The Second Annual Dan Meyer Awards

During Major League Baseball's award season, the best of the best are featured (maybe not always with the Gold Gloves). And we should celebrate the best. But there is always a flip side. For every best, there was a worst. Saying that does understand that even the worst MLB players in a particular year are among the best players in the world. MLB players are an elite group of talent. So keep that in mind.

Baseball will award its most valuable player. The Flagrant Fan awards what my friend, Mike Hllywa of Off Base Percentage, likes to call the LVPs. These players did not have good seasons. These players were, in most cases, worse than replacement level. These players made fans look at GMs and ask, "What were you thinking?"  Some of these players have big contracts that now look like albatrosses. Like I said, you celebrate the best? You also have to celebrate the worst.

Why are they called the Dan Meyer Awards? That's a long explanation and I will save myself some typing by referring you to last year's award post.  Suffice it to say that Dan Meyer played twelve Major League seasons and compiled -6.5 fWAR and -5.5 rWAR. That was a lot of negative value for that long of a career!

To qualify, each positional player had to have at least 450 plate appearances except for catchers that only needed 350. Here are your 2014 Dan Meyer Awards for the LVPs (h/t to Mike) for each position. We will consider the pitchers in a later post:

Catcher: This one was easy. A.J. Pierzynski was the only catcher in baseball with more than 350 plate appearances that scored in the negative numbers on offense, defense and base running. Quite a few were in the negative for two of the categories, but only AJP nailed the three-fer. The Red Sox released him and then blasted him in the press (anonymously, of course) and then the Cardinals signed him and the guy actually played in the post season. AJP only walked 3.9 percent of the time and had a wOBA of .277.  With positional points because of the importance of catching, it is very difficult to score a negative WAR as a catcher. AJP nailed it.

First Base: This is quite interesting that the first two positions winning this award feature players who played for both the Cardinals and the Red Sox in 2014. And I hate to pick Allen Craig here as it feels like I am piling on. Mr. Craig had a brutal season in 2014 after being feted as the world's best clutch hitter in the years leading up to 2014. Injury probably played a part. Either way, he fell out of favor in St. Louis by a fan base that became enamored with Matt Adams and Craig became part of the trade that brought John Lackey to Cards. Hopefully, the season was an outlier for Craig as his 66 OPS+ for 2014 was half of what it was in the prior two seasons. Craig played a lot in the outfield too in 2014, but we will just limp it all together here. Honorable mention goes to Ryan Howard, but that is another story entirely.

Second Base: Alberto Callaspo had a fairly brutal season for the Oakland A's. His .580 OPS was awful and a hundred and twenty points below his career average. Plus, for the first time in his career, he scored in the negative for his fielding. He is a second baseman who turned 31 in 2014. The early thirties for second basemen is like the age of 27 for rock stars. Careers seem to die quickly at the position. Perhaps Callaspo will rebound. He will need to because his season was one of the rare misses of the Oakland front office. Oh, and Callaspo grounded into 18 double plays too. Ouch.

Shortstop: Yes, all you haters, Derek Jeter wins the Dan Meyer Award at shortstop for 2014. He was 20th in defense (there were worse, believe it or not) and he was next to last in offensive value. Obviously, his age caught up to him and his offense could not make up for his defense. But the commercials were cool and he will be in the HOF in five years. So there you go.

Third Base: This was another easy call. How about a 63 wRC+ and a .260 wOBA? How about being almost two wins below replacement level? How about doing that while not fielding well and not running well? And, he still came to the plate 607 times. Our hero here is Matt Dominguez of the Houston Astros. The former first round pick simply hasn't found himself in the Majors. Dominguez doesn't walk and he doesn't hit. That is a deadly combination combined with not fielding well and not running the bases well.

Left Field: It is safe to say that this is another easy pick. No left fielder has a poorer season than Domonic Brown and like Dominguez of the Astros, the Phillies have hoped against hope that this prospect ship would come in and it foundered instead. Brown was absolutely brutal in 2014. Like Dominguez, Brown had almost two wins below replacement. He had a 75 wRC+ and a .280 wOBA to go along with having a poor season in the field. Either Brown needs a change of scenery or he simply is never going to live up to the hype. Interestingly, Dayan Viciedo was the runner up for the second year in a row. That's hard to do.

