Multiply by Three: Fun With Numbers

When I was growing up in Half Moon Bay, California, I went to school
"over the hill" in nearby Belmont (for elementary and junior high)
and Atherton (for high school). As a result, I didn’t really know anyone in
Half Moon Bay (my friends lived close to school), and spent a lot of time on
what could only be called solitary baseball activities.

This included stuff like working on my footwork in my driveway while
throwing brightly colored rubber balls against our garage door and fielding
the resulting ground balls; throwing a bucket of baseballs at a target a
couple of hundred feet away; and taking my motorcycle (a Kawasaki KE 175)
down the street to a gigantic field by the beach, where I would hit a couple
of buckets of balls off a homemade tee. (The field across the street and the
field down by the beach are now covered with million dollar homes–ironic
because we moved to Half Moon Bay because it was the only place in the bay
area where my Mom could find a house for only $75,000 back in the late
1970s.)

It was about this time that I first got interested in the performance-metric
side of baseball. I didn’t use those terms, but I did religiously grab the
green section of the San Francisco Chronicle every morning to
hungrily check the box scores.

About every other day, the Chron would run the A’s and Giants stats for the
season to date. At the time, the coverage was extremely light compared to
the flood of information we get today. Basically, we got batting average,
hits, at-bats, home runs, and RBI for each player, with a list at the bottom
for notable performances in stolen bases, runs, or doubles. For pitchers, it
was pretty much wins, losses, saves, IP, and ERA. There was also
occasionally an AP feed of the Top 5-8 guys in each category for each
league. I remember Elias Sosa freakishly being near the top of the
league in wins for the A’s in 1978 or 1979, and hoping he’d vulture enough
wins to somehow win 20 and lead the league. It didn’t happen. I think he was
8-0 fairly early in the season, and ended up something like 8-3.

Anyway, one of things I really liked to do (being the loser I was) was to
figure out what kind of stats players would have at the end of the season.
Someone has 13 home runs through 40 games? Cool! They’re on pace to hit
52.65 HR!

Naturally, when you do this kind of diseased thing, you invent things to
look forward to within that particular realm. There are a couple of points
in the season when figuring out what pace people are on was really easy–81
games, when you simply multiply by two, and 54 games, when you multiply by
three. Seeing as that I haven’t really matured very much, I still look
forward to those points in the seasons. And yes, chicks still dig this
behavior.

So, for grins, let’s take a look at some stats for the season thus far,
multiplied by three.

• Ichiro Suzuki: 267 H, 750 AB, 45 2B, 15 3B, 21 BB
• Ryan Klesko: 39 SB, 6 CS
• Russell Branyan: 36 HR, 183 K
• Devon White: 9 Grand Slams
• Barry Bonds: 87 HR, 33 Singles, 147 BB
• Marvin Benard: 105 H, 528 AB
• Ben Grieve: 9 HR, 153 K
• Roberto Hernandez: 66 G, 42 ER
• Johnny Damon: 147 H, 678 AB, 36 SB
• Shea Hillenbrand: 612 AB, 6 BB
• Cristian Guzman: 24 3B
• J.D. Drew: 57 HR, 93 BB
• Jose Guillen: 21 Baserunner Kills in 81 Games
• Jason Giambi: 156 BB
• Chicago White Sox: 420 BB
• Doug Glanville: 30 HR
• Mike Sweeney: 81 2B
• Rico Brogna: 3 HR
• Roberto Petagine: 0 HR
• Luis Gonzalez: 63 HR
• Tim Salmon: 108 H, 516 AB
• Glenallen Hill: 0 BB, 60 K
• Alex Rodriguez: 417 TB, 93 BB
• Sammy Sosa: 129 BB
• Mike Hampton: 6 HR
• Alex Cora & Tom Goodwin: 6 HR
• Derek Bell: 57 TB
• John Vander Wal: 276 TB, in his role
• Michael Tucker: 12 Bat Flips that should get him drilled
• Lance Berkman: 42 HR, 143 BB
• Paul Wilson: 173 IP, 162 ER
• Pedro Martinez: 243 IP, 39 ER
• Kerry Wood: 199 IP, 306 K
• Tom Glavine: 207 IP, 105 BB
• Danny Patterson: 80 IP, 9 ER
• Brad Radke: 266 IP, 24 BB
• Randy Johnson Curt Schilling: 669 K
• Torii Hunter: 3.67 Range Factor (Damn!)
• Omar Daal: 18 W, 3 L
• Anthony Young: 0 W, 0 L
• Paul Quantrill: 87 G, 12 ER
• Mike Trombley: 105 IP
• Mike Hampton: 232 IP, 69 ER
• Dan Miceli: 0 W, 15 L, 0 S, 9 BS
• Texas Rotation: 961 IP, 711 ER (6.66 ERA)

Some pretty interesting stuff. Don’t think any of it will actually happen,
except possibly Torii Hunter completing the best defensive year ever and
Russ Branyan striking out 183 times, but still pretty cool nonetheless.

Sorry, ladies…I’m spoken for.

Gary Huckabay is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Contact him by

clicking here.