Fewest career RBI for a player with an 8+ RBI game since 1919
Posted by Andy on May 18, 2011
Since 1919, there have been 114 players with at least one game with 8 or more RBI. The 3 players to do it the most are Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Dave Kingman.
Among those 114 players, here are the fellas with the fewest career RBI:
| Rk | Player | RBI | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | J.R. Towles | 43 | 2007 | 2011 |
| 2 | Bill Glynn | 56 | 1949 | 1954 |
| 3 | Augie Bergamo | 63 | 1944 | 1945 |
| 4 | Tony Cloninger | 67 | 1961 | 1972 |
| 5 | Norm Zauchin | 159 | 1951 | 1959 |
| 6 | Phil Weintraub | 207 | 1933 | 1945 |
| 7 | Glenn Adams | 225 | 1975 | 1982 |
| 8 | Barry Foote | 230 | 1973 | 1982 |
| 9 | Ben Zobrist | 250 | 2006 | 2011 |
| 10 | Pat Seerey | 261 | 1943 | 1949 |
| 11 | Lee Walls | 284 | 1952 | 1964 |
| 12 | Alex Kampouris | 284 | 1934 | 1943 |
| 13 | Johnny Rizzo | 289 | 1938 | 1942 |
| 14 | George Mitterwald | 301 | 1966 | 1977 |
| 15 | Adam Lind | 307 | 2006 | 2011 |
| 16 | Ben Broussard | 314 | 2002 | 2008 |
| 17 | Erubiel Durazo | 330 | 1999 | 2005 |
| 18 | Josh Willingham | 358 | 2004 | 2011 |
| 19 | Dave Robertson | 364 | 1912 | 1922 |
| 20 | James Loney | 365 | 2006 | 2011 |
| 21 | Mike Blowers | 365 | 1989 | 1999 |
| 22 | Mike Epstein | 380 | 1966 | 1974 |
| 23 | Chris James | 386 | 1986 | 1995 |
| 24 | Tommy McCraw | 404 | 1963 | 1975 |
| 25 | Randy Bush | 409 | 1982 | 1993 |
As with my recent post about fewest career HR buy a guy with a 3+ homer game, I have included active players here who are likely to move off the list given some time.
J.R. Towles is in the majors now and will hopefully accumulate a bunch more RBI before his career is over. If so, that will put Bill Glynn at the top of both the above list, as well as the 3+ HR list. That's thanks to this game, where Glynn drove in 8 runs while batting leadoff (as the first baseman!) for the Indians.
OK, rapidly getting off track here, but 1B batting leadoff can't be all that common...I just checked and the last time a player started as the leadoff hitter and at first base was Dan Johnson for the Rays last year. Ben Zobrist also did it for the Rays a few days earlier, and before that it was Conor Jackson for a few games early in 2010 and Dan Murphy for a few games in early 2009.
And, just to go totally off topic, the other day I was wondering if a team ever had a batting order that went 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, i.e. the right fielder batting first, the center fielder batting second, etc. Seems like the rarest thing on there is the first baseman batting 7th, but that does happen a fair number if times each season.) Anybody know?
May 18th, 2011 at 8:04 am
Not a 9-1 lineup, but this article has the only alphabetical-order lineup in history:
http://valueoverreplacementgrit.com/2011/05/16/lineups-from-a-to-z/
May 18th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Foote and Mitterwald -- two former Cubs and both catchers. Yet another brilliant list.
May 18th, 2011 at 9:32 am
First thing I thought: Fernando Tatis & Mark Whiten, but alas, they just miss, both in the mid-400's.
But I'm sure Tatis has the fewest RBIs for someone to have 8 RBI in an inning!
May 18th, 2011 at 9:37 am
So for these reports generated from reports, how can I see, for example, fewest stolen bases in a season where a player stole 4 or more bases in one game? I can get fewest career stolen bases, but I can't figure out how to do it for just the one season.
May 18th, 2011 at 9:40 am
A foot note on Tatis.
Although 1999 looked like a productive year; 34 HR and 105 RBI, he had 61 or 59% of his RBI in 21 games, or 14% of his games.
So Andy, I was wondering if there were a way to see who spread out their production over the most games.
For instance, I know one year John Olerud (who I believe to be twice as valuable as people think) once was on base in like 159 out of the Mets games. That to me, is real production.