Center Field: Fangraphs.com did not have any center fielders with a negative fWAR because of the position importance. Their two lowest ranking CF guys were tied at 0.4 and they were Michael Bourn and B.J. Upton. But Upton gets the nod because he had more plate appearances AND because baseball-reference.com DID rank him in negative territory. Poor Upton has become such a symbol of this new pitching age that he cannot seem to get beyond the mire he has found himself in the last two seasons. New glasses might have helped in the second half. But he still finished with a wRC+ of 74 and he struck out just shy of 30% of the time. Ouch. Fortunately, he is still capable in center field and can still go get the ball because his offense has been an Atlanta nightmare.

Right Field: What in the world happened to Jay Bruce? His OPS dropped a hundred and fifty-three points in 2014 from 2013. He batted his weight and his ISO dropped sixty points. His wins above replacement fell off five wins from the season before on both major stat sites. And while fielding statistics still have their flaws, they tell a story of a guy who fell down in his fielding as well. One big difference became his success against left-handed pitching. His OPS dropped against them by a hundred and eighty points from 2013 to 2014! I suspect that infield shifts hurt him as his BABIP fell to .269. Whatever the case, Bruce went from a very useful and valuable player to terrible in one fell swoop. Let's hope that it was a fluke season and he'll bounce back.

We could probably throw the DH in there too which would be Billy Butler. But he got to the World Series, so he can smile about it now. Adam Dunn was in the building, but at least he hit some dingers, a marketable skill set nowadays.

Thus is the list of Dan Meyer Award winners for 2014. God willing, come back this same time next year for the 2015 awards. And remember that the pitchers are not forgotten. The Kyle Davies Award winners will be announced soon.

Derek Jeter and hyperbole

I purposely stayed off Twitter tonight and just watched the last game Derek Jeter will play at Yankee Stadium. And I was not going to write about it either. What more could I possibly say that has not been said on both sides of the Derek Jeter narrative? Plus, I cannot passively talk about the evening because Derek Jeter has long been my favorite player, so that should excuse me for having too personal a view of what I saw tonight. But as most writers will tell you, the only way we can work out how we feel is to write it all out.

Being a Derek Jeter fan and a baseball writer has been like a thin piece of land that is the only divide between two oceans. One ocean sweeps toward you with over-ventilated god-making such as what Bob Costas and Jim Kaat did tonight on the broadcast. As I have written several times before, nobody is that saintly or should be exalted that highly over other mortals. Derek Jeter's post season heroics can be explained because he had more opportunities than anyone who ever played the game. He was bound to succeed on some of those occasions.

The other body of water is made up of critics--those who write either in negative reaction to all the hyperbole (which I respect) and those who want to add to their street cred or make a name for themselves by not only tearing down this god-making narrative by statistics but also by coming up with hyperbole of their own as to why Jeter was not that great in the first place.

The latter body of critics are harder to respect and are often just as guilty on the polar opposite extreme as the god-makers. Even the much-respected Buster Olney fell prey to the temptation of blaming the entire Yankee season on Jeter in this past week. Seriously!? Did you watch this team play?

Standing on that thin piece of land, I have written thousands of words basically stating that nobody is as good as Derek Jeter has been exalted as being and at the same time, he has been much greater than the critics would want us to believe.

I pretty much know what I am talking about because I have watched him every time I could in the past twenty years. Since MLB.tv came along, that has been nearly every single game.

There have been plenty of players who were greater than Derek Jeter. He often was the third or fourth best player on his own teams through the years. His greatness and his Hall of Fame career really come from his metronome-like onslaught of playing day after day for most of his nineteen full seasons (I don't count the cup of coffee season and I really shouldn't count 2013) and being productive day after day, week after week and year after year.

Through the hyperbole, Kaat and Costas did come close to the essence of Jeter's career by talking about how Jeter used the same model glove for twenty years and the same model bat. Nearly everything he did was dependable. Two-hundred hits? Sure. A .380 on-base percentage? Sure. A post season matching his in-season stats? Sure. He was always very good year after year after year.

Watching Jeter as much as I have, I understand that Jeter was limited in range at shortstop. It never took a genius to see that. The defensive numbers make sense. If his defensive metrics were baseline at least, he would have been closer to being the best shortstop ever.

