Though the All-Star break is typically used to distinguish the first and second halves of the baseball season, most teams play their 81st game of the 162-game schedule sometime in late June. As we approach the actual halfway point of 2013, most of the early-season statistical oddities have abated, leaving only a few players on or near record-breaking paces. And long gone are the lusty days of the late 1990s and early 2000s when players seemed to threaten major records every year. Any records shattered in 2013 will be of the more subtle sort, if not necessarily less impressive.
Four records in particular are endangered — two lofty, two lousy.
Most doubles in a season
Record-holder: Earl Webb, 67 doubles, 1931.
Record-holder: Earl Webb, 67 doubles, 1931.
The threat: Manny Machado, Baltimore Orioles
Machado is 20 years old and already looks like one of the best players in the league. Through his team’s first 80 games, he already has 36 doubles, putting him on pace to shatter Webb’s 82-year-old record with 73 doubles. No one has hit 60 or more doubles in a season since 1936. Machado’s biggest hurdle in the chase could be his own ability, though, as players his age tend to improve rapidly. At some point, as he grows stronger, some of those doubles will become home runs, so Machado falling short of Webb’s mark might wind up a very good problem for the Orioles.
Best strikeout to walk ratio by a starting pitcher
Record-holder: Bret Saberhagen, 11:1, 1994
Record-holder: Bret Saberhagen, 11:1, 1994
The threat: Adam Wainwright, St. Louis Cardinals
Rate stats like this one don’t make for very exciting record chases in the season’s last month. But if Wainwright can maintain the remarkable control over his first 16 starts of the season, he should be in the hunt for the Cy Young Award. The 6’7″ righty has as many wins this season — 10 — as walks he has allowed, something no one has done since Saberhagen’s strike shortened but record-setting 1994 season. With a 10.6 strikeout to walk ratio, Wainwright could get to Saberhagen’s pace with four more strikeouts without a walk. But keeping it up through the second half of the season will be a challenge.
Most strikeouts in a season
Record-holder: Mark Reynolds, 223, 2009.
Record-holder: Mark Reynolds, 223, 2009.
The threat: Chris Carter, Houston Astros
As the baseball world has learned more about what contributes and detracts from run-scoring, strikeouts seem to have lost some of their stigma for hitters while paradoxically gaining prestige among pitchers. The byproduct is that all five of baseball’s 200-plus strikeout seasons have come in the last five years — three of them from Reynolds. Carter has 108 through his team’s first 79 games, putting him on pace for 221 strikeouts. He’s one of the Astros’ best hitters despite all the whiffs, so he should get plenty of opportunities to challenge Reynolds.
Most batters hit by pitch in a season
Record-holder (post-1903): Jack Warhop, 24 HBP, 1909.
Record-holder (post-1903): Jack Warhop, 24 HBP, 1909.
The threat: Doug Fister, Detroit Tigers
This record’s difficult to define, as 19th century hurlers plunked batters at a downright ungentlemanly rate. Someone named Phil Knell actually hit 54 batters in 1891, though he did through 462 innings. Fister, a thin and cerebral righty with great control, clearly doesn’t fear throwing inside. With 12 batters hit through his team’s first 77 games, he’s on pace for 26 hit by pitches in 2013. Kerry Wood hit 21 batters in 2003. The last guy with more than 21 was another Tiger — Howard Ehmke, who hit 23 batters in 1922.
Other notable half-season accomplishments: Rockies starter Jhoulys Chacin — who pitches for the Colorado Rockies — has allowed only 0.206 home runs per nine innings, best in the Majors. If he could somehow maintain that, it’d be the best by any starter since Greg Maddux’s incredible 1994 season, and the best in Rockies’ franchise history. The Rockies’ pitching staff has been third best in the Majors at suppressing home runs, so maybe they’re figuring something out.
The Orioles’ Chris Davis is on pace for 107 extra-base hits, which would tie him for third most in a season all-time. There have only been 15 seasons of 100-plus extra-base hits in baseball history. Four guys did it in 2001, with Barry Bonds notching 107.
Both Mets starter Matt Harvey and the Mariners’ Hisashi Iwakuma have WHIPs (walks plus hits per innings pitched) below 0.9. That rate has only been bettered five times since pitcher’s mounds were lowered in 1969, and not since Randy Johnson did it in 2004.
Reds outfielder Shin-Shoo Choo is on pace to be hit by pitches 41 times. That’d place him well shy of Ron Hunt’s stunning modern-era record of 50 HBPs in 1971, but it would make Choo only the second player since 1900 to be plunked more than 40 times.
Phillies starter Cole Hamels is on pace for 22 losses. It won’t happen, but if it did, he’d be only the second 20-game loser since 1980. And Hamels would presumably look very sad.
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