Day

Started out the day going to Chase Field for the 1pm game between the Diamondbacks and Giants.  A well played game but the Dbacks lost 3-2.  I then raced home and made it in time to watch David Price pitch to the first Yankees batter.  Watched the entire game, all 11 innings and nearly five hours.  The Sox, down 4-1 in the bottom of the 9th with two out and the formidable Aroldis Chapman pitching, came back to tie and then won in the 11th.   This capped a four game sweep by Boston, of which I watched all but two innings.  All in all, a perfect baseball day.

So given my baseball fixation, I spent some time on baseball-reference.com while watching the games so can inform you of these interesting tidbits:

In 1976, Mark Fidrych, the Detroit Tigers 21 year old rookie had a phenomenal debut season, of which THC has written (read The Bird), in the course of which he accumulated 9.6 Wins Above Replacement value (WAR).  There are only three other players since 1900 who have had more than 9.6 WAR at age 21 or younger; Babe Ruth, Bob Feller, and Mike Trout - two Hall of Famers and the best player in baseball today.  Unfortunately, Fidrych hurt his arm the next year, but it was one glorious season for him.

I also decided to investigate in more detail the 1966 campaign of Juan Marichal, the stylish Hall of Fame pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, another player of whom THC was written before (see Gibson Koufax Marichal Mashup and The Fight)

From 1963 through 1969, Marichal won more than 20 games six times, only falling short in 1967 when he was injured.  In 1966, Juan started out 10-0 after his first 11 starts, with the only non-decision coming in a May 17 start against the Dodgers when he was lifted after ten innings after allowing only seven hits and one run in a game the Giants eventually lost in the 13th inning.

Marichal (who was also known as The Dominican Dandy) was dominating in his first 10 starts having an ERA of only 0.59 after shutting out the Phillies on May 26, but it was this game that alerted me to his astonishing usage pattern by Giants manager Herman Franks.

In those first 10 starts, the Giants hurler allowed zero earned runs on five occasions, one earned run four other times, and gave up two runs against the Cardinals, and only gave up six extra base hits (3 doubles and 3 home runs).  It looks like the two runs scored by the Cards may have been because Marichal let up a bit against them, after the Giants scored 13 runs in the top of the third before adding another in the fourth to take a 14-0 lead.  Juan allowed the two runs in the fifth before being removed from the game.

In those ten starts, the Giants star tossed three games on three days rest, five on four days rest, and once on six days.  Eight of the ten starts were complete games, the exceptions being the five innings against the Cardinals and the ten against the Dodgers.  The Dodgers game was his eighth start, followed by a three hit shutout against the Mets on four days rest.  His next start was against the Phillies after only three days off and he threw 14 innings to beat the Philadelphia team 1-0, raising his record to 10-0.  He must have thrown somewhere between 160 and 200 pitches, simply unthinkable by today's standards.

Franks trotted him out against the Reds on four days rest in his next start.  Though Marichal threw another complete game victory he gave up three runs for the first time in 1966.  He then pitched his next two starts on three days rest, giving up six runs in both of them!  So did Franks give him some more rest?  Of course not!  The Giants manager continued to pitch him on three days rest and Juan was effective beating the Dodgers and Astros in his next two starts.

Though he was not as effective for the rest of the season, Marichal finished with 25 wins and only six losses setting career single season best performances on hits per 9 innings, walks per 9 innings, and K/W ratio.  It was a different time.