But I will swear to this until I am out of breath or these fingers cannot type anymore: During the post season in the glory years and during a no-hitter or something like that, I wanted the opposing batter to hit the ball to Jeter. He would get the out. Yes, that is a fan talking, but there is something to being a fan who wants a ball in a big spot to be hit to that awful-fielding shortstop. He wasn't that awful. Derek Jeter was not going to cough it up in a big spot. That meant something.

As much as Derek Jeter has been bashed--and believe me, it became a flood this year--why is it that his uniform jerseys outsell any others? Why is it that players from every team have been universal in their praise for him? Why is it that so many shortstops and other infielders want to wear Number 2 for their respective teams? It's for much the same reason that my generation wanted to wear Number 7 or Number 24.

You cannot trust the hyperbolic god-making of people like Costas and others. They go way, way over the line in their effusiveness. I get that. But there is something there. There are his teammates that wanted him to succeed so badly tonight. There are a clubhouse full of Boston Red Sox players that were super happy for Jeter according to Pete Abraham.

Trying to find the real Derek Jeter is like sifting through tons of sand to find the gold nuggets. Once you dig through the hyperbole from both sides--through the god-making and those who hang up numbers to puncture his myth--you get to the gold that Derek Jeter was vastly respected by his peers and teammates and that just about everything in his career was as storybook as you could imagine.

But I have to be honest in the end that I was not thinking of any of those things when I was watching his last Yankee Stadium game while cringing at Costas and Kaat. I was watching my favorite player play for the last time in pinstripes. I just wanted him to do okay.

And okay he did and everything was perfect going into the top of the ninth. Others who will probably never wear pinstripes again like Hiroki Kuroda and Ichiro Suzuki had successful games and Derek Jeter had a hand in three of the Yankees' five runs. It was perfect.

Unlike Dan Plesac (apparently), I was not hoping for a blown save so Jeter could get up again. I did not want to see him fail in his final Stadium at bat. Just a couple of nights ago, I watched him make the last out of a game that pretty much ended the season. I know Jeter isn't the hitter he once was. I did not want him to bat again in the game.

And that's why, when David Robertson coughed up the lead, while possibly playing his last game in pinstripes and ruining Kuroda's start and ruining the scenario "I" wanted, I was about as mad as I've ever been watching a baseball game. I was furious. "He ruined it! Oh no, he ruined it!"

I was glowering going into the bottom of the ninth. I had seen Jeter nearly break down at short the half inning before (before the blasts) and I just had no feeling he would do anything but strike out or ground out weakly in the ninth.

But no, the situation turned into the biggest hyperbole creating moment of Derek Jeter's career. Driving in the winning run was so hokey-movie-like that the entire MLB Network would explode in its myth-making histrionics. I instinctively knew that the critics would be blasting Buck Showalter for not walking him.

But in that moment, nothing mattered except that Derek Jeter knocked in the winning run...a walk off...in his last Yankee Stadium at bat. I sat in my chair and wept. The sobs were one part sadness and knowing I would never watch him again in pinstripes and also euphoric that he had ended it in that fashion.

And then my son called from Florida. He wanted to share the moment with me. Jeter has been his favorite player and unlike me, has rooted for him for almost two-thirds of his life. My son's voice was quivering and we shared that moment, father and son, in a way that only baseball can do and for both of us, we were emotional between sadness and elation. That call was probably the icing on the cake for me.

After my son hung up, I stared at the television and half listened to the continuing hyperbole, but I didn't care. All I could think about was that I had just watched something I will never forget and shared a moment with my son that will be a lasting memory for both of us. Take your narratives, all ye who disseminate them.  This was baseball and exhibit 4,543 why it is the greatest sport of them all.

BBA Linkfest - bring a deer generals

Welcome to another chapter of the BBA Linkfest. You may know that I am the current president of the general chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance and one of the things I like to do is feature our chapter's work. We have some new members, which is great.

"General" means that our chapter members do not have a team focus nor feature a specific topic such as fantasy or others. Our chapter members write about everything, which is sometimes harder to gain a foothold for pageviews. But it is who we are. Well, almost all of us except that Carelli guy who writes about the Yankees for Yahoo Sports. Heh.  Here are the links:

I start from the middle alphabetically and work my way around:

Matt Whitener of Cheap.Seats.Please. has a really entertaining rundown of the ten best closers in baseball. Hint: #1 just got a nice contract.

