#gene tenace

[coolthingsguyslike]

[gummyartstradingcards]

[i-used-to-collect-stuff]

Penn Emblem baseball patches from 1979

[baseballthing]

Gene Tenace and Max Bishop Walk into a List

Gene Tenace homered twice in the first game I ever attended and has been a hero of mine ever since. I became fascinated with Max Bishop some years ago and ended up writing a chapter about him in Best of Baseball Prospectus: 1996-2011, Vol. 1.

Tenace and Bishop both drew a lot of walks. I've long appreciated a batter's ability to take a walk. One of the first baseball articles I ever wrote professed profound admiration for Dave Magadan's skill in that area.

Anyway, I was flipping through The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, as I will do, and noticed a fun fact in the writeup for Bishop (ranked the 43rd best second baseman of all time, according to James):

Maxie had 1,153 walks in his career and 1,216 hits—the highest ratio of walks to hits of any player in baseball history (playing 1,000 or more games). The top ten: Bishop, Gene Tenace, Eddie Yost, Eddie Stanky, Mickey Tettleton, Roy Cullenbine, Ferris Fain, Joe Ferguson, Eddie Joost, and Mark McGwire (through 1999).

This book was written several years ago, so I decided to update the list:

Max Bishop: 5789 PA, .951 BB/H

Gene Tenace: 5527 PA, .928 BB/H

Barry Bonds: 12606 PA, .872 BB/H

Eddie Yost: 9175 PA, .866 BB/H

Eddie Stanky: 5436 PA, .863 BB/H

Mickey Tettleton: 5745 PA, .838 BB/H

Mark McGwire: 7660 PA, .810 BB/H

Adam Dunn: 8328 PA, .807 BB/H

Roy Cullenbine: 4786 PA, .796 BB/H

Ferris Fain: 4904 PA, .794 BB/H

Bonds and Dunn replace Ferguson (another favorite of mine growing up) and Joost, who slip to 11th and 12th, respectively. Some of these guys were helped by their low batting averages; Ted Williams merits an honorable mention for ranking 13th on the list despite hitting .344 (Bonds is second highest at .298).

Bonus fun fact: If you ignore the spirit of James' list and follow the letter, Mariano Rivera (1 BB, 0 H), Jose Mesa (1 BB, 0 H), and Lee Smith (3 BB, 3 H) jump to the top.

As always, all of this is made trivially easy by Baseball-Reference's Play Index.

[baseballstaches]

I am on vacation through 10-JUL, so I'm re-running my tribute to the 1972 Oakland A's from back in 2010.

Gene Tenace: wiki | baseball reference

Mike Hegan: wiki | baseball reference

[athleticstrivia]

27 April 2013

Who are the three World Series MVP winners for the A's from '72-'74?

Gene Tenace, 1972

Reggie Jackson, 1973

Rollie Fingers, 1974

[oaklandtribunearchives]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oakland/ci_21709380/trip-time-celebrating-swingin-40th-world-series-anniversary

Now online Trip in Time: Those Swingin' A's, an extensive retrospective of the 1972 World Series.