Starting at the begining of any season of professional baseball, what is the longest a player has ever kept his batting average at 1.000?
Are you referring to number of at bats or just days on the roster?
I bet that someone has gotten a hit early in the year and never batted again either because of injury or being sent to the minors.
Sorry, number at bats.
I have a bet with my friend who believes no one has ever gotten 5 or more at bats and stayed at 1.000. I think it’s insane to believe that’s never happened, I just don’t have the proof to back it up. I figure that if, on average, the batter has an overall record of .200, you’ll get five hits once ever 3,125 times. If you take every batter over the last century, then it becomes very likely something like that has happened.
So, you mean has anyone started out the season with 5 hits in his first 5 ABs? It’s possible, but I don’t know if anyone has kept track of such things.
Steve Finley (AZ Diamondbacks) started last season 5-5.
He went 4-4 in his first game:
link
and singled in his first at-bat in the second game:
other link
So what do you win?
[I fixed the links. -manhattan]
[Edited by manhattan on 12-27-2000 at 05:28 PM]
Players have gone 6 for 6 and 7 for 7 in a game. Probably someone has done it to start the season. I would think someone has probably gone 2 or 3 games in a row without getting out (to start a season.)
Some baseball fans are really into stats. They call themselves sabrematricians. The name comes from SABRE which is a group that keeps tons of stats. I think it stands for Society for Amercian Baseball Research - not sure what the last word is.
The last word is “research.” The acronym is SABR, no E.
RickJay is correct–no “E” in SABR (I know–I used to belong to that organization).
John (?) Paciorek (brother of former Seattle Mariner and now broadcaster Tom Paciorek) went 4 for 4 in his only big league game. He has a career batting average of 1.000.
I don’t know the most hits in consecutive at bats to start a season, but I’m figuring it’s less than 10. Isn’t the major league record for hits in consecutive at bats ten or twelve?
Frank Catalanotto, utility infielder for my beloved Texas Rangers, had hits in 11 consecutive AB’s last season. [Not starting the season.] He was on the DL for a couple weeks after the first few hits. When the streak finally ended, he was pretty close to the record, which was 13 IIRC. Surely, somebody with better sources than I can check out the real numbers.
**
Actually, John Paciorek went 3 for 3, not 4/4, for the Colt .45s in 1963.
Zev Steinhardt
Just curious… why didn’t he get to play in the next game (or any others)? Seems like his debut performance was pretty good.
Mea culpa. Mea summa culpa. Thanks for the correction.
TXLonghorn–I heard the story, but unfortunately I don’t recall it. My recollection is either that he was a late season callup and didn’t make the majors the next year (or ever again), or he suffered an injury.
Hopefully someone’ll be along with the correct answer.
John Paciorek (older brother of Tom Paciorek) had suffered from a back injury during most of the minor league season. He wanted to take the rest of 1963 off to rest, but Houston wanted him to showcase in a game when it was going to start nine rookies.
Paciorek had a great game, but afterward he decided to take the rest of the year off. When he got back to spring training in 1964, the back injury prevented him from ever regaining major league form.
The flipside of John Paciorek was Robin Yount’s older brother Larry. He came in to relieve in a game for Houston in 1971, but he hurt himself warming up. Since he was officially announced as a substitute, he is credited with appearing in a major league game, although he never threw a pitch.