All kidding aside, Chris Carelli of Yahoo still dabbles at his The Baseball Stance site. This entry looks at the questions facing each of the 3o teams.

Justin had some birthday and anniversary celebrations this this past week (congrats!) but is frustrated by the wait of this year's MLB The Show over at this Baseblog site.

For one of our newer sites (welcome!), Off the Bench, Sean Morash looks at what the Reds might do with Homer Bailey.

On another of our newer sites, Payoff Pitch (welcome!), a very thorough examination of the 2014 Tampa Bay Rays is undertaken.

Kenneth Matinale of Radical Baseball has a terrific post as he struggles to place Derek Jeter in context with other post-WWII shortstops.

One of my favorite posts of the week is by David of BaseballRoundTable.com and tells the story of a Spring Training no-hitter started by none other than Pedro Martinez.

When stopping over at High Heat Stats, the problem is not finding a post to choose. Rather, it is finding which gem among Smaug's prizes to pick over the others. Doug has a really neat post on something Alex Cobb did in a game.

At The Baseball Hot Corner, Timmy Kennedy tries to help the Toronto Blue Jays decide on Ubaldo Jimenez or Ervin Santana.

The terrific Justin Miller who writes for three different sites including his own, inside the mlb, has a nice entry on the best recent one-year deals. Any time Andy Pettitte is in there, I'm happy.

The always prolific MLB Reports has a great post by Chuck Booth on the San Francisco Giants and a look at the team's payroll and contracts going forward. Be sure to check out Sully's videos every day too.

Another of our newer sites, Cover Those Bases, looks like a really good one. Especially if this breakdown of the Phillies' rotation is any indication.

We have a second baseball site in Italy! How cool is that? It is especially cool for me since the better half of my genetic makeup is Italian. The site is called Quarta Base and in this post, the author introduces himself to the BBA.

Another of our new sites, Pepper, celebrates the start of Spring Training. Welcome!

Eugene Tierney is not new to us, but he sure is nice to have around. In his 85% Sports post, he talks about Jason Heyward's new deal.

The always interesting Shawn Anderson of the Hall of Very Good has an interesting idea for the BBWAA. He also has a story on a two-star athlete you may know.

Mike Hllywa on Off Base Percentage (one of my favorite blog names) trolled Jose Canseco for a day.

My buddy over at Diamond Hoggers has a great new post on the fine art of baseball heckling and how sometimes it backfires.

Hans Weisse is another of our overseas writers at Dugout 24. This post tells you what he has been up to lately.

Ben's Baseball Bias has a wonderful roundtable discussion of the New York Yankees. Loved it.

The always fun Michael Clair of Old Time Family Baseball had some last minute Valentine's Day cards for you.

For my post of the day choice, Paul Sullivan of Sully Baseball, wrote a tribute to Jim Fregosi. I sure wish I could have met the guy. RIP.

The Sisco Kid of Baseball Sisco Kid has a tribute to Derek Jeter, who just announced that 2014 is his last season.

My great friend, Jonathan Mitchell of MLB Dirt actually thinks that Jason Hammel can help the Cubs. Maybe I like the writer so much because he is even more of an optimist than me!

Our original Italian writer, Mario Salvini has a great Spring Training story on Earl Weaver on his Che Palle! site.

Dan Kirby, a self-professed draft junkie, gives his top 100 draft pick predictions on the ever-prolific Through the Fence Baseball site.

Bryan of Replacement Level Baseball Blog gives us a truly terrific post on the Hall of Fame standard and which current players are on their way. Epic post!

For Baseball Junkies is thinking along Bryan's line and lists the All-Decades Teams from the 1920s to the 2000s. That's a lot of work!

Theo of Hot Corner Harbor bids a fitting adieu to Lance Berkman and Michael Young.

And lastly and leastly, you can read my look at the conservative projections of Jose Fernandez here.

And remember, as you look out at the frozen tundra like that outside my window, it has to be spring somewhere...

