Some team history

[crashtest]

ken said:

In 46 seasons, there have been 17 Opening Day Catchers: Ausmus (8), Ashby (7) Edwards (5) and Bateman (4) had the most. Eight players had but one OD start

This is a great thread. I dare the icehouse to even attempt this kind of mind candy....any way you could post the Astros players with the most opening day starts at each position?

Thanks, Ken.

To do the catcher/RF comparison, I went to baseball-abstract to pull up the box score of every OD and wrote down the C and RF in columns. It was fun, but a little labor intensive. I would guess that the following players had the most OD starts at their respective positions:

C - Ausmus, as tabulated
1B - Bagwell
2B - Biggio
3B - I betcha it was Rader
SS - I'd have to go with Metzger. Thon could have made 10 if not for the tragedy.
LF - Probably Cruz
CF - Cedeno - once he made the team, Wynn went to RF. Puhl started lots of seasons in RF before he played CF.
RF - Puhl, as tabulated
P - Several candidates but Dierker stand out in my memory. Scott really didn't have all that many years. Ryan always seemed to start the 2nd game of the season. Oswalt might have matched or passed Dierker. I'm sure somebody knows the answer to that one.

Strange, but it really doesn't seem to me that the starting 8 could get past anybody in the playoffs. A case of "the whole is LESS than the sum of the parts"*

*For example, Metzger/Ausmus/Pitcher is a blackhole that would swallow up the rest of the line-up (see Wingnut/Ausmus/Pitcher. Then you have the problem of 2 lead-off hitters (Puhl and Biggio) without a good number 2. Also, 3 number three hitters (Bagwell, Cedeno,Cruz) without a really good 4. Rader would be a number 5 but he was as streaky as he was crazy. I think that line-up would have lots of trouble scoring runs. It might win in the Dome, but it wouldn't be that much better than last year's line-up at MMP.

[crashtest]

James - do you have any connections with say, Tal Smith, Gene or Mickey Herskowitz who might be able to readily contact Bill James to get him to write an on-line article about Walt Bond to set the record straight? Frankly, the "vague remembrance" borders on libel. Maybe he made an amalgam of incidents involving Wynn/Cedeno/Wilson, but he really needs to correct that. Bond was just too fine a gentleman to have that unwarranted cloud of suspicion hang over his legacy and family. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help the effort.

[crashtest]

Talk about alternate universes, some guy ran a SIM League called the Spirit of '62.

www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/archive/index.php/t-3673.html

Walt Bond won back-to-back MVPs in '63 and '64:

1963 - Cincinnati Reds beat the New York Yankees 4-2.

AL MVP - Walt Bond - Boston (55 HR 138 RBI, .293) This man would die in real life of Leukeimia in the 60's and this replay made me familiar with this great player. He was dominant for the Red Sox and ended up playing for Cleveland as well. His 55 HR's and 138 RBI's have held up as single season records.

1964 - Yankees beat the St Louis Cardinals 4-3

AL MVP - Walt Bond - Boston (46HR 113RBI, .318) - Bond leads the Red Sox, but the Bosox are a feeble team in this league that tends to collapse after good starts much like the real life team.

Absent leukemia and given a roster spot, those stats don't seem so far-fetched.

[crashtest]

Here's another great site. It shows how every batter fared against every pitcher, down to thesequence of pitches. Walt Bond batted .300 or better against 3 HoF pitchers: Spahn, Drysdale and Gibson. He absolutely OWNED Gibson. He had 7 HR in 62 ABs against those three. Check it out.

www.thebaseballcube.com/h2h/b/bondw101_b.shtml

[jamesa46]

crashtest said:

James - do you have any connections with say, Tal Smith, Gene or Mickey Herskowitz who might be able to readily contact Bill James to get him to write an on-line article about Walt Bond to set the record straight? Frankly, the "vague remembrance" borders on libel. Maybe he made an amalgam of incidents involving Wynn/Cedeno/Wilson, but he really needs to correct that. Bond was just too fine a gentleman to have that unwarranted cloud of suspicion hang over his legacy and family. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help the effort.

Crash-
Mickey would most likely be the one with the influence to convince Bill James to edit his story and I have a direct line of contact with Mickey so I would have absolutely no problem addressing this with him. Plus considering Mickey's credentials as not only a sports columnist for Houston sports he's written several biographies including Mickey Mantle's Bio and currently working on Don Shula's biography therefore his reputation for getting the facts straight is well documented.
I will definitely talk to Mickey about this.

Tal could likely have the clout but his expertise is in a completely different direction and as for Gene, he's currently very busy indexing all of his files on baseball that he's collected since his days as a minor league broadcaster and is going to begin piece-mealing it all out in a serial format of short sports articles which is going to take up a lot of his time.

[crashtest]

ken said:

In 46 seasons, there have been 17 Opening Day Catchers: Ausmus (8), Ashby (7) Edwards (5) and Bateman (4) had the most. Eight players had but one OD start

This is a great thread. I dare the icehouse to even attempt this kind of mind candy....any way you could post the Astros players with the most opening day starts at each position?

Ken- here ya go. Courtesy of baseball-reference, everything you always wanted to know about OD line-ups:

www.baseball-reference.com/teams/HOU/opening.shtml

Complete with spreadsheet. LF beat RF by one, 27 to 26. It will be tied after this year since Lee will again start in LF while Pence will be a new one in the RF column. I got most of the others except for 3B where Caminiti's encore gave him the lead with 8. Third base beat out second base for the fewest: 13 to 15, although Biggio, Doran and Morgan started 30 out of 46 seasons. Oswalt (5) will have the most OD starts after this year, currently tied with Richard and Reynolds.

[chandler44]

Baseball-reference is an amazing website. Sean Forman has created something special.

[crashtest]

jamesa46 said:

crashtest said:

James - do you have any connections with say, Tal Smith, Gene or Mickey Herskowitz who might be able to readily contact Bill James to get him to write an on-line article about Walt Bond to set the record straight? Frankly, the "vague remembrance" borders on libel. Maybe he made an amalgam of incidents involving Wynn/Cedeno/Wilson, but he really needs to correct that. Bond was just too fine a gentleman to have that unwarranted cloud of suspicion hang over his legacy and family. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help the effort.

Crash-
Mickey would most likely be the one with the influence to convince Bill James to edit his story and I have a direct line of contact with Mickey so I would have absolutely no problem addressing this with him. Plus considering Mickey's credentials as not only a sports columnist for Houston sports he's written several biographies including Mickey Mantle's Bio and currently working on Don Shula's biography therefore his reputation for getting the facts straight is well documented.
I will definitely talk to Mickey about this.

Tal could likely have the clout but his expertise is in a completely different direction and as for Gene, he's currently very busy indexing all of his files on baseball that he's collected since his days as a minor league broadcaster and is going to begin piece-mealing it all out in a serial format of short sports articles which is going to take up a lot of his time.

Thanks, James - great job with the Walt Bond article. I just knew you had the solution for the Bill James problem.

[crashtest]

crashtest said:

Well, '62 had Smith, Buddin, Amalfitano and Pendleton. In '63 it was Campbell, Lillis, Fazio and Goss. In '64, it was Bateman, Kasko, Fox and Wynn. Thereafter, guys like Bateman, Wynn and Morgan provided some continuity for at least one of the 4 positions. So, I'll go out on a limb and say that no team named "the Astros" has turned over all 4 middle positions in one year.


PS It was a little nip and tuck there when Biggio converted from catcher to 2B from '91 to '92, but Finley held the job in CF.

Correction here: Spangler was our first CF, Pendleton was in left, Mejias in right.