Superlatives and Inferlatives

The Washington Nationals, coming into this afternoon’s game, have given up the most runs in MLB but have also scored the most runs in MLB. This doesn’t happen a lot, nor do the other combinations of tops and bottoms in runs scored and runs allowed. Here are the relevant teams, with the GNats included through last night:

Best Pitching, Best Batting

SeasonTeamRSRARecord
2022LAN847513111-51-0
2001SEA927627116-46-0
1906CHN712381115-36-3
1902PIT780439102-36-3
1898BSN872614102-47-3

Best Pitching, Worst Batting

SeasonTeamRSRARecord
2003LAN57455685-77-0
1989LAN55453677-83-0
1937BSN57955679-73-0
1927BRO54161965-88-1
1913CHA48849878-74-1

Worst Pitching, Best Batting

SeasonTeamRSRARecord
2026WAS28430125-27-0
2008TEX90196779-83-0
1991TEX82981485-77-0
1986CLE83184184-78-1
1970SFN83182686-76-0
1968CIN69067383-79-1
1933PHA87585379-72-1

Worst Pitching, Worst Batting

SeasonTeamRSRARecord
1988BAL54678653-107-0
1974SDN54183060-102-0
1952PIT51579342-112-1
1949WS158486850-104-0
1932BOS56691543-111-0
1916PHA44777636-117-1
1908SLN37262649-105-0
1899NY174186862-88-2
1898SLN57192939-111-4

Observations:

  • I’m a little surprised Colorado never made the Worst Pitching, Best Batting List. If we looked at home games alone, I bet they’d be there routinely. But half their games are on the road, and to be able to pitch in Coors Field at all, the pitchers have to be so good that their road performance keeps them from the bottom. (This is a guess. If this were Rockies Journal, I’d explore it.)
  • Some of the best and worst teams of all time are on the top and bottom tables, as you’d expect
  • You’ll never have a great team no matter how well you pitch if you can’t hit, and vice versa, but the poor pitching teams that score a lot of runs are usually on the good side of 0.500, while great pitching teams that can’t score are generally below 0.500. But the only other team in the Nationals’ boat in the last 35 years also finished under 0.500. So maybe the game has changed.
  • We’re not even quite one-third of the way through the season, and the Nationals are only 3 runs scored ahead of the Braves, though they’re a healthy 23 runs allowed ahead of the penultimate Orioles.
  • The Braves, as I just said, are only 3 runs out of gaining the lead in Runs Scored and have given up only 13 more than the MLB-stingiest Brewers. So a spot on that top chart is far from out of the question, and the records in that top chart are mouthwatering. Of course, the Braves’ current win percentage extrapolation translates to 112 wins, which is not my predicted 162 but is only one digit off.
  • English has no Latinate word that is an antonym of “Superlative.” That’s a little weird, and is based on the fact that a superlative can be superlatively bad: “worst” is a superlative. I did not coin “inferlative,” as it appears on at least one Internet website as a potential word nobody uses. But really, nobody uses it (the only time i could find it used was a 1990 review of an EP record that I suspect even ububba has never heard of) so I’m claiming it, though I admit Claude gave me a set of choices and it’s the one I picked. And the fact that inferlative has a connotation of Hell-like fits well with anyone who was a fan of the 1952 Pirates or the 1988 Orioles.

Commercials

I know everyone gets different commercials on these broadcasts, but I suspect everyone gets that ad for JBL earbuds. I am not a violent person, but I want to punch that guy in the face. I probably won’t, partly because I’m not sure if he exists. But if I ever meet the person who wrote “moonbeams ice cream taking off your blue jeans” in a bar, I’m definitely going to yell at them. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can count yourself lucky.

The Game

A fairly rare Saturday day game in Atlanta. My memory of growing up in Atlanta is that it poured every afternoon in summer for about an hour, so 4:00 is an odd time to start a game. Sure enough, rain delay at 4:35 after an inning-and-a-half. 15 minutes of real rain and a startup again around 5:10. tfloyd and friends staying dry?

Jake Irvin against Sherlocks. Holmes was very sharp in his two innings of work before the rain but quickly loaded the bases with no outs in the third. A comebacker to the mound was turned into a double play with a nifty snare by new Folk Hero™ Chadwick Trump digging out a low throw from Holmes to pivot the twin killing.

Realizing that this “getting men on base” thing wasn’t helping them score, a solo homer in the 4th made it 1-0. Another solo homer in the 5th made it 2-0. Sherlocks was done, but he struck out 10 around those two homers. Drake Dodd replaced him and did fine: three scoreless innings. Tyler Kinley worked the 9th after a resurgent performance last night in the 11th. No problems.

I would love to say something about what was going on in the bottom of innings, but through 5 Jake Irvin had yielded nary a hit. Then something happened… Irvin got hurt and had to leave. He was replaced by Brad Lord, who worked a nice 3 innings, paralleling Dodd.

Seventh inning. Time to get to work. Michael Harris II led off with a single. Matt Olson, fighting a mild slump, hit a tailor-made double play that Jorbit Vivas dropped before he could shovel it to 2nd and, after a review, Harris was safe at 2nd. After Albies popped out, Dominic Smith flew out and it was up to the questionably resurgent Austin Riley. With a strikeout, the questions persist.

RAJ struck out for the fourth time to end the 8th inning. I’m starting to think there could have been a wee too much celebration last night.

Richard Lovelady, yesterday’s opener, came in at the bottom on the 9th as today’s closer.

This was just about the perfect two outcome game. 26 strikeouts, eight total hits and two solo homers for the only runs. The good news: a refreshed bullpen for the rubber game tomorrow afternoon.