The most accurate shortstop arms

When I was a kid, my brother and I made up this game called, "Ground ball to first." We would stand on opposite sides of the street about 70 to 90 feet apart and each half inning of a nine inning game consisted of us taking turns playing shortstop and first base. The first baseman was on "offense" and would throw grounders to the other. An out required a perfect field of the baseball and a perfect throw back to the first baseman. Errors were the only way to score. It was from that game that I have always appreciated the strong, accurate throw from the shortstop position.

I had the idea to go through the list of shortstops in the last fifty or so years who are on Baseball-reference.com's assist leaders. I also took a look at those with the top fielding percentages and zone ratings. Please note that I am not looking for the best fielding shortstops here. I am only looking for the most accurate arms. If you dig down enough for each player, you can find out how many of his total errors were throwing errors and then it is a simple case of dividing the throwing errors by throwing errors plus assists.

I know this is not perfect because some of the throws might have been relay throws and some benefited from year to year by who played first base and that first baseman's scooping ability (or height!). But I would assume all of that stuff evened out over the length of each player's career. I also know that I did not get everyone. I added to my list at least four times and am sure I missed a couple.

But the list became interesting as it is and gives a pretty good snapshot of what shortstop's arm was accurate or not. Here are my numbers from best to worst:

1. Larry Bowa - .0022
2. Dave Concepcion - .0037
3. Mark Belanger - .0041
4. Bill Russell - .0046
5. Bucky Dent - .0048
6. Don Kessinger - .0053
7. Leo Cardenas - .0057
8. Bert Campaneris - .00596
9. Robin Yount - ..00599
10. Bud Harrelson - .0067
11. Roy McMillan - .007105
12. Cal Ripken, Jr. - .007108
13. Omar Vizquel - .00711
14. Chris Speier - .007198
15. Ozzie Smith - .007199
16. Alan Trammell - .0073
17. Garry Templeton - .0075
18. Luis Aparicio - .008638
19. Rey Sanchez - .008647
20. Tony Fernandez - .0090
21. Jimmy Rollins - .0104
22. Ed Brinkman - .0119
23. Ozzie Guillen - .0126
24. Alex Rodriguez - .0134
25. Royce Clayton - .0144
26. Barry Larkin - .0158
27. Miguel Tejada - .0164
28. Edgar Renteria - .0167
29. Derek Jeter - .0178

Larry Bowa was amazingly accurate and tops our list of modern shortstops with the most accurate arm. Eight of his sixteen full seasons at shortstop had zero throwing errors. Zero! And five others included only one throwing error. He made only 15 throwing errors his entire career. Eight of those were in the first two seasons he played. He went from 1974 to 1980 without a single throwing error. Amazing.

Of course, throwing accurately is only part of a shortstop equation. B-R also tracks something called Percentage of fielded balls that turned into outs. Throwing is only a part of that equation. Release and simply catching the ball cleanly also play a part. During all seasons I looked at, 89 or 90% was the league average.

1. 95% - Mark Belanger
2. 93% - Leo Cardinas, Rey Sanchez, Bud Harrelson, Roy McMillan
3. 92% - Larry Bowa, Bert Campaneris, Alan Trammell, Cal Ripken, Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Luis Aparicio, Bucky Dent, Robin Yount
4. 91% - Conception, Templeton, Speier, Jeter, Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel, Brinkman, Guillen
5. 90% - Tejada, Russell, Rollins
6. 89% - Clayton, Renteria, Fernandez
7. 88% - Kessinger

So the old saw would apply that most of these long-time shortstops "made all the plays."

For 2013, the top five in throwing accuracy from shortstop were:

1. Stephen Drew - .0030
2. Jose Iglesias - .0057
3. Asdrubal Cabrera - .0095
4. Jhonny Peralta - .0101
5. Troy Tulowitzki - .0104

Please remember that I am not saying this makes the best shortstop. Good old Asdrubal points that out in this list. But it is interesting to see who has the most accurate arms from the shortstop position. Larry Bowa should be smiling at Stephen Drew.

3000 for post number 3000

This post marks the three-thousandth post of this site. And I rarely write quick hit posts, so you have to figure an average of seven hundred words a post. So a decent estimate is that I have written two million, one hundred thousand words. Many of you have read at least a few hundred thousand of them and I am so appreciative that you stop by and read this stuff. To celebrate this milestone, let's celebrate those players who have reached 3,000 hits for their careers. There are twenty-eight of them. It would be easy enough to just list them. That would be boring. Instead, let's  give the details of each player's milestone hit (Pete Rose and Ty Cobb had another big milestone but we'll save for after the next thousand posts go by). Here we go!

