Fun With Numbers And Opening Day
In case you were living under a rock, yesterday was Opening Day in Major League Baseball. It was the first time since 1968 that all major league teams were schedule to play on the same day, but the weather fucked that up, causing the Cincinnati Reds vs Washington Nationals and Detroit Tigers vs Pittsburgh Pirates games to be postponed until today.
Now that Opening Day is behind us (for the most part), there are real life, tangible stats, that matter, next to guys’ names. So let’s have a little fun with those numbers.
Just a fun little side note before we get going, Matt Davidson of the Chicago White Sox became just the 4th player in Major League history to hit 3 homeruns on Opening Day. He joins Dmitri Young in 2005, Tuffy Rhodes in 1994 and George Bell in 1988. Young hit 21 homeruns in his 2005 season, while Bell launched 24 in 1988. Tuffy Rhodes hit 13. In his career. Baseball is a weird, weird sport.
Anyway, onto the numbers.
Matt Davidson is on pace for 486 homeruns, while Giancarlo Stanton is on pace for 324. Davidson is making $570,000 this year, Stanton is making $25 million. Pshhh
Mike Trout is on pace to go 0-for-972
Clayton Kershaw’s stat line at his current pace: 0-32, 32 earned runs allowed.
The Red Sox are on pace to give up 972 runs in the 8th inning
Speaking of, Joe Kelly is on pace to make 162 appearances, throwing 54 innings and walking 486 batters. Pretty good
Eduardo Nunez is on pace to hit 162 inside the park homeruns, which would be spectacular
The Milwaukee Brewers are on pace to play 1,944 innings, and the Chicago White Sox are on pace to score 2,268 runs.
MLB teams as a collective group are on pace to hit 80,190 home runs this year. The previous record was set last year at a measly 6,105
Collectively, MLB hitters will strikeout 612,360 times. So I guess you take the bad with the good right?
The New York Yankees are on pace to hit 486 homeruns in 2018, which would shatter the previous record of 264. Not to be out done, the White Sox are on pace to hit 972
Noah Syndergaard is on pace for 320 strikeouts, Chris Sale is only on pace for 288.
The Baltimore Orioles are on pace for 162 blown saves, but on the bright side, are also on pace for 81 walk off homeruns.
Nick Markakis is on pace to go 162-810 (.200). But all of his 162 hits will be 3 run homeruns, resulting in 486 RBI. 81 of those hits will be walk off bombs.
Chase Utley and Cameron Maybin are both on pace to go 162-162 (1.000)
There was 1 error made on Opening Day. It was Jose Martinez. He’s obviously on pace for 162 errors. The rest of Major League Baseball will clearly play error free baseball all season, so that we can all laugh at Jose Martinez for being the only professional athlete that can’t catch a fly ball.
The San Francisco Giants will not allow a run all season. They’ll go 162-0, Hunter Strickland will have 162 saves, and Giants will have 162 shutouts over 1,458 scoreless innings.
Just some truly shocking stuff going on in Major League Baseball these days. We’ll have to wait and see which guys actually maintain their pace. I’m really rooting for that whole error thing to pan out.
–Brian Borders (@bborders12)