Baseball’s Nice Round Numbers, and the Near Misses As Well
Often while I’m looking up the statistics for a particular player, I notice the number of times a player either reaches a particular milestone, or just barely misses it. As someone who loves stats, I enjoy it when a player posts a nice, round number, such as 300 wins, 3,000 hits, or 500 doubles. For one thing, I’m sure Hall of Fame voters also take note of these statistics. So, for example, they should take a second look at John Olerud’s very productive career when they notice (assuming they take the time to actually analyze a player’s stats at all) that Olerud slammed exactly 500 doubles in his career.
I’m also intrigued, however, when a player comes ever-so-close to reaching one of these milestones, but falls just short. Would Kenny Lofton, for example, have received more serious scrutiny during the most recent HOF voting if he’d batted .300 for his career, rather than .299?
What follows is an overview of the players who posted those nice round numbers as well as those who fell just short. Several players appear on one or more of these lists. Some are Hall of Famers while others are all but forgotten. A few players on these lists are still currently active. There are, perhaps, a few surprises.
Let’s begin with Doubles:
John Olerud is one of two players to hit for the cycle in both the National and American Leagues. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Goose Goslin and John Olerud each netted exactly 500 doubles. Goslin is in the HOF. Will Olerud, with a career WAR of 58.0, a batting title, a 200-hit season, four 100 RBI seasons, three Gold Gloves and more walks than strikeouts merit serious consideration?
Rusty Staub ended his fine career with 499 doubles. One of the most underrated players of all-time, would Staub have garnered a few more HOF votes if he’d grabbed an additional two-bagger? Bill Buckner, Al Kaline and Sam Rice each ended up with 498 doubles.
Further down the list, we find Babe Herman, Gee Walker and Paul Hines settling in at 399 doubles. (Did you know Babe Herman’s middle name was Caves? What’s up with that?)
Gee Walker also managed to strike out exactly 600 times in his career, a nice round number. Hines won a couple of batting titles in the 19th century.
Remember back in the late ’80′s when Mets phenom Gregg Jefferies’ rookie card was skyrocketing in value? Well, though Jefferies’ career fell short of expectations, he did manage to reach exactly 300 career doubles, as did the Yankees’ Roy White and a couple of other guys. White once led the league with 99 walks, his career high, just missing that nice, round 100.
Five players fell just short of 300 doubles. Wally Berger, one of the five, batted exactly .300 for his career, in addition to his 299 doubles. Nine other guys reached exactly 200 doubles, and six more just missed at 199. Joey Votto currently has 201, probably fewer than half the number he’ll finally tally.
Now let’s turn to Runs Scored:
English: 1934 Goudey baseball card of Gerald “Gee” Walker of the Detroit Tigers #26. PD-not-renewed. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cap Anson ended up with 1,999 runs. If I was that close, I’m pretty sure I’d bribe someone to let me play long enough to reach 2,000. Either way, he’s in the Hall of Fame. Ed Delahanty reached 1,600 runs scored on the nose. The underrated Tony Philips got to 1,300, one ahead of the unfortunate Harold Baines, stuck at 1,299.
Edgar Renteria had a tidy career, scoring exactly 1,200 runs.
No player in baseball history ever finished his career with exactly 1,000 runs scored.
Adam Dunn currently has 999 runs scored, and will probably jack another solo homer soon enough to reach a thousand.
Jorge Posada tallied 900 runs scored, while Don Kessinger and Vernon Wells each managed 899.
As for Triples, there’s a bit less of interest to notice here, though two players, Dan McGann and Hi Myers each reached exactly 100 for their respective careers. Three other players notched 99.
Many baseball fans have long been fascinated by Runs Batted In. To wit,
A-Rod, apparently allowed to resume baseball activities, has 1,950 RBI. Will he play for someone long enough to reach 2,000? Does it matter at this point?
Jim Thome, whom I’m led to believe is basically retired, has 1,699 RBI in a probable HOF career. Napoleon Lajoie got to 1,599, and Eddie Collins drove in 1,300. Jim Edmonds, one of my favorite center-fielders, accumulated 1,199.
