"Some baseball experts in the United States and elsewhere challenge Oh’s mark"

Really.

AMong all pitchers with at least 500 PA since 1920, who was the hardest to strike out at the plate?

Jim Albright once ran some numbers and projections on Oh over at Baseballguru.com . I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but I know he found something like Oh would have still hit 500+ homers, but would not be anywhere close to the all-time mark, much less 868.

I'm not saying he'd hit forty to fifty home runs, but I'm sure he would have hit in the thirties and probably the low forties...It's correct that thirty home runs a year add up to over six hundred home runs, and he'd do that if he played the same number of years here that he played there.

Oh played 110 exhibition games against major leaguers, either in October or November or during spring training. He had 338 at bats and hit for a .260 average with 88 walks for a .413 on-base percentage. He also slugged 14 doubles, no triples and 25 homers among his hits, for a .524 slugging average. (I’ll list the pitchers he took out of the park below). These numbers include a 6 for 54 in 1971 against the Orioles, and an 0 for 12 in 1960. We won’t make any discount for the 1971 performance, as it may or may not represent a slump, but it would be appropriate to eliminate the 1960 results, since we do not project Oh to have been ready for the majors at that time. If you eliminate the 1960 results, his average will rise to .270, his on base percentage to .414, and his slugging percentage to .543. It is likely this performance came at least mostly in parks which were not of major league dimensions. However, it is a dominant performance against pitching which appears be above the average of pitching he would have faced in the majors, for reasons which will be demonstrated when we list the MLB pitchers Oh hit his homers against.

The pitchers (and the year) Oh hit his homers off of were (lefties are denoted with an asterisk [*], and if a pitcher gave up multiple homers to Oh, the number appears in parentheses): Hank Aguirre, 1962*; Nick Willhite, 1966* (2); Alan Foster, 1966; Joe Moeller, 1966; Jim Brewer, 1966*; Steve Carlton, 1968*; Dick Hughes, 1968; Nelson Briles, 1968; Ray Washburn, 1968; Larry Jaster, 1968*; Wayne Granger, 1968; Frank Reberger, 1970; Frank Linzy, 1970; Pat Dobson, 1971; Jim Palmer, 1971; Dick Hall, 1971; Jerry Cram, 1974 (2); Jerry Koosman, 1974*; John Matlack, 1974 (3)*; Tom Seaver, 1978; and Tom Hume, 1978. Further, the same data tells us Oh was pulling even this group of pitchers: 4 to left, 1 to left center, 3 to center, 5 to right center, and 12 to right.

If you looked at the teams Oh played against, you’d think he should have faced some pretty good pitching. The teams Oh and the Giants faced, when their various records are weighted by games against Oh and the Giants, is 92-70 when projected to a major league schedule. They had three league champions among them. The list of pitchers Oh homered off of supports the belief he was facing good major league pitching. For those of you who need more proof, let’s look at the median (the middle of the group) pitchers Oh homered against. Since we don’t have the full record, it only seems fair to be conservative in our estimate. We’ll use the pitcher’s ERA the actual year the homer occurred unless the pitcher had less than 50 IP. In that case, we take the ERA for both the season the homer occurred and the next season as well. Oh hit two against guys with ERAs of 5 or more, and there were only 4 more homers off of a pitcher with an ERA over 4. Anyway, the median lefty yielding a homer had a 2.92 ERA, the median righty yielding a homer had a 2.80 ERA, and the overall median pitcher yielding a homer had a 2.85 ERA. The average ERA was 3.55 in the majors during the period 1962-1975, and the lowest it got for any season for the whole majors was 2.98 in 1968. Thus, one can reasonably say in the exhibitions against major leaguers, Oh got his homers off a better than average group of major league pitchers. When all factors are considered, this segment of data outweighs the All-Star data and keeps Oh’s record the way we would expect a HOFer’s record in his circumstances to be.

Over his entire career, he fanned once every 42.8 PA.

Johnny Sain: 20 Ks in 856 PA.

Twelve active pitchers have 500 PAs - who has the fewest Ks among them?

I would guess that Jamie Moyer, Brett Myers, Brad Penny or Jake Peavy are on that list instead of Cook and Harang.

Edit: Also Randy Wolf. Also Russ Ortiz. Also Javier Vazquez who is near the top among active pitchers in every stat. Possibly Jason Jennings. Possibly Josh Fogg. Possibly Bronson Arroyo. Possibly Tim Hudson.

Another hint...HI-YAAAAAAA!!!!

Firpo Marberry?

Firpo Marberry?



I'm so happy I found out that there was somebody named this.

No homers in the regular season anyway. The postseason is another story with Mr. Lolich.

Easy trivia question - who is the only other player besides Lolich to have no career MLB home runs in regular season play, but at least one in the post-season? (1903 and after - I have no idea if someone did it in the Temple Cup or whatever...)

Blanton is one of them.

Easy trivia question - who is the only other player besides Lolich to have no career MLB home runs in regular season play, but at least one in the post-season?

For what it's worth my OOTP league found a way to incorporate Japanese players

lust plain joe: Have any of your fellow gamers taken a look at the Mexican League?

Isn't the quality of the Mexican League generally considered to be somewhere around the AA level? If so it probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

What the hell is Jason Repko doing starting for a playoff team?

The original dimensions of Ponce de Leon Park as measured from home plate were 365 feet in left field, 321 feet in right field and a very deep 462 feet in center field. In later years, a cyclone fence was installed running from the left field foul line to the edge of center field, reducing the dimensions to 330 feet in left field and 410 in center field.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of Ponce de Leon Park was a giant magnolia tree in deep center field, 462 feet away from home plate. In place of a fence in center field was a steep grassy embankment, which was considered part of the field. Balls hit there were considered in play. If a batsman hit a pitch into the tree it was ruled a home run, making Ponce de Leon the only park in baseball history to have ground rules allowing a tree in the outfield. Babe Ruth and Eddie Mathews have been credited as being the only players to hit balls into the tree in center field.