I guess, Game finder - minimum 1 RBI most games?
May 18th, 2011 at 10:11 am
Re: 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 batting order:
Tony LaRussa was going to do that once, but then he changed to 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-9 just to show us all how smart he is.
May 18th, 2011 at 10:31 am
[...] Fewest career RBI for a player with an 8+ RBI game since 1919 … [...]
May 18th, 2011 at 11:07 am
@5, Dukeof -- After poking around that '99 season for Tatis and the rest of the NL, it doesn't look like his RBI bunching was unusual.
Tatis ranked:
-- 20th in total RBI;
-- 16th in most games with at least 1 RBI;
-- 15th in most games with WPA >= 0.100;
-- 21st in most games with WPA >= 0.200;
-- 5th in most games with WPA >= 0.300.
In fact, Tatis was less of a buncher than most of the 100-RBI guys: Out of 27 NL hitters with 100+ RBI, Tatis ranked 21st in ratio of RBI to games with 1+ RBI.
I think the biggest factor in "RBI bunching" (for lack of a better term) is not the player's streakiness or tendency to pile up RBI in blowouts, but simply his HR rate. Since 1999 was a season of historically high HR rates, it's not surprising that RBI tended to be bunched. Look at all the 100-RBI guys just in the NL that year who had fewer games with 1+ RBI than Tatis (107 RBI in 66 games):
-- Brian Giles, 115 RBI, 65 games
-- Larry Walker, 115 RBI, 64 games
-- Vinny Castilla, 102 RBI, 63 games
-- Rico Brogna, 102 RBI, 60 games
-- Carl Everett, 108 RBI, 59 games
-- Jeromy Burnitz, 103 RBI in 59 games
-- Gary Sheffield, 101 RBI, 59 games
-- Todd Helton, 113 RBI, 58 games
-- Eric Karros, 112 RBI, 57 games
-- Jeff Kent, 101 RBI, 56 games
-- Steve Finley, 103 RBI, 50 games
May 18th, 2011 at 11:22 am
Re: the 9-1 lineup
How often does the SS bat cleanup and the 1B bat seventh in the same game?
May 18th, 2011 at 11:39 am
@4
Odd. Sean Forman describes how to the kind of search based on results of a previous search at this link
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10708
Andy also illustrates how he used the feature here
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10716
Basically you click on the Share option once you have done the first search and select share "as a link". This saves a url at the bottom of the play index that can then be opened to start your second search using only the "hits" from your first search.
Clear as mud? 🙂
May 18th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Clear as mud indeed as I simply can't figure out how to look up individual season results based on same-season results from a report.
May 18th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Regarding the 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 line-up, I found one (actually, quite a few for the same team in one year).
The rarest part of that is the SS batting 4th, which you can verify by doing a PI search on Seasons with Player Games Matching both defensive position and batting order position.
So I used the PI to find players who played a lot of games in a season at SS batting 4th. Then I compiled a list of players with a lot of games in a season at 1B batting 7th, and looked for common years and teams. I got lucky, because the very first 1B on the list (Charlie Grimm) matched with one of the SS (Glenn Wright), both playing in 1924 for the Pirates.
Looking at the batting orders for the 1924 Pirates, they had 31 games (!) with a 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 order, in fact 30 in a row from Aug. 25 to Sep. 23, with one more on Sep. 25. (That makes me wonder if it was on purpose.) The only changes in the players were the pitchers, of course, and they used three different catchers in the 8th spot.
May 18th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
@4 @10
Actually, Odd, trying to use the PI to do what you have requested may not be possible.
A bit of old-fashioned brute force may be necessary as well as searching the database. I'm not sure.
You can get the list of players stealing four or more bases in a game, obviously, but then the second search only would only turn up career fewest stolen bases.
If you asked the PI to look for fewest single-season stolen bases for the players on the first list, then it will return another season in which they didn't steal a base.... which is not the same season they have stolen 4 bases in one game.
I think the only way to do it is to take each player off your first list and find the number of stolen bases he had in that same season and put your list together manually.
Am I wrong? I may be out of my league here in trying to answer your question.
May 18th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
@13, Neil -- Your conclusion is correct, but the reason is even simpler than you described.