Well, first, a disclaimer. With guys with a lot of hits over 3,000, I had to do some addition and subtraction to find out what year the event happened. I hope I don't get any of them wrong.

Of course we have to start with Pete Rose. If I did my calculations right, he reached hit 3,000 on May 16, 1978 in Montreal. He went three for five in the game and it was his second hit that made the mark. The hit came against Wayne Twitchell who started for the Expos. Rose doubled and scored in the first and singled to left for the milestone hit. The Reds won the game and Tom Seaver got the win. Rose made an error in the game at third base, but nobody is perfect.

Ty Cobb entered 1921 needing 144 hits to reach 3,000. He would reach the milestone in the second game of a double-header on August 19, 1921 against the Boston Red Sox. The game was played in Detroit and Cobb went three for five in the game and five for ten in the double-header. The third hit of the second game reached the milestone. The victim was Red Sox' pitcher, Elmer Myers, who was forced to pitch the entire game despite giving up ten runs on 19 hits and three walks. Like Rose, Cobb was 34 at the time. The double-header exploits lifted his average to .387. He finished the season at .389.

Sort of a weird pattern is going on here. Rose started 1978 needing 44 hits to get to 3,000. Cobb started 1921 needing 144. Hank Aaron started 1970 needing 44 hits to get to 3,000. Like Cobb, he got his milestone hit in the second game of a double-header. And like both Rose and Cobb, Aaron went three for five in the game. Aaron's happened on May 17, 1970. The big hit came in his first at bat against the Reds' Wayne Simpson in the first inning. The hit drove in a run. Unfortunately, the Braves lost both games that day in Cincinnati, the second one went fifteen innings. When Aaron got his hit, Pete Rose was watching out in right field.

A 38 year old Stan Musial entered the 1959 season needing 43 hits to get to 3,000. He was slowing down at this point and it took him until June 23, 1959 to get it done. The Cardinals were in Milwaukee to play the Braves. The hit came in his third at bat. He would go one for four in the game. He hit a single to left off of Carl Willey. Hank Aaron watched the hit from right field.

Tris Speaker entered the 1925 season in his 37th year on earth needing 39 hits to reach 3,000. He was also the manager of the Indians who finished the season in sixth place. He was in his seventh season as the player-manager. He would still finish the season batting .389 with a 1.057 OPS! He reached the 3,000 milestone on May 18, 1925 against the Washington Senators. The Senators were a great team and would end up winning the American League Pennant. The Indians won this one though, 9-6. Speaker went one for three in the game with two walks. He scored a run and drove in one.

Cap Anson finished his career before the turn of the 20th Century. We won't be able to get a game log for this one. As best I can tell, he hit his 3,000th hit sometime during the latter half of 1895. Anson was 43 at the time and still hit .335 playing for the Chicago Colts. He was also the player-manager.

Honus Wagner finished his career in 1917. We have the game logs only for his last two seasons. He reached 3,000 before that in 1914 when he entered that season needing 59 hits to reach the mark. He was 40 years old that season. According to the Sabr Baseball Biography Project:

"On June 9 he got his three-thousandth hit, doubling against Philadelphia's Erskine Mayer to become the first player to achieve that milestone in the twentieth century."

Carl Yastrzemski was 39 years old when the Red Sox played the Yankees in Fenway Park on September 12, 1979. Both teams had excellent records, but by this late in the season, the game was meaningless because both teams were double-digit games behind the front-running Orioles. The Red Sox won the game, 9-2. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Captain Carl came up with two outs and nobody on base. Jim Beattie was on the mound for the Yankees and Carl Yastrzemski hit a single to right for his 3,000th hit. His hometown fans gave him a long and huge ovation and then he left for a pinch runner waving his cap to the crowd on the way to the dugout.