English: 1933 Goudey Baseball Card of Babe Herman of the Chicago Cubs #5 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Darryl Strawberry drove in exactly 1,000 runs. For him, there should have been so many more.
Wally Pipp, Gee Walker and Babe Herman all drove in 997 runs. Walker and Herman, you’ll remember also appeared together on the doubles list with 399 a piece.
Bases on Balls:
Stan Musial walked 1,599 times in his career. As a side note, you may or may not know that of his 3,630 hits, exactly 1815 were accumulated at home, and another 1815 occurred in road games.
Eddie Collins drew 1,499 walks.
Tod Helton has drawn 1,299 walks thus far. Helton also has hit exactly .320 for his career, but how much will HOF voters discount his career due to the so-called Coors Field effect?
No player ever drew exactly 1,000 walks in his career. Boog Powell walked 1,001 times, and Jim Edmonds drew 998.
How about Base Hits?
Roberto Clemente was, of course, halted by tragedy at 3,000 career hits. No other player accumulated exactly 3,000 hits. In fact no player stopped at 2,000 hits, either. Shawn Green topped out at 2,003, while HOF’er Jimmy Collins swatted 1,999 hits. Apparently, not reaching 2,000 hits (let alone the supposedly magical number of 3,000) didn’t hurt Collins chances of making it into The Hall.
Second baseman Joe Gordon played in exactly 1,000 games for the Yankees (before moving along to Cleveland.) In those 1,000 games, he accumulated exactly 1,000 hits.
Wally Berger of the Braves (Photo credit: Boston Public Library)
As far as Batting Average is concerned, a .300 batting average has always been a significant level of accomplishment for baseball purists. Some players have managed to hit exactly .300 for their careers, including Wally Berger (who also had 299 doubles, and a career high 199 hits in 1931), John (I ain’t an athlete lady, I’m a baseball player) Kruk, Roberto Alomar, Oyster Burns, Billy Goodman and the still active Josh Hamilton.
Meanwhile, in addition to Kenny Lofton, other players who ended their careers at .299 include Carl Furillo, Rico Carty and Bake McBride. The Royals Billy Butler is currently also a .299 career hitter.
Enos Slaughter batted .2999 for his career, which rounds up to .300.
They say chicks dig the long-ball. I have’t seen any objective studies on this, but has a home run ever been hit where at least a few fans didn’t stand up and cheer (except perhaps when Barry Bonds played on the road late in his career?)
Mark McGwire will probably be the first and last player ever to hit exactly 70 homers in a season.
Babe Ruth, of course, hit exactly 60 in a season. He also once hit 59.
Six players have hit exactly 50 homers in a season. Jimmie Foxx of the ’38 Red Sox was the only player to hit exactly 50 up until 1995. Since 1995, five players have reached that total, including the improbable Brady Anderson.
19 players have hit 49 homers in a season. Gehrig and Killebrew did it twice each.
English: Major League Baseball Hall of Fame player Al Kaline in his official 1957 Detroit Tigers photo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Exactly 50 players have hit exactly 40 homers in a season. Adam Dunn has reached that number four times.
For a career, Willie Mays reached 660 for his career. I’ve always liked that number because that’s how many baseball cards Topps used to feature annually in its sets for us kids to strive to collect. (Norm Miller anyone?)
Andres Galarraga and Al Kaline slugged 399 each. Remember that Kaline also had 498 doubles. Seems like he could have stuck around another week or so to pop a few more extra base hits.
Chuck Klein slugged 300 homers. Tim Salmon reached 299. Torii Hunter, by the way, is at 298 homers.
Four players hit exactly 200 career homers. Three have hit 150, including Kevin Youkilis. Seven players have hit 149, including Lou Brock, and the still active Ian Kinsler, Alex Rios and Jayson Werth.
Six players, including John Kruk (appearing again) and Bruce Bochte hit 100 home runs. Bochte also had exactly 250 doubles, drove in exactly 100 runs in 1979 and batted .300 on the nose in 1980.
Seven players have hit 99 homers, including the Pirates current catcher Russell Martin, and HOF’er Monte Irvin.