The ability to do a filtered search -- i.e., a search only within the results of a previous search -- is currently limited to "Season Finder" searches. So there's no way to apply that feature to the list of players with a 4-SB game.
Sean noted the limitation near the end of his original post.
May 18th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
@14
Thanks, JA.
In your usual inimitable style you've explained it much more simply.:-)
I actually had missed the significance of Sean's comment at the end os his post. 🙁
May 18th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
@9
It happened quite frequently on the 1949 and 1950 Red Sox. SS Vern Stephens hit fourth while guys such as Walt Dropo, Billy Goodman and Billy Hitchcock played 1B and batted seventh.
May 18th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
The other team to have a 9-1 lineup was the 1943 CHW.
They did it 46 times in the season, 33 of them being consecutive (Jun 26 to Jul 28). The rest the did it from Aug 6 to Aug 16 (13 cons games).
I checked for AL after 1973 by putting the DH as the sub of the pitcher (a 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-10(DH) lineup) and I didn't find anything. Also, I tried with a 10-9...3-2 lineup for AL after 1973, and also came empty.
May 18th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
Shortstop batting cleanup is another one that's pretty rare.
So SS batting 4th seems about as unlikely as the 1B batting seventh.
Aha, a play index search tells the tale -- this is actually much rarer than the 1B at 7th. I found 8800 games where a SS batted 4th and had at least 3 PAs, while I found 25000 games where a 1B batted 7th and had at least 3 PAs. No rarer than RF batting leadoff or 2Bs batting 6th (~24000 ea.). More common was Cf in 2nd and LF in 3rd at around 50k, 3Bs in 5th at about 58k, and leading the way, as I expected, were Cs in 8th at 115k and Ps in 9th at about the same.
So the real stickler here is going to be shortstops who batted cleanup.
May 18th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
There was a paragraph in there that I must have deleted in between my first and second speculating about who might have batted cleanup from the SS, Arod, Trammell, Ripken, Garciaparra, Banks, all confirmed as guys who did it a fair bit. But the list of guys who did it a lot is confined to big stars. mostly HoF, borderline and HoF track.
May 18th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
SS batting 4th and 1B batting 7th:
From 1919 to 2010, it was done 1296 times, approximately 14 times a year.
Look at 1923 Cleveland Indians...They hold the record for most games with SS as 4th in the lineup, and 1B as 7th, with 88 such games. However, they were even beyond that: they did it all in CONSECUTIVE games!! From Jul 1 to Oct 7, they played all their games with SS Joe Sewell batting 4th, and 1B Frank Brower (81 G)/Ray Knode (7 G) batting 7th.
Besides 1923 CLE, the 2 other teams with at least 80 such games are 1924 PIT (86 G) and 1927 PIT (82 G). 1948-49 BOS played 135 games with this lineup, the most over any 2-year period.
There have been 19 teams with 20+ such games, with the last in AL being 2008 CLE (24 G), and in NL, 1958 CHC (22 G).
Last year, it was done 5 times, twice by COL and SFG, and once by DET.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN201006020.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR201006180.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/COL/COL201007270.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/COL/COL201007310.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL201010020.shtml
There have been only 4 games in which BOTH teams played with this lineup in the same game. All games were on July of 1948, between CLE and BOS. Here they are:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS194807241.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS194807242.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS194807250.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE194807300.shtml
May 18th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
SS batting 4th and 1B batting 7th:
From 1919 to 2010, it was done 1296 times, approximately 14 times a year.
May 18th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Teams that have SS batting 4th and 1B batting 7th:
1296 games: 708 wins, 584 losses, and 3 ties. Looks convenient 🙂
May 18th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
[...] Fewest career RBI for a player with an 8+ RBI game: Andy K. of B-R found players whose 8-RBI games were completely out of place with the rest of their careers. [...]
May 18th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
JA
Thanks for the find, I was just looking at the 61 RBIs he had in 21 games, or, all the games he had multiple RBIs.
I wonder who had the most games, or the highest % of RBIs of games played or team games.
I know Gehrig, Greenberg and Wilson would be up there, but how about more recently?
Andy mentioned a while back, that while Jeter didn't have a good offensive season in 2010, he was on base in a very high % of games.
