The Angels made 22-year-old James Wood the first player to get four intentional walks in one game since Barry Bonds in 2004. You can also argue about the plan, as Wood proposed at least one runner with four-scoring hits, and the only runner did it in a weird, ending doubles match. If the angels aim to avoid the big picture, then they nail it. If their goal is to win the game, then, Hope Springs Eternal; Nationals won 7-4 in 11 innings. The obvious point is that 6’7″ wood is a terrible talent, but it is obvious that it is inconsistent with current baseball thinking or actually any baseball thinking footsteps.
Wood’s season was incredible, launching 22 home runs 14.5% of the time, hitting .283. His 156 WRC+ makes him the eighth batsman of the season and a true contender for the National League MVP. However, it is impossible to argue that he is in a bond. That year, Bondes received four different times. He has been in a row for the fifth consecutive 45-HOMER season and his 13th consecutive 30th driving sports. He has a single-season home run record and has achieved success in history. He proposed 233 WRC+ on the way to the 2004 Ridiculous 11.9 War. He is in his own league. Furthermore, the game has been improving in its mindset since 2004 and it has now been widely understood that intentional walking is rarely a wise move.
Stathead uses the Retrosheet data behind before intentional walking is formal statistics, listing 12 instances where the player has at least 4 intentional walks in the game. John Schwartz of 1980 Journal of Baseball Research You can teach you more about the history of IBB, including the argument that Mel Ott won five intentional passes in the 5 October 1929 doubles (although Retrosheet only listed three of Ott’s five walks that day as intentional). So it’s an extremely rare feat and happens once a third of the time in baseball history, which happened specifically in 2004.
As Alexandra Whitley said Baseball prospectusGiven today’s game state, Wood’s achievement is even more noteworthy: “Because of fewer intentional walks in this era, fewer long extra renewal matches, no ideal pitcher, his pitcher takes the opponent’s position, I’m going to deal with your position (I’m the four cards I look at him), and all his cards are looking at him, and he doesn’t look at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he looks at him, and he’s not going to be a decision by chance. All this is saying that this is everywhere. Judge Aaron (Aaron) Judge never got four free passes in a game, nor did Mike Trout (although both players got three at one time).
Breaking out of part of me is the ideal place for opponents to target. Not only is the wood not hitting the ball in front of a weak pitcher, but the player hitting behind him is actually pretty good! Angels are very careful against great batsmen, and runners are in the scoring position, but they also put another runner on the base before they have to face a decent batsmen. The intentional walk took Luis García Jr. García a little frustrated for the year, but he still entered the game with 101 WRC+. Additionally, his winning streak, running 137 WRC+ in the first 12 games, he led the series with a three-hit match. Rosario had a WRC+ of 109. Neither of these players had a terrible number, but they weren’t selling either. Wood entered the game with 156 WRC+, which was great. It was above the combined score of García and Rosario. However, the gap was still lower than the gap between bonds and wood – not to mention he.
I was curious how this gap had piled up historically, so I collected data from four other passable games (and of course Andre Dawson’s 1990’s Type Five IBB game). I watched each player’s WRC+ enter the game and then subtracted the WRC+ of the next hitter in the lineup. Before we get to the numbers, there are a few explanatory notes: we don’t have game logs in some earlier seasons, so in these cases I had to use full-season statistics for each player, not the statistics they entered into the game. Next, in most cases, the second lineup position is shared by multiple players, so I calculated more than one average WRC+ for them. For example, García has a PA and Rosario has three on Sunday, so I calculated their merge WRC+: (101 x 0.25) + (109 x 0.75) = 107.
There are four games for intentional walks
Source: stathead
Dawson intended five times on May 22, 1990.
This chart offers a lot of fun stuff. Only four of them did not participate in the additional situation, and only three games saw the team lose by walking. There are bonds that receive four-channel treatment twice in a 10-day period. In the best season of his entire career, JT Snow has runs of 155 WRC+, but is still 81 points behind. A few years ago, Edgardo Alfonzo took out 150 WRC+ a few years ago, which looked like something cats dragged in. The last affirmation, not least, is that there is a nicknamed David “Soup” Campbell.
Back to our initial question, Woody’s 49-point advantage over García and Rosario is indeed one of the smallest gaps in history for the small sample of the four ibb games. Its closest neighbor is the 64-point gap in Templeton’s game, when the Buccaneers just took him to a position facing the pitcher. Most of the gap is above 95 points. Four bond games scored an average of 206 points. Two hundred and six! Bonds are better than players who hit the ball immediately after him. The Angels’ decision to stroll through the wood is not unprecedented, but it’s unusual even in the context of four-innings. It’s really hard to get around your head.
Before I leave you, let’s take a look at some other fun games on the list. Maris is ranked second in the game, and it also features Angels. A year ahead of the single-season home run record for Breaking Babe Ruth, Maris has a nice season but not incredible. It seems that the angel is not necessarily particularly afraid of him. Not only did they intend to take him four times, they also issued three passes to his teammates. This is one of at least seven of the eight games. The Pacers lost every game except one.
On August 25, 2021, the Dodgers intend to step on Paders eight times in 16 innings. All eight of their intentional walks appear during the extra event. They were a reaction to the zombie runners, but also pulled a double switch to Padres, transferring their pitchers to fifth place in the lineup. Five of the eight IBBs were bypassing the San Diego lineup center to face pitchers — three of which were cleaning up batsman Jake Cronenworth, who approached our roster — and the strategy worked. The Dodgers won 5-3.
By far, the strangest game on the roster belongs to the match between the Reds and the Cubs on September 7, 1951. That day, worried that Slugger Ted Kluszewski escaped from the second inning, dropped out in the fourth inning, got a home run in the sixth inning, and escaped in the seventh inning. But the game went on 18 innings. Kluszewski scored as a runner in the next four games. Every time the bears put him on, and every time they avoided driving Hank Edwards out. However, it’s not always that easy. At the bottom of the 15th, Edwards hit what was supposed to be a walking single, but the ball hit the clumsy Kluszewski to finish the game. Krusfski finally left the base empty in the 18th inning, and the cub finally threw himself at him again. He hit the lead singles from Dutch Leonard, who then walked away with Edwards. After another singles and fielder selection, Dixie Howell scored in the left and right sacs, ending the game four hours and eight minutes later. (As a side note, this absolute classic doesn’t have a SABR game story yet, so if you’re a member, you should write it voluntarily!)
But, despite it being a crazy and crazy game, the strangest thing is that Edwards was much better than Cruzwisky that season and career. Kluszewski will continue to be one of the great power hitters of the game, launching 187 home runs over the next five years and running on 144 WRC+, but 1951 was just his fifth season (including 1947’s nine-game coffee), and in those five seasons he raised the strike line above. Meanwhile, Edwards entered the six-year game, during which he played .286 and ran 124 WRC+. He played .364 in 1950! In 1951, Kluszewski hit .259 with 13 home runs and beat 81 WRC+. It was by far the worst season of his entire career, he lifted the -0.2 War. Meanwhile, Edwards hit .297 with a 14.9% walk rate, which earned him 116 WRC+. He is not a power batsman, but his benchmark percentage is 65 points higher than Kluszewski. Do you rather throw a slugger than face the guys at the base even if the base hit rate equals the loss, even before you consider the fact that the batting average is on the base, you are not willing to hit the loss. It’s even weirder than the four-time walk James Wood.
