105 at bats into the season it’s obvious that something is amiss with Griffeys ability to take a walk and he sits on a .298 on base percentage.
Stop the presses!!!
No don’t…. but let’s keep an eye on this at least.
Archive for May, 2006
Have You Seen Me?
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006Baseball Archelogy – Fielding Minutia
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
One of the fun things about the game is the vast areas of history that one can get lost in, the people, places and events wash over the game like a wave, a never ending barrage of events that are so very different and yet so very much the same. Looking through the pictures of the past we can tell the game was less refined than it is now, a harder affair flush with conditions so very different than today.
But what does that tell us about the way the game was played? Imagine you are at a great dig in the Utah desert and you come across a bone that looks like it is from a mammoth, however you aren’t sure what it tells you about that animal and the era that it dwelled in. Baseball statistics are much like that, you can fall into a copy of Total Baseball and reap wonderful amounts of information about the game and its records, history and stars.
This won’t help you much because you can’t see how the game was played, and to do that you need to take those bones and put them together in your head, only then can you start to see that the structure is a lot like the game we watch today, but it isn’t quite the exact match.
Delving into what is different and why it was different is what makes the examination interesting.
Have the Reds ever had pitching? 1950-1959
Thursday, May 25th, 2006“Warren Giles was the type of general manager who would say, “Sign this contract or stay home.”
Hank Sauer
“There was no money in those days, even after my great season in 1947, I got only a small raise, up to $13,000.
I asked for more but that didn’t do any good.”
Ewell Blackwell
YEAR W L PCT ERA 1956 91 63 .591 -.07 1957 80 74 .519 -.75 1958 76 78 .494 0.23 1955 75 79 .487 0.09 1959 74 80 .481 -.36 1954 74 80 .481 -.43 1952 69 85 .448 -.29 1953 68 86 .442 -.35 1951 68 86 .442 0.26 1950 66 87 .431 -.17
By the end of the 40’s and into the postwar grey flannel age of the 50’s the Reds were a team in constant tradition. Last in the league in attendance and only out done in mediocrity by the Pirates and Cubs. Lacking the pop the other teams had the Reds removed Goat Run in 1950, this extended the right field line to 366 feet, 3 seasons later they reinstalled it for the seating.
The 1951 Reds were perhaps the best pitching team in the decade. With Blackwell and Ken Raffensberger. In fact the staff had only one pitcher with a below average ERA, the Achilles heel was the hitting that year.
But that wouldn’t be the case for the rest of the decade.
ERA DIFF PLAYER LEAGUE Harry Perkowski 1.13 2.82 3.96 Frank Smith 0.76 3.20 3.96 Bud Byerly 0.68 3.27 3.96 Ken Raffensberger 0.52 3.43 3.96 Ewell Blackwell 0.52 3.44 3.96 Herm Wehmeier 0.26 3.70 3.96 Howie Fox 0.13 3.83 3.96 Willie Ramsdell -.08 4.04 3.96
Following the season general manager Warren Giles left the team to become the National League President (Housing the office in the Carew Tower) (more…)