Sometimes franchise records are good, like Joey Votto being the dreamiest OBPiest dreamiest Reds player of all time.

Johnny Vander Meer (center): Best Lapels in Reds history. (Photo Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Others are essentially, like Pete Rose and Leo Cardenas tied for most games player in a season, at 163. Others are at least vaguely negative or actually bad. Like the ones I’m about to tell you about. Why am I going to tell you about them? One, because it’s mildly interesting in its own right. Two, because it’s a reason and a way to bring up Reds history. And Three, because it’s the end of January, the only thing that’s going on right now is the Reds Caravan*, and I’m in New England.

*You might as well watch the video of Gapper falling over things on Jamie Ramsey’s blog. It’s a decent piece of mascot theater, as far as that goes.

Most Outs in a Single Season – Tommy Harper, 1965

In 1965, 24-year-old left-fielder Tommy Harper made 514 total outs. Despite outs generally being bad, this really isn’t a terrible record; Harper did have a .340 OBP that would make Drew Stubbs cry a single tear of crystalline joy  (I really should stop making fun of Drew Stubbs, as he isn’t on the team anymore.) Mostly, being the leadoff hitter for a Reds lineup that scored the most runs in the NL meant that Harper came to the plate 745 times.  Incidentally, the ‘most plate appearances in a season’ for the Reds looks like this.

Jim Bottomley was actually genuinely famous, as the 1928 NL MVP. The rest of the 1934 Reds, though….less so.

I had this idea to find the least famous Reds teams that have ever taken the field. So, I started with most common lineups for the starting 8 position players, as listed on fangraphs. (In other news, that page is great).  I then started to list all the awards, all-star appearances, and times leading the league in a few categories (AVG, HR, RBI, SB), for each player for all the years before that particular year. So, for example, Joey Votto pops up as very un-famous, indeed, in 2009, but doesn’t, obviously, in 2011. I then picked out the teams that had 6 or more players (out of 8), with no awards or all-star appearance

s or titles. That left me with about 20 teams, so I also took out the teams that had a player with 5 or more awards, etc. At that point, you have a bonified super famous dude on your team, so you no-longer qualify for non-fame. That left me with 10 teams, which is a little more reasonable.

It’s not a perfect system, obviously. Lots of players have name recognition without winning any awards. Additionally, there’s a time frame issue. There are more awards, by far, now, than there were 100 years ago. In fact, I only started looking with the 1934 team, because the All-Star game started in 1933. Even so, with only a few years of MVP awards, and a couple All-Star selections, the 1930s teams still show up with a disadvantage. Then again, there were fewer teams in 1934, so it evens out a little bit.

Here’s the list:

Obviously, the ’30s dominate, which may be an unfair aspect of the system I made up, but before 1934, Lombardi had yet to do anything much worth talking about, compared to his batting title and MVP award of the later part of the decade. But, for example Kampouris, Riggs, Myers, and Goodman were all close to rookies in 1935, so they hadn’t established any kind of fame.

Then, the late 40s, and early 50s appear a lot. The Reds were really terrible in this era, and the oddness caused by WWII in MLB were not too far behind us. Kluzewski, obviously, is famous in terms of Reds histor, and at least for a few of these years, he was off the general radar, but in 1953, for example, he had OPSed .892 the year before, and even got a couple MVP votes, so he probably wasn’t totally unknown. Still, by my arbitrary made-up rules, mighty Klu didn’t get an all-star nod until 1953 itself. Still, guys like Virgil Stallcup, Bob Usher, and Lloyd Merriman were fairly forgettable.

Of course, the 60s and 70s are going to get a total miss on the non-fame-meter. But I think the more recent teams are interesting. Especially, the 1988 team, which is the only one on the list with a winning record. It’s not too hard to see how that happened. The 1988 team obviously had a great bullpen, but their lineup was pretty solid, too. Larkin and Davis later went on to be stars of various magnitudes, and so did Paul O’Neill, just on a different team. Kal Daniels also had a great season, though Daniels doesn’t really trip the fame alert even over the course of his career.

I also love that 2009 shows up. Like I said earlier, this was before Votto got famous, and Phillips and Bruce have since developed some more famous-ness. But the Rosales-Janish-Nix bit does make me facepalm a bit.

It’s worth noting, though, that a lot of these teams show up because they have a lot of young players, and they often presage some really good teams. The Reds won the NL pennant in 1939 and 1940,  won the World Series in 1990, and won the NL Central two years out of the three after 2009. So, maybe being un-famous is just a sign of good things to come. (Or not, absolutely nothing good happened to the Reds in the ’50s, afterall)

(Note: Since I was unable to come up with anything on today’s off day, I’m reposting. This blog post originally appeared on C-ing Red on September 17, 1919, I’m apparently much older than I look. So is the internet.)

How appropriate that the Reds would win their first pennant during the year of the 50th anniversary of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings historic undefeated season. Yesterdat, they mathematically guaranteed their League winning status by defeating the rival New York Giants at home in Redland Stadium with a score of 4-3.

