1.

                        Whenever they say "Wikileaks"

                        I always think of Rickie Weeks;

                        You may call it treason,

                        But I call it a double play.

2.

            What was the best stretch of pitching performances by any team in 2010?    The best 35-game stretch was by a team you wouldn’t guess.   I’ll tell you later.

3.  Pitching Matchups

            The best pitching matchup of 2010, simply in terms of having two outstanding pitchers on the mound, occurred on June 15 in Gotham City, and featured Carsten Sabathia against Harry Halladay.    Sabathia won, 8-3, as Halladay had his second-worst outing of the season.   His only worse outing was his start against the Red Sox. 

            The worst pitching matchup of 2010, in terms of the record of the starters, occurred in the nation’s capitol on September 5, and featured Jason Marquis against Charlie Morton.   Marquis finished the season 2-9 with a 6.60 ERA; Morton was 2-12, 7.57.

            Marquis pitched well that day and won the game; in fact, you wouldn’t believe it, but Marquis actually finished the season pitching extremely well.    Marquis had 13 game appearances in 2010, all of them starts, and in the first five (three in April, two in August) he was 0-5 with an ERA of 14.33.     But in his last eight starts his ERA was 3.51, and that included one start in which he gave up 6 runs in a third of an inning.   In the other seven, he was quite good. 

4.  Parks

            Courtesy of Retrosheet, we now know that Joe DiMaggio played 127 games in his career at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, home of the Browns. . . 127 games, basically one month short of a full season.   This is his career batting record in St. Louis:

            Pretty good, right. . .45 homers, 45 doubles, 156 RBI and a .389 average in the equivalent of five months, OPS of 1.223.

            Nah, that’s not good.   This is good:

            That’s Mel Ott’s career batting record in the Baker Bowl (Philadelphia). . . ..415 with 161 RBI in 119 games.  OPS, 1.282.

            How’s this for a Home/Road split?

            That’s Chuck Klein, 1931—a 132-point edge in batting at home.   He increased that to 157 points in 1932:

            And, for the capper, to 187 points in 1933:

            In 1933 he missed by ten hits of hitting .500 for the season in his home park.

5.  Doubles

            The career record for doubles, 792 or 793, by Tris Speaker, is one of baseball’s oldest records, and has rarely been threatened.   Some of you may remember that three years ago, I predicted that the career record for doubles would be broken about the year 2020.   This started, actually, with an observation that the number of doubles hit was increasing to where it might now be possible to break the record.    This provoked a flood of reader comment telling me that this couldn’t happen or wouldn’t happen for any one of sixteen different reasons.   My experience is that whenever people give you sixteen different reasons why something can’t happen, it’s about to happen, and so—after looking at the issue more closely—I predicted that the record definitely would be broken about that time.

            But we are in an era of rapidly contracting offensive levels, and I was wondering if this might throw a monkey wrench in the works.   The National League ERA this year, 4.02, was the lowest since 1991, and the American League ERA, 4.14, was the lowest since 1992.    Is the reduction in offense going to save the doubles record?

            It occurred to me that I could study this, in the following way.    One can figure the chance that some player will hit 793 career doubles by figuring the chance that each player will hit 793 doubles.   However, you don’t get a lot out of that, because there are so few players who have a realistic chance of hitting 793 doubles.   If you just studied that you would get an unstable measurement that would be heavily reliant on whether the best doubles hitters had good seasons.

            What one can do, however, is to figure the expected number of active players who should get 500 doubles, and 600 doubles, and 700 doubles.   Those numbers are more stable, because they are based on more players, and, if those numbers go up, then the chance that the doubles record will be broken has to go up, for the same reason that, if you have more teenagers having sex, the teen pregnancy rate has to go up.   One thing follows the other.

