Don't Give Up Without a Swing

Yesterday I posted about Eddie Collins and Ray Chapman, two of the most prolific sacrifice bunters in baseball history. Today I want to look at the other side of the same topic: players who never had a single sacrifice hit. Unsurprisingly, many active players and guys who retired recently are on top of the list of most plate appearances without a sacrifice hit.

Most Career Plate Appearances with Zero Career Sacrifice Hits, 1895*-2008
(active players in red)

1. Frank Thomas, 9938
2. Harmon Killebrew, 9831
3. Carlos Delgado, 8021
4. Mike Piazza, 7745
5. Eric Karros, 7100
6. Tim Salmon, 7039
7. Vladimir Guerrero, 6991
8. George Bell, 6586
9. Mo Vaughn, 6410
10. Cecil Fielder, 5939
11. Sean Casey, 5491
12. Richie Sexson, 5413
13. Troy Glaus, 5372
14. Eric Chavez, 5156
15. Pat Burrell, 4913
16. Tony Clark, 4894
17. Aubrey Huff, 4349
18. Richard Hidalgo, 3927
19. Mark Teixeira, 3413
20. Terrence Long, 3325

* - Sacrifice Hits have been recorded since 1895

Simply by choosing a convenient year to end the search can change this list dramatically. I chose 1980 because it's a round number and only one member of the previous list appears on the new leaderboard. If a player got a sacrifice hit after 1980, however, I took him off the list. Not fair, perhaps, but that's okay, I'm cherry-picking anyway. :)

Most Career Plate Appearances with Zero Career Sacrifice Hits, 1895*-1980

1. Harmon Killebrew, 9831
2. Willie Aikens, 1171
3. Pancho Herrera, 1108
4. Brant Alyea, 982
5. Danny Walton, 881
6. Hawk Taylor, 766
7. Jim Beauchamp, 730
8. Jouett Meekin, 645*
9. Tim Harkness, 632
10. Bill McGhee, 583
11. Jerry Davanon, 574
12. Carlos Paula, 492
13. Larry Elliot, 486
14. Amos Rusie, 475*
15. Carmen Mauro, 456
16. Dave Schneck, 443
17. Charlie Manuel, 432
18. Heinz Becker, 412
19. Clint Hartung, 403
20. George Tebeau, 388*
21. Frank Baker, 384

*Meekin, Rusie, and Tebeau all played before 1895, so they could have had sacrifice hits that went unrecorded. Tebeau was a regular position player for five seasons prior to his final season in 1895 so I included the player below him on the list since I'm leery of assuming he actually had zero sacrifices. Meekin and Rusie had a number of seasons after 1895 in which they had zero sacrifices.

Sacrificial Lambs

I had intended to have a (hopefully) much more interesting post to explain not putting up anything new for a week, but I didn't quite get that done. Instead I've got a trip down baseball's memory lane.

People in sabermetrics circles have been decrying the tactic of bunting to advance runners for a long time. The argument goes that moving a runner from first with zero or one out to second with one or two outs often actually lowers the expectation of scoring and also winning the game. In a time when almost any major league hitter can hit a home run and games regularly feature five or more runs by each team, it's hard to argue against playing for more than one run. It wasn't always that way, however. In the early part of the twentieth century, sacrifice hits were extremely important. In games that often ended 3-2 or 2-1, every run was vitally important. The all-time leader in sacrifice hits, Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins, played from 1906-1930 and topped 30 sacrifice hits six times. For comparison's sake, no one in the major leagues last season had more than five sacrifices.

Collins was by no means the most prodigious bunter of his day, however. Much like Hank Aaron, his record was not achieved by leading the league year after year, but rather through longevity. Collins never led the league in sacrifice hits but played for twenty-five years. Despite his long playing career, if not for an unfortunate pitch from Carl Mays it's possible Collins wouldn't hold the sacrifice hits record.

On August 16, 1920, the Cleveland Indians came to the Polo Grounds in New York to square off against the Yankees. Mired in a tight, three-way pennant race (for a visual display, see this cool site) along with the Chicago White Sox, the third-place Yankees saw the late-season series against the Indians as a crucial time to make up ground. Taking the mound for the New York club was ace Carl Mays who would end up with 26 wins for the season. Unfortunately, the game became known for much more than being a contest between two good teams. During the game, a pitch from Mays hit Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman in the head. Chapman lost consciousness soon after and died following emergency operations to remove pieces of his skull in an attempt to relieve pressure caused by brain swelling. As the New York Times reported,

The shock of the blow had lacerated the brain not only on the left side of the head where the ball struck but also on the right side where the shock of the blow had forced the brain against the skull, Dr. Merrigan said."

