Tribulations of a Data Nerd producing “Content”

So watching JR Ritchie‘s awesome debut, I thought I’d try and create some interesting statistic from the Retrosheet database. When he gave up a homer to his first batter faced, I knew that was too obvious a focal point, and sure enough it has been discussed in several places, and there’s a webpage (which hasn’t yet been updated as of this afternoon) devoted to this “feat.”

But when Carlos Carrasco came in to finish up the game, I furiously went off to write the code about the largest age differences between winning pitchers and saving pitchers. I did it, I got a result (Ritchie/Carrasco are 338th) but then realized Carrasco couldn’t earn a save in this game. Nerdery thwarted.

However, there is something maybe worthwhile for a Braves Journal audience. The largest age discrepancy between a winning pitcher and saving pitcher was earned on September 22, 1931. In that game, the 20-year old Van Lingle Mungo won at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis against the Brooklyn Robins (they were still dodging trolleys, but they were nicknamed for their manager Wilbert Robinson for 18 years. How great would if have been if the Braves had been named the Cocks? Or even the Snits?) in a game saved by the 47-year old Jack Quinn, a 27.9 year difference in age between the winning and saving pitcher. (Quinn’s an interesting character. Despite his Irish name, he was Slovakian and at one time held the record both for the oldest guy to win a game and for the oldest guy ever to homer, records which were broken by Jamie Moyer and Julio Franco. He is still the oldest player ever to start either a World Series game or on Opening Day.) The next two on the list go the other way in 1984, when the 45-year old Phil Niekro got wins for the Indians, both saved by 19-year old José Rijo.

But of course the real thing that brings out is the most famous baseball-themed jazz song, Van Lingle Mungo, a Dave Frishberg classic that if you don’t know it, has lyrics that consist in their entirety of baseball players, mostly from the 40’s. And no, Talkin’ Baseball, pleasant though it is, is not jazz, and is, at its best, an Easy Listening homage to Van Lingle Mungo.

Anyway, this is how screwups lead you to produce “content” despite yourself.

The Game

Philadelphia, reeling, comes to Unincorporated Cobb County. Not to get all Shakespearean (well, maybe a little Shakespearean) I am taken back to Mrs. Warren’s 6th grade English class, in which we were given a short-ish verse to memorize every week. I can still recite a very few of these by heart, but they mostly serve today to allow me to Google them and cite them appropriately (or inappropriately — I don’t really care.)

At some point there in 1968, our task for the week was to memorize a passage from Julius Caesar including the following famous lines spoken by Julius Caesar:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

As Caesar learned, his qualms were well-taken. I’d much rather face a Phillies team convinced it is the Gas House Gang than one in the throes of sniping over age and finger-pointing. And as I type this at 6 PM EST, I have no idea which way this series is going to go. Maybe the Phillies are preparing to throw in their rally towels. But I wouldn’t count on it in April. Such teams are dangerous.

It turns out I needn’t have worried — at least for game 1. It was Andrew Painter against Sherlocks, and because I have relatives visiting I didn’t get to see much of it, but what I saw was still a Phillies team that is struggling and a Braves team that can come back from behind with a three-run late inning when they need it. The rumors of Michael Harris II quad injury were apparently disinformation directed at the AppleTV announcers, because he hit a pinch-hit double in the bottom of the 6th that gave the Braves the lead. He was removed then for a pinch-runner, but if he is able to generate a double on command for the rest of the season we probably don’t need him to do anything else.

The Phillies weren’t completely feckless: Trea Turner and Bryce Harper homered for the Phillies three runs. They had eight other hits in the game, but only scattered singles after the Braves took the lead in the 6th. They are still a dangerous team who isn’t at the moment acting very dangerous. Timing is everything and if we can sneak through a win in this series we will have gotten them at just the right time.

Zack Wheeler returns tomorrow night from thoracic outlet surgery. I would have thought they’d have waited to let him start the season against a sympathetic home crowd. But they may not think they have the leeway to do so. Such men are dangerous.