            OK, here’s what I did.   I figured, for every player in major league history after every season, the chance that he would hit 500 doubles in his career, and 600, and 700, and 800, and 900, and 1000; nobody has ever hit 1,000 doubles, but numerous players have hit so many doubles for a few years that it appeared reasonably possible that they might.    Then I figured, for each player, his "2BX" number, his 2BX number being his chance to hit 500 doubles in his career, plus 2 times his chance to hit 600 doubles, plus 3 times his chance to hit 700 doubles, plus 4 times his chance to hit 800 doubles, plus 5 times his chance to his 900 doubles, plus 6 times his chance to hit 1000 doubles.

            The first player to establish a chance to hit 500 doubles in his career was Abner Dalrymple in 1880.    Dalrymple hit 25 doubles in 1879 and 25 more in 1880.   He was only 22 years old at that time, and we estimate that there was an 11% chance that he would go on to his 500 career doubles, although he didn’t.     That made him the "2BX" leader. . .violating my rule against acronyms; yes, I am aware of this.  The 2BX leader is the best doubles hitter of his time, or at least the leading threat to hit a large number of career doubles.   These are the 2BX leaders since 1880:

            In 2010 this list goes Pujols, Markakis, Miguel Cabrera, Bobby Abreu, Adrian Beltre:

            Now, to get to the $64,000 question:   Is the chance to have an 800-double career dissipating? 

            It is, yes—and rapidly.

            If you add up all of the "2BX" scores for each player, you get a "major league 2BX" figure.    Up to 2007, this figure was increasing at a tremendous rate of speed, as ever-increasing numbers of doubles were being hit:

            This number indexes the "threat" to Tris Speaker’s record.  From 1989 to 2007, it increased more than three-fold.  But since 2007, as the hitting explosion has ended, this number has retreated:

            The 2010 index is the fifth-highest of all time—but also the fifth-highest in the last five years.

            So clearly, there is a window of opportunity here for the doubles record to be broken, but if it isn’t broken in the next ten years, then it might be another ninety years before that window opens again.

            So, am I going to withdraw my prediction about the doubles record falling?   Nah.  If you withdraw your predictions, it just gives you the chance to be wrong twice.    Besides, I still think I’m on solid ground.   We estimate that Albert has a 29% chance to hit 800 career doubles, Markakis 23%, Miguel Cabrera 22%.    The chance that some active player will hit 800 career doubles is 91%.    Obviously, if offensive levels continue to contract rapidly, then that number is too high, because the method implicitly assumes that the norms of the past will be the norms of the future.   But I still think it will happen.

6.   Gordon and Doerr

            Joe Gordon (1938-1950) and Bobby Doerr (1937-1951) were Los Angeles natives, both second basemen, and are both in the Hall of Fame.   Both were outstanding defensive second basemen.  On a superficial level Doerr appears to have been a better hitter, out-hitting Gordon .288 to .268, and with an OPS still one point higher (.823 to .822) although Gordon had more walks and power. 

            What is interesting, though, is that Joe Gordon out-hit Bobby Doerr in every park in which the two men played, and his OPS was at least 60 points higher in every park.    There’s a tiny quibble with that being an accurate statement, which I’ll get to in a minute, but. . .in Philadelphia, Doerr hit .265 with an OPS of .760.   Gordon hit .273 with an OPS of .831.  

            In St. Louis, Doerr hit .282 with an OPS of .825.   Gordon hit .310 with an OPS of .958.

            In Washington, Doerr hit .258 with an OPS of .669.   Gordon hit .283 with an OPS of .801.

            In Chicago, Doerr hit .275 with an OPS of .738.   Gordon hit three points lower (.272) but with an OPS almost a hundred points higher (.833).

            In Boston, Doerr’s home park, Doerr hit .315 with an OPS of .929.   Gordon hit one point lower (.314) but with an OPS 68 points higher (.997).

            In Yankee Stadium, Doerr hit .200 with an OPS of .529.  Gordon hit .256 with an OPS of .784.