Though Mays protested the beaning wasn't intentional, many figured his prior reputation as a head-hunter meant hitting Chapman in the head was a planned incident. Whatever the case, Mays thereafter had to deal with harassment from the stands. Though his claims aren't necessarily backed up by his overall numbers (only 207 wins, to point out one example), Mays often claimed the fatal beaning was used to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. For much more on both the beaning and the whole baseball landscape in 1920, I suggest you read The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell.

The reason I bring up this unpleasant time in baseball history is because of the victim. Chapman was 29 when he died, with any number of years left to play in his career. He still has three of the top fifteen single-season marks for sacrifice hits, including the single-season record with an amazing 67 sac bunts in 1917. Though his playing career was so suddenly ended, he is now sixth on the list of most career sacrifice hits with 334. Though it's obviously hard to figure how the end of the deadball era after 1920 would have changed his numbers, it's not hard to see another few years in the league placing Chapman at the top of the career list. Five more years of his by then usual 40+ SH per year would have put him comfortably above Collins' eventual career mark of 512.

It's extremely unlikely anyone will ever again challenge Collins' mark or even Chapman's. The active career sacrifice hits leader, Giants shortstop Omar Vizquel, has 233 bunts. He's forty-one years old and still over one hundred bunts behind Chapman. Only six active players total, none less than 38, have more than one hundred career sacrifice hits. It just is another example of how some records are unbreakable, not because of a lack of skill on the part of others, but rather because of the changing strategy in the game.

Noble First Basemen?

What could be more noble than sacrificing a chance on offense to move a runner over (and generally lowering your chances of scoring)? Well, it doesn't really impact your batting line so I guess it's not very noble after all. In any case, it's become more and more rare to see first basemen square around to bunt a runner over. Most of this is because first base has become the defensive position of an awkwardly-mobile slugging type on almost every team. I would guess the drop in sacrifices from the early twentieth century through today plays a role, too, though that drop isn't so dramatic if you look only after World War II.

For some initial visual fun, let's take a look at a chart of the number of full-time first basemen with one or more sacrifices during each season. Full-time in this case is defined to be players who appeared in 50 or more games during the season and who played first base in 80% or more of them. I hope to avoid the scrappy, utility player types by setting such stringent requirements. On to the picture!


(click to enlarge in a new window)

I think the spike in 1978 is pretty interesting, but overall there's a general downward trend as time goes on. In 2002, only two full-time first basemen had a sacrifice hit: Scott Spiezio (3 SH) of the Angels and Tino Martinez (1) of the Cardinals.

That's kind of a segue to look at sacrifice hits by first basemen as a whole. Prior to 1931, every full-time first baseman had at least one sacrifice hit each season: Dale Alexander in 1931 was the first one to go an entire season without sac bunting (successfully, at least). Consider that it took Lou Gehrig until 1934 to do the same thing.

A decent way to look at the amount of sacrifice hits by first basemen is to look at the sum of all the plate appearances by full-time first basemen divided by the sacrifice hits by all of them. The higher the rate, the less sacrifice hitting by first basemen in MLB. Here's the chart from 1901 to 2007:


(click to enlarge in a new window)

Obviously, sacrifice hitting has gone way down in recent years. The 1998 season especially stands out: in 16414 plate appearances, full-time first basemen had all of three sacrifice hits for a rate of 5471.3 PA/SH. The lowest rate since 1901 was 1909's 27.7 PA/SH when first basemen had 297 SH in 8217 PA.

Just so it's possible to see the variations in the early part of the 20th century a little better, I've shortened the chart to show only 1901-1997.


(click to enlarge in a new window)

That shows the variations in years prior to 1998 a lot better. Even considering the lack of home runs in the deadball era, it's interesting how it took ten years for managers to stop giving their first basemen the bunt sign (at least as often as before).

EDIT (1/15): Fixed a few grammatical errors and made sure clicking on the images actually opened them in a new window rather than the current one. Also, a thank you goes out to Midwest Diamond Report for linking!