Game 15 - "A Fusillade of Hits All Over the Plateau"

May 3, 1911
Philadelphia 13, New York 4

"ATHLETICS BATSMEN ON WILD RAMPAGE" screamed the headline in the New York Times. Now that's more like it. The A's dispatched the Yankees with ease to take their second series win of the season. But that's a pretty boring and modern way to say it, isn't it? The Times, as usual, was able to summon the proper words:

The Philadelphia Athletics flayed the Yankees into submission on the Hilltop yesterday by a fusillade of hits all over the plateau, until Fisher and Quinn the New York pitchers, were about ready to be rushed to an emergency hospital. The score was 13 to 4, the numerous counts of the Newlyweds coming as a reward for the season's most violent outburst of titanic bat wielding.

It was a rematch of the teams' game 2 starters, but this time Jack Coombs got the best of Ray "Pick" Fisher. In fact, the Yankees only managed four hits off of Coombs, who seems to be recovering nicely from his recent bout with malaria, but his teammates' four errors helped put some runs on the board for New York.

No matter, though. The Macks were able to score seemingly at will and topped their previous season-high for runs scored by two. Moreover, "every mother's son of the world's champions laced the ball safely, a few of them indulging in the diversion so often that after a while it became a habit."

The A's also collected their second and third home runs of the season, one by soon-to-be-regular first baseman Stuffy McInnis (playing short today), and another "a Herculean drive*" by the 3-position's current occupant, Harry Davis.

Davis (left) was a native Philadelphian who bounced around the National League before jumping over to Ban Johnson's brand new American League in 1901, when he was named the first captain of Mack's Philadelphia A's. He was a stalwart and popular presence on the team for its first decade; Davis played a key role in the 1905 pennant campaign and was twice in the top-10 for WAR. Now 37 and having manned first for the A's entire existence, he will soon be stepping aside for the youngster McInnis**.

Incidentally, what does Harry Davis have in common with Babe Ruth, Ralph Kiner and teammate Home Run Baker? They're the only four players to lead their league in home runs for four consecutive seasons. I know, I know...Davis and Baker did it in the deadball era***; it's still cool. Though no one involved knows it, today's will be the last home run for hometown hero and Girard College grad Harry Davis. He hit 75 in his career****.

* During the play, CF Bert Daniels "collid[ed] with the stand and [was] temporarily disabled in his game attempt to reach over the seats and pluck the floating sphere." Would he be a candidate for the new 7-day concussion DL today? He was not removed from the game.

** Can anyone think of any other 37-year old infielders with a distinguished history as team captain whose game succumbed to the ravages of time?

***10, 8, 12, and 8 HR for Davis for 1904-1907 and 11, 10, 12, and 9 for Baker for 1911-1914. The A's were the class of the junior circuit when it came to deadball-era slugging. A member of Connie Mack's team held the league lead in homers for 10 of the league's first 14 seasons.

**** Please take the time to read his page at SABR's bio project. I love that Harry Davis was one of the few players to successfully steal first base from second before it was made illegal.

[Today's Source for box score and game account: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D00E6D91439E333A25757C0A9639C946096D6CF; Image of Harry Davis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_H._Davis.jpg]

Eddie Plank - The Arm of the A's

P is for Plank,
The arm of the A's;
When he tangled with Matty,
Games lasted for days.
-Ogden Nash, "Line-Up for Yesterday"

I'd like to get around to a closer look at most of the players on the team throughout the season, and since Eddie Plank is starting the next game against Boston, we might as well begin with him.

Nicknamed Gettysburg Eddie due to his hometown*, Plank made his debut in 1901, the Athletics' inaugural season. The 25-year-old lefty made his presence felt right off the bat, providing his new team with 4.4 WAR and 17 wins as a rookie. From then on, he was a consistently good pitcher for the next 17 seasons, 14 of which were with the A's.

View his full stats.

His career numbers aren't necessarily gaudy (he rarely led the league in any significant pitching categories), but they were always really solid. According to teammate and fellow HOFer Eddie Collins, "Plank was not the fastest, not the trickiest and not the possessor of the most stuff; but he was just the greatest." All told, he deserves a place among the pitching greats (and possibly one of the top 10 lefties). Here are a few cherry-picked stats showing where his career numbers place him on the all-time list in a few key categories:

• WAR: 22nd for pitchers (5th among lefties) with 76.30
• ERA: 21st (tied- also 6th among lefties) with 2.35**
• Innings Pitched: 28th (5th among lefties) with 4,495.2
• Complete Games: 16th (1st among lefties) with 410
• Shutouts: 5th (1st among lefties) with 69
• Strikeouts: 49th (17th among lefties) with 2,246
• WHIP: 30th (6th among lefties) with 1.1189
• Wins: 13th (3rd among lefties***) with 326. Now I don't put a lot of stock in pitcher wins, but you don't win 326 games without being awfully good, and I'm still impressed by big numbers. He was the first lefty to win 200 and then later 300 games, and he was the career wins leader in all of baseball for a few years until Walter Johnson**** passed him. He won 20 games or more 7 times. He still has the most wins for a lefty in the AL (305).

And lucky for us, 1911 was his best year. As a 35 year-old he posted the highest ERA+ (151) and highest WAR (6.1) of his career. He won 23 games with a 2.10 ERA. He also led the league in both shutouts (6) and saves (4 - though saves hadn't been invented yet). What's even more impressive is that it wasn't the least bit flukey: his BABIP was exactly the league average (though he did seem to have some good defense behind him, as his FIP was about half a run higher than his ERA). We'll be enjoying quite a lot of his starts this year.

Finally, I love that Nash's famous poem references his battles with Christy Matthewson. That's some good foreshadowing, as we'll be meeting those Giants in the World Series. Having played in separate leagues their entire careers, the two never met in the regular season. But their teams faced off in three different World Series: 1905, 1911, and 1913. They started three games against one another in those years. Matty won two of them, and Plank came away with one. None of them were high-scoring games, as you might guess. Nash was probably also referring to Plank's reputation for his long stalling pauses on the mound***** But did the games actually last days? Here are the game times for their three match-ups: 1:46, 2:22, 1:39.

* He served as a battlefield tour guide during the off-season.

** That's a great ERA, but his career neatly nestles in the timeline of the dead-ball era, which makes it slightly less impressive in retrospect. It's still good for a tie for 93rd in ERA+ with 122, which puts him in some good company with both Bob Feller and Babe Ruth.

*** Behind Warren Spahn and Steve Carlton.

**** Who would defeat him 1-0 in his final game, an 11-inning complete game, no less.

***** I guess that made him the deadball era's Jamie Moyer.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Plank
http://baseballhall.org/hof/plank-eddie
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/planked01.shtml
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1010385&position=P