Swinging for the fences often leads to strikeouts.
Tony Philips struck out 1,499 times. Shawon Dunston and Jeffrey Leonard each reached exactly 1,000 career strikeouts. David Justice retired having been struck out 999 times.
Adam Dunn struck out 199 times in 2010.
![[Eddie Collins, Philadelphia, AL (baseball)] ...](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2076/2162649157_a6744750c7_m.jpg "[Eddie Collins, Philadelphia, AL (baseball)] ...")
[Eddie Collins, Philadelphia, AL (baseball)] (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)
Cesar Cedeno stole 550 bases in his career, a nice, tidy sum.
Bill Lange (whose nickname, for unknown reasons, was “Little Eva”) had 400 steals, 350 walks, a .330 batting average and a .400 on-base percentage. Bill, thanks for keeping those numbers nice and clean. Just please don’t try to explain to us how you became “Little Eva,” thank you.
Bobby Abreu looks like he’s going to finish with 399 career steals.
Shortstop Frank Taveras stole 300 bases in his career, including 70 in 1977.
Several players stole exactly 200 bases, including Ken Griffey, Sr., Jose Canseco (I know, I know), and Don Buford.
In 2009, Phillies second baseman Chase Utley was a perfect 23 for 23 in stolen base attempts. In 2011, he was successful in all 14 of his steal attempts.
In 1988, Mets outfielder Kevin McReynolds successfully stole 21 bases in 21 attempts. He also drove in 99 runs that year, missing by one what would have been his only one-hundred RBI campaign.
For the Sabermetric fans among us, how about career WAR?
Bob Gibson just missed 90 career WAR (89.9), while Curt Schilling just missed 80 career WAR (79.9.)
Rick Reuschel and Scott Rolen each retired with at 70.0 career WAR. They each have a better case for the HOF than you might think.
Hall of Fame outfielder Zack Wheat accumulated a 60.0 career WAR. Tony Lazzeri and Eddie Rommel each came in at 50.0. Freddy Lynn (one of my boyhood heroes) walked away from the game at 49.9.
And there’s Kevin McReynolds again, one of several players to retire at exactly 30.0 career WAR
Tired of looking at position players? How about the pitchers.
Let’s briefly look at Wins and Losses:
Early Wynn and Lefty Grove each won exactly 300 games. There have been four pitchers (including the Braves Tim Hudson) who are listed at 200 victories. Russ Ford won 199 games. Dizzy Dean won 150 games. Don Newcombe won 149.
There have been a dozen 100-game winners and eleven 99-game winners.
Joey Jay of Middletown, CT won 99 games, struck out 999 batters, and posted an ERA+ of 99 for his career.
Bert Blyleven lost 250 games. Eight pitchers had exactly 150 losses. Two pitchers lost 149. Ralph Terry lost 99 games. Terry also accumulated exactly 1,000 strikeouts and 20 shutouts.
Tom Browning of the Reds made 300 career starts, struck out exactly 1,000 batters, lost 90 games, and, as a hitter, struck out exactly 200 times.
Bob Caruthers who, despite the fact that he was born in Tennessee was nicknamed “Parisian Bob,” fanned 900 batters, posted 99 losses, and hit 99 batters. He also led his league with exactly 40 wins twice, in 1885 and 1889. As a hitter, he legged out 50 triples (yes, 50 triples for a pitcher!) and slugged an even .400.
Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, one of the last decent nicknames, struck out 799 batters in his career.
Looking a bit more specifically at strikeouts for pitchers, Andy Benes struck out exactly 2,000 batters in his career. Billy Pierce fanned 1,999. Amos Rusie struck out 1,950. Charlie Buffinton (born Buffington, but his family couldn’t afford the extra G, so he dropped it) K’d 1,700. Rollie Fingers struck out 1,299. The aforementioned Ralph Terry and Tom Browning posted 1,000 strikeouts each. Bill “Spaceman” Lee got to 998. Joe Blanton currently has 994 as of this writing.
