Best Hitters Versus The Pirates

I watched the Pittsburgh Pirates-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game on Sunday thanks to a free weekend preview of MLB Extra Innings. The Pirates broadcasters spoke extremely highly of likely future Hall of Fame St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina just before he picked off Adam Frazier in the first inning and threw out another Pirates runner trying to steal second in the second inning. You would think that the Pirates would have something like "Yadier Molina is a really good at throwing out runners" in their scouting report.

Anyway, the Root Sports broadcast also showed Molina's career batting statistics against the Pirates including his 97 runs batted in. This got me thinking. Who has the most RBIs against the Pirates in baseball history? I mentioned this on Twitter, and Sean Forman (great name) of Baseball-Reference replied that the all-time leader (who I won't identify yet) has 306 career RBIs against the Pirates. Yadier Molina has a long way to go to reach this number!

Based on the link that Sean sent me from Stathead (I'll share this later), I thought I would do a little baseball trivia today. If you want to play, try to name the top 10 players with the most home runs against the Pirates in baseball history, the top 10 players by on-base percentage, and the top 10 by slugging percentage. I included the last two categories only because most other all-time stats (like RBIs, hits, games, etc) consists mostly of players from long ago.

Feel free to list your guesses in the comments section below. I'll share the answers here soon.

Update: Here are the results.

Most Home Runs Against the Pirates
1. Mel Ott - 83
2. Hank Aaron - 78
3. Willie Mays - 76
4. Eddie Mathews - 73
5. Mike Schmidt - 62
6. Stan Musial & Duke Snider - 58
8. Ernie Banks - 57
9. Willie McCovey - 56
10. Rogers Hornsby - 55

Now that is an impressive list!

Highest On-Base Percentage
1. Barry Bonds
2. Bob Elliott
3. Albert Pujols
4. Lance Berkman
5. Jackie Robinson
6. Todd Helton
7. Mel Ott
8. Jim Edmonds
9. Rogers Hornsby
10. Stan Musial & Joey Votto

Highest Slugging Percentage
1. Albert Pujols
2. Barry Bonds
3. Jack Clark
4. Jim Edmonds
5. Alfonso Soriano
6. Mike Piazza
7. Rogers Hornsby
8. Chuck Klein
9. Larry Walker
10. Willie Mays

If you want to check out all of these stats and more, please check out this link from Stathead. Please note that there must be a minimum number of plate appearances to make this list. For example, my friend Dan mentioned that Billy Hamilton has 56 stolen bases against the Pirates, but he's not on this list.

You can check out Sean's work on Baseball Reference and Stathead

Photo by Billy Hurst/AP Photo

Pirates Won! (In My Dream)

I rarely remember my dreams, but this one was somewhat odd and certainly topical, so I wanted to share what should have happened in last night's Pittsburgh Pirates-St. Louis Cardinals playoff game. Please note that all of this truly did occur in my dream, so feel free to provide your dream analysis in the comments section below.

With the Cardinals up 6-1, the Pirates started getting runners on base and scoring runs. The Cardinals kept pitcher Adam Wainwright in the game too long until finally calling their bullpen and bringing Angela from The Office into the game. She had a great fastball, but couldn't seem throw a strike.

With the bases loaded and the Pirates down 6-5, the team brought in pinch hitter, Emeka Okafor. Why the 6' 10" Washington Wizards basketball player was on the Pirates makes as much sense as Angela from The Office being on the Cardinals. Anyway, Okafor hit a ground-rule double that should have been a home run. Since baseball has instant replay for home runs, I have no idea why this was not reviewed.

In the bottom of the 9th, the Pirates brought in Jason Isringhausen to finish the game. Isringhausen was the Cardinals closer for several years, but retired from baseball after the 2012 season and hasn't played for the Cardinals since 2008. He also never played for the Pirates.

I missed seeing Isringhausen retire the Cardinals in order as well as part of the top of the 9th inning since I was watching the game via DVR. Of course, the DVR acted like an old VCR where I would have to press stop to fast-forward and rewind with no idea where it would land when I pressed play again.

As the Pirates celebrated, Howard Stern sang "We Are The Champions" but in a serious manner and not in any type of ironic way. For some reason, the television also showed Jon Stewart several times while dressed in a suit like on The Daily Show set. Apparently, he was part of the Pirates organization and made the decision to have Okafor pinch hit.

Oh, despite playing the Cardinals, this was a World Series victory and not the divisional round series win.

I should mention that I watched this game with a housekeeper that I've never met and my mother-in-law. I also remember that I wanted to see the reaction to the Pirates win on Twitter.

So there you have it! While the game really went like this (and other accounts too), I like the version that occurred in my dream better.

Pablo Sandoval Traded To Cardinals (Express Fail)

Tuesday's edition of the Washington Post Express showed the starting line-up for last night's baseball All-Star Game. Despite being a pretty big baseball fan, I somehow missed the fact that the San Francisco Giants traded their All-Star third baseman Pablo Sandoval to the St. Louis Cardinals.

This is a shocking trade since Sandoval is an excellent hitter batting .307 with 8 home runs and 30 RBIs despite only playing in 53 games and with the Giants only .5 games out of the NL West and Wild Card. In addition, it's surprising that the Cardinals would aquire a third baseman since David Freese is also an All-Star and coming off a season where he was the World Series MVP.

What makes things even more interesting is that I haven't seen any other reports of a Giants-Cardinals trade and Sandoval wore his Giants gear during last night's game. Joe Buck didn't even say anything about him becoming a Cardinal. Perhaps Express knows something that we don't. Of course, perhaps not.

Please click here to see past editions of Express Fail.

Update: For the first time since I started writing Express Fail posts, Express issued a correction in today's paper stating that Sandoval plays for the Giants. My apologies to Express.