Time for some baseball stats, old and new.
The new: Aaron Judge is not chopped liver.
On May 2, thirty three games into the season, Aaron Judge was batting .197 with a slugging percentage under .400.
In 94 games since, Judge is hitting .384, slugging .852, with an on-base percentage of .504. He has 68 extra base hits, of which 43 are home runs and has driven in 101, more than an RBI per game. He's been on base 207 times in those 94 games.
According to OpStats, which compiles esoteric statistical information, Judge is the first player in major league history to, over a 100 game period, bat above .375 with at least 45 homers and 100 RBIs.(1)
And he's a likeable guy, which is terrible for a Red Sox fan.
The old: Lefty Grove was pretty good.
Well, we already knew that. Lefty had a lifetime 300-141 record, leading the American League a record nine times in ERA.
But let me tell you about the time when Lefty was really good.
From July 1, 1930 through September 24, 1931, Grove pitched in 69 games for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. Those seasons were in the midst of the greatest offensive explosion of the 20th century in baseball. The A's won the pennant both years, and their record during the 69 games Lefty appeared was 62-7, with his personal won-loss record 49-5 with eleven saves, because Grove both started and relieved. During this same period, the A's were 99-64 in games in which Lefty did not make an appearance.
Lefty completed 40 of the 45 games he started, while picking up the eleven saves and seven wins in 24 relief appearances, including one relief stint of 9 innings and another of 8 innings. Grove appeared in 30% of the games played by the A's in this period.
Of his five losses, two were in relief and three as a starter. The losses as a starter: 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 (in this game only one of the 3 runs against Grove were earned). The 1-0 loss was quite memorable. Lefty had tied the American League record with 16 straight wins, when on August 23 he faced the weak St Louis Browns lineup. In the 3rd inning rookie Jimmie Moore, playing in left field in place of the injured Al Simmons, misplayed a fly ball into a double scoring the only run of the game, a miscue not charged as an error. Grove, highly competitive and with a fiery temper, exploded in the clubhouse after the game, going on a long rant against Simmons and, according to his SABR biography, trying to "tear off the clubhouse door, shredding the wooden partition between lockers, banged up the lockers, broke chairs and ripped off his shirt, buttons flying. 'Threw everything I could get my hands on — bats, balls, shoes, gloves, benches, water buckets, whatever was handy,' he told author Donald Honig"
Over 447 innings Grove's ERA was 2.07. During this same period the league ERA was about 4.50.
In the middle of this streak, Grove appeared in three games during the 1930 World Series against the St Louis Cardinals. On October 1, starting Game One, Grove won 5-2. Four days later, he started and lost Game Four, 3-1, despite tossing a 5-hitter and giving up only one earned run. The next day, he pitched two innings in relief, picking up the win 2-0.
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(1) These composite stats are fun but can be misleading. If you change the .375/45/100 line to .375/40/100 you get other streaks that are as, or more impressive. Take Babe Ruth, for instance:
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