Game of the Week: 4/13-19
In addition to our regularly scheduled commentary, us writers here at Fangraphs will be implementing a few different weekly specialty posts. The others should debut this week, if not today, but we will kickstart my Monday morning series right now, revisiting a really interesting game from the previous week of action. For the inaugural post, join me in a trip back to Saturday, to the new Yankees Stadium, where things, well, didn’t go as planned for the Bronx Bombers. The game graph says it all:
The Yankees actually had a decent shot at winning this game… in the first inning. Then everything fell by the wayside as the Indians absolutely torched Chien-Ming Wang and Anthony Claggett in the second inning. After a Mark Teixiera jimmy-jack (that term needs to be used much more!), the Yankees boasted a 65.9% win expectancy. One grueling half-inning later, the Yankees had but a 1.5% chance at winning the game.
The plummeting slope in the game graph represents the Indians scoring 14 runs in the top of the second frame. Travis Hafner singled and promptly moved up to second base when Jhonny Peralta followed with a single of his own. Shin-Soo Choo then knocked the ball out of the park, giving the Indians a 3-2 lead.
After Ryan Garko fouled out, Ben Francisco doubled and came around to score on an Asdrubal Cabrera single. Grady Sizemore doubled, advancing Cabrera to third, but neither would stay put very long as Mark DeRosa continued to showcase power, knocking both runners in with a double. At this point, the Yankees had retired just one hitter and now trailed 6-2.
Wang uncorked a wild pitch allowing DeRosa to move up ninety feet. Victor Martinez then singled DeRosa in, increasing the lead to 7-2, and ending Wang’s abysmal outing. Hafner then stepped in for his second plate appearance of the inning and smashed a double. Martinez held at third but both he and Hafner soon scored on a Peralta 2-run double. The Indians now led 9-2, and the Yankees had a win expectancy of just 4.6%.
With Peralta on second, Claggett walked Choo and surrendered a single to Garko to load the bases. Francisco finally provided that second out by striking out, but Claggett could not parlay that into further success as Asdrubal Cabrera hit a grand slam. With the bases empty and the Tribe up 13-2 the heels of a salami, Grady Sizemore just added insult to injury by launching a solo homer. Claggett fanned DeRosa to end the inning, but the proverbial damage had been done, with the Indians turning a 2-0 deficit into a 14-2 lead.
Though they would eventually win the game by a score of 22-4, the second inning is what made this particular game earn the weekly honor. The Indians plated 17 batters in the top of the second, scoring 14 runs in the process. I checked my Retrosheet database to see how rare it was for this many batters to come up in a specific half-inning.
From 1954-2008, there have been 4,466 half-innings with 10+ batters. Just 17 of those innings featured 17+ batters. Just 8 of those 17 saw 18+ batters come to the plate. The top of the second inning in this Indians-Yankees affair became just the eighteenth half-inning since 1954 to feature 17 or more plate appearances. The most plate appearances in this returned resultset was 20, belonging to the Reds on 8/3/1989.
Relative to runs scored, only three games since 1954 have featured teams scoring 14+ runs in a single inning: the Red Sox scored 14 in the bottom of the first against the Marlins on 6/27/03; the Reds scored 14 in the bottom of the first against the Astros on 8/3/1989; and the Rangers scored 16 in the bottom of the eighth against the Orioles on 4/19/96. The second inning for the Indians marks just the fourth time this occurred.
This self-appointed game of the week might not have seemed all that great for the Yankees faithful, but for historical purposes and sheer rarity of the events involved, this GOTW honor is bestowed upon the 4/18 Indians-Yankees matchup.
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I thought I remembered a Red Sox / Marlins game in which Johny Damon had three hits in the first inning. It turns out that the Sox scored 14 runs in the first on June 27, 2003:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=230627102
I wonder if this wasn’t captured because of a quirk in the way the query was structured, or if there are significant holes in the Retrosheet database?
Andrew, good catch. I’ll revisit the query when I get home but odd that this game wouldn’t be included. Everything else checks out but perhaps something was lost with regards to that game.
Looks like Bill Mueller was thrown out at the plate on the same play the 14th run scored. Maybe that effected the results…
Okay, figured it out and updated it. It was because the final play was both a run-scoring play and an out. I added the wrong column, which is what gave the DB an issue. Once I switched to event_runs_ct as opposed to inn_runs_ct, everything was fixed.
Only seventeen men came to the plate that inning but still, this sort of game begs so many questions for those interested enough to investigate, namely how rare is it for one team…
1. …to have eight different men reach base three times (and each have an extra base hit to his name)?
2. …to have four different men reach base four times?
3. …to have six different men hit home runs?
4. …to bring 13+ men to the plate in one inning and not have a single one retired on a fair ball?
5. …to outscore all other teams in action that day combined in a particular inning (14-8 in the second inning in this case)?
6. …to score more runs in an inning than anyone else does in an entire game (the Pirates came closest with 10)?
7. …to score as many runs in one inning as thirteen other teams did in their entire game combined (ATL, CIN, MIL, SFG, TEX, SEA with 0; NYM with 1; ARI, DET, KCR, LAA, OAK with 2; TBR with 3)?
8. …to score as many runs in one game as fifteen other teams did combined (those thirteen plus NYY and TOR with 4 apiece)?
9. …to outscore the next highest-scoring game (9-6, FLA over WSN)? I’m guessing this is probably the most common.
10. …to outscore six other games combined (22-20)?
11. …to outscore five other entire games combined in one inning alone (14-13)?
12. …to have all of this happen in one game?
I compared it to the Rangers’ 30-3 drubbing of the Orioles two years back which only satisfied conditions 2, 4, and 9, although they did score exactly as many runs as the six lowest-scoring games combined so I’ll give them partial credit for number 10.
Oh, and I agree. Jimmy-jack is not used nearly as much as it should be.
Fixed and data updated. As to all 12 of those points, well, perhaps you’ve given me an idea or two or three for posts this week! Definitely interesting stuff.
Mostly just wondering aloud. I expect Jayson Stark to have some relevant numbers for us in his next Useless Info.
Derosa’s torrid start? .320 wOBA and a -36.6 UZR/150 at third, he has hit three home runs which is a good sign, because I remember reading on hit tracker that Mark led in ‘lucky HR’s in ‘08′ and DeRosa led the list.