Finally, working more or less backwards, four pitchers struck out 250 batters in a season. Justin Verlander is one of them. Curt Schilling struck out exactly 300 pitching for the Phillies in 1998.
And the immortal Toad Ramsey struck out an amazing 499 batters in 588 innings for Louisville in the American Association in 1886. That total, by the way, did not even lead the league.
That’s all for today, folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this romp through the world of Baseball Stat-Geekdom today. I’m sure you’ll catch some mistakes, for which I alone take responsibility. Go easy on me, boys and girls. I’m 49-years old, rounding up to exactly 50 later this month.
Baseball, Wages, and the American Middle Class
As you can clearly see from this graph, the middle class has been trending in the wrong direction, regarding its share of national income, for over 40 years now. If you are at least over 45 or 50 years old, you may recall a time when a one income household (usually headed by a male breadwinner) could adequately, even comfortably, provide for itself. My father, for example, was a factory worker his entire life in Bridgeport, CT. With a sixth-grade education, and a lot of hard work, he was able to support my mom, my younger brother and I until I moved out of the house in the 1980′s and began to support myself. By that time, (a bit earlier, actually) my mom had gone back to work as well.
My dad worked in a union shop and received a fair wage for hard work, as had his parents’ generation before him. I, too, worked for a couple of years in a union shop. The Teamster’s Union negotiated wages and contracts for us at UPS in Stratford, CT in the early 1980′s. When I started working there (loading and unloading trucks) I was earning about $10.00 per hour. Even in Connecticut, that was a pretty nice wage for a kid just out of high school. Within about a year, I was earning around $12.00 per hour, shared an apartment with a friend of mine, bought a car, and was able to save a little money.
It should be noted that UPS was enjoying prosperity in those days as well, despite the presence of labor unions in its midst.
In the late fall of 2011, a month or so before Christmas, I thought about making a little extra money down here in Greenville, S.C. where I now live. My wife is the primary breadwinner in our family, but I like to work, so I thought, just for the hell of it, I would check out what UPS here in the greater Greenville area was paying its employees for the same job I used to do around thirty years ago. It turned out their starting wage, in a non-union facility, was around $8.00 per hour. Now, adjusting for thirty years of inflation, I can’t even imagine what this “modern” wage would have equated to thirty years ago.
Now let’s turn to Major League baseball for a few minutes to see how the ball players, represented by the Major League Baseball Player’s Association, have fared over approximately that same time period.
As you can see, the players, represented by a very strong union, have become wealthier than they probably ever could have dreamed of just forty years ago. Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees will earn $28 million dollars this season. Derek Jeter’s net worth is around 125 million dollars. Now, obviously supply and demand is an important factor here. As long as baseball remains popular, the money will be there to pay this select group of highly talented athletes.
But it’s equally important to remember that baseball has been a capitalist enterprise for well over a century now, yet ball players have not always grown rich, and least not this rich. The minimum salary for a player (his contract negotiated by his union) is now over $400,000 dollars, around ten times the average salary of a non-union teacher here in South Carolina. I am not making an argument over the relative fairness of what a teacher makes vs. what an athlete makes. Great teachers are rare, but so are great athletes. Still, children understand and respond to incentives just like the rest of us. What choices are we encouraging our children to make based on the incentives available to them now and in the future?
The primary arguments I’ve heard from people (some of whom haven’t earned a middle class wage for years) against unions is that either A) Unions are corrupt, B) Union workers are greedy, or C) We can’t afford them.
Let’s take each of these three arguments as they relate to baseball.
A) Unions are Corrupt: There’s no question that the Player’s Union hindered the development and implementation of any rules regarding testing for steroids. One reason for this was that they believed protecting a player’s privacy was an important consideration. How could they be sure this wouldn’t turn out to be a witch-hunt? In that regard, they turned out to be right. The so-called confidential list of players who tested positive was partially leaked to the press, then on to the public. From that point on, all players have been branded guilty until “proven” innocent. Many of the Hall of Fame voters themselves seem to be waiting for “more information” regarding players they suspect might have used PED’s. Perhaps more names from another “confidential” list will someday illegally be made public. Then, with illegally obtained information at hand, they can penalize still more “dirty” players.