            In Cleveland, Doerr hit .258 but with an OPS of .702.   Gordon hit just .245, but with an OPS of .767.

            OK, here’s the fly in the soup.   "In Cleveland" is actually two parks, old League Park, where the Indians played weekday games, and Cleveland Stadium/Memorial Park, the big old lakefront park most of you remember, where they played weekend games in the 1930s and played fulltime from the mid-forties into the 1990s.   Doerr actually did outhit Gordon in League Park, where they played far fewer games than in any other park.   Gordon played only 36 games in League Park, and Doerr only 45.

            But here’s what I thought was fascinating about that—that

            a)  the two men played in the same parks and the same cities in the same years,

            b)  Gordon’s OPS was at least 60 points in every city, yet

            c)  Doerr’s OPS was higher overall.

            Doerr’s OPS was higher overall because he played 954 games in the park where he hit best (Fenway Park), as opposed to 135 games in the park where he hit worst (Yankee Stadium).   Gordon also hit better in Fenway than in any other park, but he played only 115 games there.   He played most of his career—846 games—in the two parks where he hit the worst, Yankee Stadium and Memorial Stadium in Cleveland.   It makes it appear that Doerr was a better hitter than Gordon—when if you adjust their stats so that they all play the same number of games in each city, Gordon’s OPS is a whopping 109 points higher than Doerr’s, .851 to .742, and even his batting average is 12 points higher (.279 to .267).   The difference between Joe Gordon and Bobby Doerr, in park-normalized OPS, is the same as the difference between Charlie Gehringer and Mark Loretta, the same as the difference between Nap Lajoie and Fernando Vina, and larger than the difference between Ryne Sandberg and Jeff Treadway.    

            This is Joe Gordon’s career batting record in Doerr’s kitchen:

            Whereas this is Doerr’s record in Gordon’s:

7.   Advertising

            The essential problem of advertising—like all forms of propaganda—is that it requires increasingly large doses of advertising to get the same effect.   I am referring here both to a narrow effect and a broad one.   Let us suppose that there is a new product, new yummy zero-calories cherry goop, which must be introduced to the public by advertising.   The first million spent in advertising the product will attract the most eager customers, those who are receptive to new products by nature, like cherry goop and are in the habit of watching their calories.   The second million moves down the chart to those who are less receptive to new products, like cherry goop less and pay less attention to calories, and the third million will be less effective than the second, and so on down the line; eventually everybody who can tolerate cherry flavors has tried your product, and you can advertise until the cows come home and the Pirates win the pennant, and it won’t do any good. 

            That’s the narrow effect, but there is also a broad effect:  advertising builds resistance to advertising.   We are all exposed to thousands of commercial messages every day now.  We start to filter them out, having nothing to do with yummy cherry goop.   The more commercials we see, the less attention we pay to each one, which requires the advertiser to be yet more active and more intrusive in trying to reach us.

            We are living in the age not merely of advertising, but in the age of dead advertising; advertising no longer has much impact, so ever-larger doses of advertising are required to achieve ever-diminishing returns.   There is an assumption, I think, that this will go on forever; that advertisers will become more and more clever about finding ways to invade our private spaces with their crap.    I wonder.    I wonder if it is possible that this whole thing will just. . .collapse.    In the e-universe people will review new products for their readers, and people who have new products to sell will reach people through those reviews, and everybody will realize that paying sports teams millions of dollars to name their stadiums after you and hanging banners everywhere is just a stupid waste of time and money.

            It’s a thought.

8.

            Houston.   The team that had the best run of 35 consecutive starts by their pitchers in 2010; it’s Houston.

            Between August 9 and September 14, Houston Astros pitchers made 35 starts, pitching 224.2 innings with 16 wins, 4 losses, 208 strikeouts and an ERA of 2.48.    Bud Norris, Wandy Rodriguez, J. A. Happ, Nelson Figueroa and Brett Myers.