Shohei Ohtani Joins the 50/50 Club (and Has One of the Best Single-Game Performances in Baseball History)

Shoehei Ohtani makes a habit of doing things that none of us have ever seen before.

During today's game, he became the inaugural member of the "50/50 Club", as he now has both 50+ home runs and 50+ stolen bases this year. No member of the 50-home-run club had ever stolen even as many as 30 bases before.

He also joined the club in spectular fashion today with a game for the ages. Ohtani's performance today was one of the best single-game performances in Major League Baseball history. He went 6 for 6 with 2 doubles, 3 home runs, 10 runs batted in, 4 runs, and 2 stolen bases. There have been only 16 games in Baseball history in which a player has 10+ RBIs; this is the first one by a Dodger. This is the first time in Baseball history that a player has had 3+ home runs and 2+ stolen bases in the same game.

Since the RBI became an official statistic in 1920, Shohei Ohtani is now the only player in Baseball history who has a game — any game, so they each can occur in different games — in their career with 10+ RBIs, 6+ hits, 5+ extra-base hits, 3+ HRs, and 2+ SBs. Any game. Ohtani did them all in the same game. Amazing!

I have never seen any game like this in my life before.

(P.S. The Dodgers clinched a playoff berth with their victory today.)

Pitching is for the Young

This one completely snuck up on me...

Anyway, as Rob Neyer reports, the Tampa Bay Rays about about to break a seriously impressive record: most consecutive games started by pitchers under the age of 30. The record is currently held by the 1913--1917 Washington Senators.

Wow!

Ichiro gets 10th Straight 200-Hit Season

Let me follow up Zifnab's lead by following up a negative post with a positive one (at least if you care about baseball).

Ichiro Suzuki extended his own record last night, recording his 200th hit this season in what has become his 10th consecutive year with at least 200 hits. That extends his own record for most consecutive 200-hit seasons. Ichiro's 10 career 200-hit seasons is the American League record; Ichiro is tied with Pete Rose for the Major League record. Wow!

Some more baseball records are possibly coming up. In particular, I am interested in whether Cliff Lee can break the Major League record for best single-season strikeout/walk ratio.

Ig Nobel performance in Oxford (March 6th)

A quick note for the locals...

There is going to be an Ig Nobel UK tour in March, which includes a a performance in Oxford on Thursday March 6th. It should be extremely good!


And in honor of today, I think it's worth pointing out the winner if the
2000 Ig Nobel prize in chemistry:


CHEMISTRY
Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the
University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California
(San Diego), for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be
indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
[REFERENCE: "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic
love," Marazziti D, Akiskal HS, Rossi A, Cassano GB, Psychological Medicine,
1999 May;29(3):741-5.]


I hope I eventually get one of these, although my original plan to do it by
levitating a sumo wrestler has already been taken. :(

Roger Clemens wins 350th career game

Roger Clemens won his 350th career game today. This ranks 8th all time. Greg Maddux's 340 wins rank him 10th.

Here is a good exercise that will give you an excellent idea of just how special these two players have been. Take a look at the years in which all the other members of the top 10 played:

1. Cy Young: 1890-1911
2. Walter Johnson: 1907-1927
3. Pete Alexander: 1911-1930
4. Christy Mathewson: 1900-1916
5. Pud Galvin: 1875-1892
6. Warren Spahn: 1942-1965
7. Kid Nichols: 1890-1906
8. Clemens
9. Tim Keefe: 1880-1893
10. Maddux


Let's think about this for a second. Maddux and Clemens are the only guys on this list who are still alive. Aside from them, the most recent player on the list (Warren Spahn) retired in 1965. The second most recent (Pete Alexander) retired in 1930.

In sum, wow! This isn't like the homerun leaders in which many of the guys are recent (which will be increasingly true for the next several years). We haven't seen anything like this in a very, very long time.

Dunwich Horror expansion to Arkham Horror

Apparently, this is already out. It's described here.

The aspect of the expansion that most intrigues me are the Injury and Madness decks from which one can draw instead of losing half one's items should distaster befall one's health or sanity.

Presumably, if we play with this expansion, we'll never again have to worry about a game of Munchkin lasting almost as long as an Arkham Horror game (as we observed last night). A game of Munchkin approach 2 hours (it probably clocked at 1:40-1:45 or so) was a truly impressive feat---especially the 45 minute end-game scenario (during which I kept promising that we'd be done soon, because I really thought we would be!) in which 3 of us had reached level 8 or higher and people were screwing each other [over] left and right in very interesting ways (or, as we say in the 'hood, "from all angles")!

On the other hand, the Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion card deck doesn't seem that appealing. Some of the cards in it are also purported to be extremely deadly (including---so I'm told---one or more entailing one-on-one battles with Elder Gods).