Sure, there are other kinds of corruption. These kinds also exist in non-union corporations, and among many of the Congressmen on Capital Hill, some of whom feel the need to remind us of the corruption of unions for political purposes while finding loopholes around and through the rules in an effort to enrich themselves at public expense.
B) Union Workers Are Greedy: Like us, baseball players seek to maximize economic gain within the realm of their chosen occupation, appropriate to their level of talent and experience. My friends in the private sector routinely do this as well. This is called (for better or worse) pursuing the American Dream. A couple of my friends are now quite wealthy. More power to them. This is not a zero-sum game where their prosperity comes at the price of someone else’s poverty (well, not directly, anyway.)
Public sector employees are also often accused of being greedy, despite the fact that they often earn less money than their private sector counterparts who have similar levels of education and job experience. My first year as a teacher, in a small town in rural Maine, I earned $20,900. That was in the mid-1990′s, not all that long ago. In my final year as a teacher, after a dozen years of experience and 36 Master’s Level college credits, I was earning $49,000. A friend of mine who graduated college the same year I did, who now works in the private sector, earns about twice as much as I did then.
We are all greedy. But for public sector unionized employees, as for MLB players, this is not a zero-sum game. The money a teacher, fireman or policeman makes is part of the tax base that pays for their own salaries, as well as the benefits received by others. Moreover, their disposable income is just as vitally a part of the consumer spending that promotes and supports local business as the dollars spent by private sector employees. Therefore, any attempt to “control” the costs of public employees by destroying their unions may have, at the local level, the unintended side effect of hurting overall consumer spending, which benefits no one.
C) We can’t afford them. This argument, that unions will destroy the economy, was an argument that MLB franchise owners made over and over again in the years leading up to the creation of the Baseball Player’s Association, and especially during the dawn of free agency. Exploding baseball player salaries will kill the game. Tickets will no longer be affordable, and player greed will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Also, team owners will be put out of business because they won’t be able to afford these new, extravagant salaries.
None of these things came to pass. When George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees in 1973, he paid just under ten million dollars for the franchise. Estimates are that the Yankees franchise is now worth around three billion dollars. Certainly, not every franchise can boast that same level of economic success, but in the rare occasion when an MLB franchise does go on the market, it rarely lacks a plethora of interested millionaires seeking to purchase it. Moreover, the eight best years of attendance in baseball history have each occurred in the past eight years. Clearly, if you build it, they will come, no matter how much the employees are getting paid.
Map usa unions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Similarly, beyond the world of baseball, the argument has been made that we can no longer afford unions. Yet many corporations that argue against unionized employees are among the richest companies on earth. Keeping their employees unnecessarily poor may allow them to please their shareholders, but the end result is a two-tiered economy that undermines real economic opportunity, upward mobility, and democracy itself. Even Henry Ford, who was anti-semitic and an early admirer of European fascism, declared that it was right to pay his assembly line workers a fair, living wage if for no other reason than that they should afford to buy the cars they were manufacturing.
It should also be noted that in the richest states like Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, public-sector employee unions have been strong for decades. The strength of those unions did not prevent those states from becoming and remaining wealthy. Conversely, many so-called “right to work” anti-union states, especially in the south, have long been among the poorest in the nation. The lack of unions has not, nor will it ever, lift these states out of their second or third-rate economic performances. Yet, counter-intuitively, most of the residents in these same, relatively poor states, harbor negative opinions of unions.
The anti-union propaganda machine has long been effective in keeping people poor and ignorant. Thirty or forty years of union decline in this country has not made the nation richer, it has made the middle class poorer. One only has to look at the recent history of Major League baseball to see the obvious solution to this state of affairs isn’t to continue to undermine, even outlaw, the few remaining unions we have left. True, fortunes can be made in the private sector outside of unions. But trends are trends, and in the long run, if current trends continue, there may not be a middle class in the future to enjoy Major League baseball. It will be a game of the few, by the few, for the few.
If that day comes, baseball and America will both be greatly diminished.
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