For Paul Molitor's 3,000th hit, we'll again turn to the Sabr Baseball Biography Project for the story:

"On September 16, 1996, at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium, Molitor singled in the first inning, the 2,999th hit of his major-league career. In the fifth inning, he hit a drive to right field off Jose Rosado and ended up on third base to become the first major leaguer to register a triple for his 3,000th hit. “I don’t know much about that young man [Rosado], but I know he did not try to avoid being the one who gave up my 3,000^th hit,” Molitor said. “I know he shook off a couple of signs and threw fastballs—saying, ‘If you’re going to get it, you’re going to get it.’”⁵³ George Brett and Molitor’s friend Robin Yount were among those on hand see him join them in the 3,000 hit club. The milestone hit came three years to the day after Winfield had collected his 3,000th hit, also for the Minnesota Twins, and the two became the first two players from the same hometown to accomplish the feat."

The 1925 Chicago White Sox were managed by Eddie Collins. He was also their regular second baseman. His double-play partner at short was Ike Davis. Heh. And he hit .346 that season at the age of 38! Collins started that season needing 48 hits to reach the 3,000 hit mark. He reached the milestone on June 2, 1925 in Detroit in a wild game against the Tigers. It was a game the Tigers would win, 16-15 and Collins went three for five in a losing effort. The second hit was the milestone hit.

Derek Jeter? Well, we all know that story. If by chance you don't, you can read about it here.

On July 18, 1970, a 39 year old Willie Mays played in a game against the Montreal Expos at Candlestick Park. He needed two hits to get to the 3,000 milestone. He went two for three to get the job done. The hit came in the sixth inning off of Bill Dillman and of course, it drove in a run.

  Eddie Murray was the Designated Hitter on July 30, 1995. He batted sixth in the lineup. Albert Belle was in front of him and Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez were behind him. Woof. That is a potent lineup. The Indians were rocking with a 41-17 record and easily beat the Twins in this game, 4-1. In the top of the sixth, Murray hit a single to right off of Mike Trombley to record hit number 3,000.

It is a real shame that Nap Lajoie finished his career on some of the worst teams ever. The 1914 Cleveland Naps were one of them. They went 51-102. LaJoie was 39 that season and was on his way out as a player. He would finish his career with two seasons in Philadelphia. Lajoie had 108 hits in 1914. His very last hit that season was his 3,000th.

Cal Ripkin Jr. was 39 years old in 2000 in the next to last year of his career. He started the 1970 season needing only nine hits to reach 3,000. Before the start of the game on April 15, 1970 against the Twins in the Hubert H. Humphrey Dome, he had only managed six and was batting .179. With 2,997 hits, Ripken would go three for five to reach the milestone. It was his third hit, a line drive single to center off of Hector Carrasco that got the job done.

On September 30, 1992, the Royals and the Angels were just playing out what was a bad year for both teams. George Brett, with the season winding down, still needed four more hits to reach 3,000. Unfortunately, the game was played in California and away from his adoring KC fans. Brett roped a double to left in the first and scored. He hit a single through the hole between first and second in the third. He hit a line drive single to center in the fifth. Then in the top of the eighth facing a long-forgotten pitcher by the name of Tim Forugno, Brett hit a line drive that the second baseman could not handle for his fourth hit. It was vintage Brett with three line drives to get to 3,000. Comically, one batter later, Brett was picked off first. That has to be the only time that has ever happened! He reached on an error in his last at bat of the game, so he reached base all five times he came to the plate.

In 1942, Hall of Fame player, Paul Waner, was playing for an awful Boston Braves team managed by Casey Stengel. He was definitely on the downside of his career and only hit .258 that season. On June 19, 1942 at home in another loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Waner went one for five. But that one hit was his 3,000th hit. You can see an image of the hit here.

Robin Yount got his 3,000th hit on September 9, 1992. Like Waner, his team lost at home and like Waner, Yount went one for five. But that one hit put him at 3,000. It was a line drive to right-center off of Jose Mesa.

Tony Gwynn got his 3,000th hit in the first inning of a game where he eventually went four for five. The hit came off of starter, Dan Smith, who could not even pitch out of the first inning. The hit was a line drive to right-center.

Dave Winfield was 41 years old in 1993 when he played for the Minnesota Twins. The Twins were a bad club in 1993 but Winfield has his last decent season that year. On September 16, 1993, The Twins were down by two runs and had to face closer, Dennis Eckersley. After a Kirby Puckett lead off triple and a strikeout, Dave Winfield hit a single through the hole between third and short. Puckett scored. Winfield later scored the tying run to send the game into extra innings in a game the Twins eventually won. That perhaps might be one of the highest WPA scores we've seen on these milestone hits.

