On Twitter, Sarah Wexler noted a strange event: Just realized we might be watching one of the tallest pitching matchups ever pic.twitter.com/kio4Sk8LYk — Sarah Wexler April 6, 2017 This is the game she was referring to. 6′ 7″ Adam Wainwright versus 6′ 7″Jered Weaver. 158 inches of starting pitchers in the game. But … Read more
One of the cool facts of the upcoming Super Bowl is the record 13-year age difference between the starting quarterbacks (Peyton Manning is 39 while Cam Newton is 26). That got the VORG wondering what the regular season record is for age difference between starting pitchers. With the Retrosheet gamelogs accessed, here is the answer: … Read more
Here is a fun little data wrangle, with birthplace and date of player debut culled from the wonderful Lahman Baseball Database. For each “debut decade” from 1900 on, here are the five most popular cities of birth for MLB players. Of course, with no west coast baseball, the early 1900s were dominated by east coast … Read more
Friend of the VORG Tim Moore on the “Effectively Wild” Facebook page earlier this week: Curious about pitchers with the same surname as the opposing pitcher’s birthplace. Bonus points if it’s a Capitol. resulting in the following discussion … Diane Firstman Tim ….. are you serious about that? Tim Moore Always. OK, so pulling the … Read more
Given the ever-expanding world upon which Major League Baseball casts its scouting net, it shouldn’t be a surprise to note the growing uniqueness of player names. Just this season, we had big league debuts from players born in Taiwan, Cuba, Venezuela and Germany, to name a few “home fields”. Here is the complete list of … Read more
Last time out, we listed the yearly leaders for most popular first names in baseball. A natural extension of this is to find the teams with the most players with the same first name in a single season. There have been four teams with at least seven different players with the same first name: 1989 … Read more
We seem to have a lot of Brandons in baseball nowadays. The Giants had three-quarters of an all-Brandon starting infield earlier this year. However, Brandon is not the most popular first name in baseball today. We’re going to list the yearly leaders for most common first name, from 1871-2013, with a big assist from the … Read more
This Monday is Victoria Day. Victoria Day is a Canadian statutory holiday celebrated on the Monday preceding May 25 in every province and territory. It honors Queen Victoria’s birthday. In Quebec this holiday is called “National Patriotes Day” (Journée nationale des patriotes). To honor our Canadian friends, the VORG gives you the most prolific players born … Read more