I wonder how much a difference that would make, translated to RUNS CREATED, or another way to check productivity, the player who spreads his TOB or RBIs into the most games.
I guess the real question would be - "would you want a guy going 1-4 every game with a few walks, HBP and 1-5 games thrown in, or a guy who was streaky?
Back to my original post, is it Olerud who has the most games with a TOB or the highest % and if not then who?
May 18th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
The first team I thought of for the 9-1 lineup was the Rockies. It's definitely plausible that Tulowitzki would hit fourth and Helton seventh, depending on who was playing second and third. That would take care of the SS cleanup and the 1B seventh.
Plus, Gonzalez would be hitting third, so I wouldn't be surprised if they've come close to the 9-1 lineup, especially last year when Helton wasn't hitting well.
May 18th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
@23, Duke -- In 1937, Hank Greenberg had 98 games with 1+ RBI, totaling 183 RBI.
Other notable high numbers in that regard:
-- 93 games, twice by Gehrig (1927, 1931)
-- 92 games, Ted Williams, 1949 (159 RBI)
-- 91 games, Rogers Hornsby, 1929 (150 RBI)
Tops in the expansion era:
-- 86 by 3 players: Todd Helton 2001 (146 RBI); Mike Sweeney 2000 (144 RBI); Albert Belle 1998 (152 RBI).
Gotta run.
May 18th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
I looked for lineups close to 9-1, with only two players switched. Since 1951 there have been 23 such games -- 6 of them occurred after a position change in-game. The spots that were switched were:
3-6 (i.e., a 9-8-7-3-5-4-6-2-1 lineup): 9 times -- this just flips the two cases we have been discussing as the most unlikely.
6-9: 4 times
7-8, 5-6, 3-4: 2 times each
7-9, 6-7, 4-9, 6-8: 1 time each
Montreal in 1986-87 had 6 such games, followed by Pittsburgh with 3 in 2005. The most recent was Oakland on 2008-06-19, with a 4-8-7-6-5-9-3-2-1 lineup, during an inter-league game with Arizona.
May 18th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Cloninger did it as apitcher. nice, especially considering even for a pitcher he was not a great hitter.
May 18th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
There are 362,880 ways to structure a batting order. 9! (the exclamation mark is called "Factorial" =362,880.
There have been 396,552 gmaes since 1876 so statistically speaking, it would have happened once since OB began. Of course nothing prior to 1919 is in the play index, so knows if it happened prior to that?
BTW Bobby Abreu thinks an alphabetical batting order is a great idea; but Ben Zobrist is opposed to it.
May 18th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
It is a small stretch, but the Angels could viably have an alphabetical batting order. Bourjos would have to cut down his K's and Callaspo would have to get hot like he was in April, but otherwise this isn't outlandish. Maicier Izturis is now the regular #3 hitter in Sciosia's lineup so dropping him to 5 is not as bizarre as it seems at 1st glance.
Aybar--SS
Bourjos--CF
Callapso--3B
Hunter--RF
Izturis--DH
Kendrick--3B
Trumbo-1B
Willits-LF
Wilson-C
May 18th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
The Phillies had a first baseman batting lead-off in a significant number of games in at least two of their pennant-winning years - Eddie Waitkus in 1950 and Pete Rose in 1980.
In a 3rd pennant-winning year, 1983, Rose was still leading off at the beginning of the year, but he was mainly playing right field then. As the season progressed, he was batting further down in the order, although he was mainly playing first base again. Remember, this was a season in which the Phillies were shaken up by a mid-season managerial change, despite having a winning record at the time, so Rose's batting order and fielding position movements may have (1) been caused by the new manager and (2) had an effect on the team's surge toward the postseason.
In 1950, Waitkus took over the leadoff spot in mid-July, and this change, too, may have been a major contribution as the Phillies overtook Brooklyn to win the National League pennant on the last day of the season.
May 18th, 2011 at 10:51 pm
@5, @24
If I have done my work correctly, in 1999 Olerud reached base 151 times, 154 if you count ROE.
May 18th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
@30
Spartan, yeah but Vernon Wells would mess everything up alphabetically when he comes back because Sciosia would bat him high in the order.
May 19th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
@31 I wonder where Rose ranks among the career leaders for Leadoff Stars at both 3rd and 1st base. Has to be near the top of the list for both I would think.