Like Winfield, Craig Biggio was 41 when he reached 3,000 hits. Unlike Winfield, it was Biggio's last season. Like Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit game, Biggio ended up with five hits in the game. The third one was the special one. After a ground out in the first inning, Biggio could not be retired the rest of the night as he went five for six. His single in the seventh off of Aaron Cook was his third hit of the game and the milestone. The hit also tied the game up in a game the Astros won in extra innings. Another high WPA milestone. The hit came at home for his home fans.

Rickey Henderson walked so many times that we'll have to forgive him that it took 23 seasons before he finally reached the magic 3,000 hit number. It happened on October 7, 2001. He was playing for the Padres at Colorado and it was the last game of the season. Henderson swung at John Thompson's first pitch and blooped a double to the right field line. He later scored the first run of the game. Henderson then took the rest of the day off.

Like Biggio, Rod Carew's 3,000th hit came in his last season in 1985. It happened on August 4 of that season in a win against his old team, the Twins. Carew only went one for five in that game. His one hit...the big hit...came as a single against Frank Viola in the bottom of the third inning. Carew had to share the spotlight that day as it was also the day that Tom Seaver won his 300th game.

Lou Brock also reached the 3,000 hit club in his last season in the big leagues. Brock's hit came against the same Chicago Cubs that traded him away to the Cardinals. Brock's milestone came in a win for the hometown fans.

Rafael Palmeiro recorded his 3,000th hit on July 15, 2005 in Seattle with a double against Joel Pineiro. I'm pretty sure that is the only 3,000th hit batter-pitcher combo that rhymes.

Wade Boggs was one of the best hitters I've ever watched in my lifetime. It is only fitting that he hit his milestone hit a week before Tony Gwynn. The two are often compared, but Gwynn was nowhere near as good a hitter as Boggs. Most know that Wade Boggs was the first player ever to have hit a home run for his 3,000th hit. The video can be found here.

Al Kaline finished his career with 3,007 hits. So it is pretty easy to figure out which one was his 3,000th. Only one other is easier. The game was September 24, 1974 in a game the Tigers lost to the Orioles in Memorial Stadium. Kaline had two hits in the game, but it was his first one, a lead off double in the top of the fourth against Dave McNally that was the milestone hit.

And finally, it just seems kind of right that Roberto Clemente finishes our list. His very last hit in the majors was his 3,000. It wasn't that he did not have more hits in him. It was just that he never got the chance as he was killed in a plane crash attempting a humanitarian airlift. His last hit was recorded on September 30, 1972 in a game against the New York Mets. The game was in Pittsburgh so his fans got to see his last hurrah. His last hit was a double off of Jon Matlack and he would later score his last run that same inning. To keep this record straight, it should be noted that those really weren't his last hits and runs scored. Clemente had four hits in the NLCS against the Reds.

There you go. There is my opus of a 3,000th post. It just might be my longest ever. Thank you again for giving me a reason to write for all these years.

Big Leagues Monthly - Issue 2

The second issue (August) of Big Leagues Monthly, a new e-magazine, is out and as a senior writer for the new work, your favorite Fan was asked to write a piece on Derek Jeter. That might be one reason to go read. But the truth is that the magazine is chock full of great baseball writing from the likes of Stevo-sama, Lew Freedman, Lincoln Hamilton, Jared Thatcher, Nathaniel Stoltz, Blaine Blontz, Mike Rosenbaum and many others. There are 64 pages chock full of great baseball writing all in one spot for you to read. Big Leagues Monthly! Check it out. And here is a teaser from the Jeter story. Read more starting on Page 27:

"Somewhere between the run of four championships in the first five full seasons of Derek Jeter’s career, the player became a demigod. His play, as recorded by the main stream media, became larger than life. The hyperbole of his heroics elevated him above simply being a terrific player who will someday be enshrined in Cooperstown. Instead, he became “Captain Clutch” and “Mr. November”. All of the hype unfortunately set Jeter up for potshots of the analytic world and took the focus off of what has genuinely been a remarkable career. The real truth of the kind of player Jeter has been lies between the hype and the history."