The Odd Stat of the Week

Issue: You realize you don't do this column on a "weekly" basis, right?

Short Answer: Sue me.

Reasoning: I have been busy, damn!  Seriously though, "The Odd Stat of the Week" sounds better than "The Odd Stat of the Time Between Now and the Last Time I Did an Odd Stat Column," doesn't it?  Plus, in the days when I was writing more, I did write the column once a week.  Almost.  Now that we have that taken care of, let's move on to some crazy stats.  It is now the beginning of August, meaning there are only two sports going on that I care about (baseball and golf, for those of you that pay zero attention), and golf doesn't usually lend itself to "odd" stats, per se, so that leaves me with the greatest game of all, and one in which stats may very well have been invented for (man, that was a long sentence).  To prove how odd baseball is sometimes, I have two crazy stats for you, both of which happened in the last two days.

The first stat deals with the team that I (and almost everyone else) hates with a passion: the New York Yankees.  The Yankees, just yesterday, finished up a four-game sweep of the Chicago White Sox.  No, that is not the odd stat.  In fact, that is not odd at all, as the White Sox stink.  What is odd is the fact that the Yankees, in a four-game sweep, walked exactly ZERO hitters.  Sounds odd.  Sounds crazy.  I wish the Reds could win one game without walking a hitter, but I digress.  One may not understand how odd and crazy this stat actually is.  The feat the Yankees just accomplished had happened only twice in modern (since 1900) Major League history.  What makes this stat even more odd is that the Yankees are only the second team to accomplish the feat, as the Boston Red Sox are responsible for the only two prior occurrences.  The last time a four-game sweep occurred with zero walks by the winning team, was in 1968, when the Red Sox swept the Chicago White Sox (weird in and of itself).  Prior to that, the Red Sox swept the Washington Senators in a four-game set in June/July of 1905.  Wow.

Part II of the Odd Stat of the Week involves a player to whom I have a connection.  Dan Uggla was drafted in 2001 by the Arizona Diamondbacks, exactly four rounds before I was drafted by the Oakland A's.  In 2001 he played in the Northwest League with the Yakima Bears at the same time I was playing for the Vancouver Canadians of the Northwest League.  Uggla began the his 2002 season with South Bend of the Midwest League, but was eventually moved to Lancaster of the California League, at the same time I was playing for Visalia of, you guessed it, the California League.  My connection with Uggla doesn't end there, as after my playing career ended, I dated his ex-girlfriend for a couple of months.  And that is all I have to say about that.  Uggla has been a good, not great, Major Leaguer.  He has a career .257 average, so what, you may ask, does he do that earned him a 5-year, $62 million contract from the Atlanta Braves?  Well, he hits more home runs than any other second baseman in the league, hands down.  He has hit 177 home runs in almost 6 seasons, which means he AVERAGES 30 home runs a year, at a position where home runs are usually the exception, not the norm.  This year has been a struggle (other than the home run category - he has 23) for Uggla.  Through 86 games this year, he was hitting a paltry .173.  Not what you're looking for out of your $62 million man.  However, since that 86th game, Uggla really started to make history - he has gotten at least one hit in his last 25 games.  Now, a 25-game hit streak is not all that odd (30+ seems to be the benchmark).  But, a player having a 25-game hit streak in a season as bad as Uggla is having now, is as historical as it gets.  When Uggla went 2-for-4 on Wednesday (8/3), he raised his season average to .215 (that is not a typo).  That batting average is 50 POINTS LOWER than any other average, after the players 25th game of a hitting streak, in the history of baseball.  Let's let that one soak in for a second...or two...the previous low*?  Hobe Ferris of the St. Louis Browns was hitting .265 after his 25th game of his hitting streak...in 1908.  That's right, Uggla just broke a record that stood for 103 years, was set in the dead-ball era (before 1920), and he broke it by a landslide.  The moral to the story?  Bad hitters don't usually put together long hitting streaks.  However, I'm sure the $62 million Uggla will make over the next 5 years will take away some of the sting.  Call me crazy.

*The previous low in the live-ball era (beginning in 1920) was Willy Taveras in 2006.  He was hitting .278 after his 25th game of a hitting streak.