The Reds didn’t take the league lead until early July, but they put the Giants behind them for good by winning four games out of 6 in a three double-header series at Polo Grounds. Though undeniably the victors of the Battle of Coogan’s Bluff, the Giants were still a mathematical threat until yesterday’s victory.

The detested Giants had already been licked once in this two game series, and brought former Red Fred Toney to the mound for Tuesday’s game. We gave him a warm welcome, scoring three runs in the bottom of the first, but in the seventh, the Reds took the lead for good.

In that inning,  Hank Schreiber stung a double to lead off, followed by Bill Rariden bunting, but Bedford Bill reached on an error by High Pockets Kelly.  Pitching legend Christy Mathewson, in charge of the Giants as John McGraw had already left for New York, took out Toney for southpaw Art Nehf. Though Nehf got the next batter, Reds pitcher Dutch Ruether, to ground out slowly to the second baseman, Schreiber scored on the play, and the Reds took the game, and the National League lead, for good. Lagging 12 wins behind the Reds, with only 11 games remaining, the Giants are done.

Though our Buckeye brothers, the Cleveland Indians are still technically in the race in the American League, as of today, the Chicago White  Sox have their race all but sewn up. Dutch Reuther may have guaranteed his shot to start game 1 versus the Sox on October 1. World Series ticket prices have already been announced, and fans aren’t happy. With prices ranging from $1 for a bleacher seat to $6 for a box seat, the Cincinnatiacs have already  expressed discontent with the higher prices.

We know now that it will be game 1 of 9, as club President and National League commissioner August Herrmann requested an extension of the series, which was voted on and approved by the teams last week. While the motive behind this is ostensibly to allow more fans to attend a World Series game, it gives the Reds a distinct advantage, as our pitching staff  has better depth than the White Sox, who rely extensively on Edie Cicotte and Lefty Williams.

It will definitely be a day game, because what is a night game? You can’t play baseball at night, you wouldn’t be able to see anything, silly.

I know I can’t wait for October 1, and will be following the game diligently through live reports from the local telegraph station. In the meantime, it’s time to rest the pitchers, and cheer on Edd Roush as he pursues his second National League batting title – if he wins, he will be the first ever Reds player to win two batting title with the team. Right now, he leads Ohio-born Hi Myers of the Brooklyn Robins .324 to .309.

*photographs first appeared in the Chicago Eagle on September 27, 1919. That is the future, which I guess is pretty awesome.

Well, At this point, it’s technically 10,001 wins, which is a nice piece of palindromity, but I’m still celebrating 10,000, in part because I got on a research kick that really interested me.

Specifically, since the Reds won game # 10,000 on April 20, 2012, with pitcher Homer Bailey getting the win,  what happened when the Reds won the other multiples-of-a-thousand wins? Who got wins #1000, #2000, and #3,000. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, and the miracle of baseball-reference/retro-sheet, in large part, we know.

#1,000 – 1896. 

Red Ehret, looking rather fetching in the uniform of the American Association's Louisville Colonels

To start out by contradicting what I just said, I regret to inform you that I don’t really know a lot about the Reds 1000th win, including what pitcher got the win in the game. Here’s what I do know. The Reds’ 1000th W came on July 12, 1896, 14 years after the official count starts, and the Reds beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms (later the Brooklyn Dodgers, and later… well, you know) with a score of 9-5. The starting pitcher was an appropriately named Red Ehret, who was born in Louisville, KY, and pitched for the Reds for two seasons. The 1896 Reds were player-managed by Hall-of-Famer Buck Ewing, and would go on to finish 77-50, only good for 3rd in the National League.

#2,000 – 1910:

Like the previous entry, I couldn’t find all of the information about this particular win, which came on May 26, 1910. It was pretty exciting, even assuming they didn’t know it was the franchise’s 2000th victory, as it came walk-off style against (you may be pleased to know) the St. Louis Cardinals, final score 7-6. George Suggs started the game, although it’s a reasonably fair bet that he didn’t get the win, as he only finished 5 of his 30 starts. Suggs was a pretty good pitcher that season, his wins, ERA, and WAR all placing him firmly in the top 10 of starting pitchers in the NL in 1910.

#3,000 – 1923:

Now here’s a game where the box score survives to the modern internet. Win 3,000 was on August 11, 1923, as the first game of a double-header against the Boston Braves. Rube Benton got the win in a complete game, though not necessarily in a manner you would consider particularly impressive, with a line of 9 IP, 14 H, 2 BB, 0 K, allowing 6 runs, only 5 of them earned. Only his endurance and the Reds bats got him the win in the 10-6 slugfest. Benton’s a bit of an interesting story – he actually pitched for the Reds in that 1910 season, but was traded to the Giants in 1915. BR-Bullpen states that he had quite a reputation for drinking (apparently, so did Red Ehret), and was also briefly implicated in the Black Sox scandal (even though he was on the New York Giants).

» Continue reading “Celebrating Reds Victory No. 10,000, Part 2: A History Of N-Thousandth Win Winners”