Browsing the references

I've sung the praises of Baseball-Reference before, but I just want to take a few moments to remind everybody out there about just how cool the best baseball reference site on the net is.  I tend to use it two or three times a week throughout the baseball season, and I continue to realize that there are hundreds of aspects of this treasure trove of a website that I haven't even explored.

• Andy Pettite's most similar pitcher at age 37 is Mike Mussina.  Both are pitchers who belong solidly in the Hall of Very Good.  Both pitchers have spent their careers on excellent teams pitching very well.  Both have a single second-place finish in the Cy Young voting but have never finished about fourth otherwise, having earned about .9 of an award for their career.  Both are well below Hall of Fame quality if measured by black ink (times leading the league in anything), but both measure well in Hall of Fame Monitor - a measure of overall career length/strength.
• If you combine the top five players (ARod, Jeter, Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, and Randy Johnson) in terms of all-time career money earned playing baseball, they've earned over a billion dollars.
• The three highest OPS+ seasons of all time belong to Barry Bonds - 2001, 2002, 2004 - with 2002 being the highest.  He had a .609 on-base percentage as a 39-year old man.  'Roids or no 'roids, his performances during the first half of this decade are just cartoonish.
• Carlos Delgado is the best player to have been born on June 25; Tommy Corcoran the best player to die on this date.
• Four players have played more than 2000 games playing only for the Reds in their career (Bench, Larkin, Concepcion, and Bid McPhee).  Mario Soto is the only pitcher to throw more than 160 (he pitched 297) games and only pitch for the Reds.  Nineteen players played one game for the Reds - their only MLB game in their career - and never got to bat.
• Billy Herman - a Hall of Famer - is easily the best player to have been born in The Hometown.
• Pete Rose is the most unique player in baseball history based on similarity scores.  Ricky Henderson, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Barry Bonds are rest of the top five.  Typically, I would say that the more unique a player is, the greater a player is, but Pete Rose is the outlier here.  He is nowhere near the same quality as the other four on that list.  He's the 13th highest on Hall of Fame Monitor, #59 on Hall of Fame Stanadards,  15th on black ink list, and 24th on gray ink.  Rose was a statistical freak, but he's not an inner-circle Hall of Famer by any means.
• The most-searched for player on Tuesday (the day before I was writing this) was Jamie Moyer who tied the record for most HR allowed in a pitcher's career.  I was one of those searches.
• Rafael Palmeiro played 2831 games - more than anyone else - without reaching the World Series.  Ken Griffey, Jr was second with 2671 when her retired last week.  Ernie Banks played 2528 without ever making the playoffs.  Go Cubbies!
• Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson played 27 years - the most ever.  Jamie Moyer is tied for 10th place with 24 seasons and isn't showing much sign of slowing.
• I hope that Matt Stairs plays for a new team next year so he can break the record for most teams played for in a career.  He's currently at 12, tied with Ron Villone and Mike Morgan.
• Julio Franco holds the records for most games, HR, doubles, total bases, at-bats, plate appearances, extra base hits, sac flies, intentional walks, caught stealings, double plays grounded into, and outs made at or after the age of 43.
• Hank Aaron never won the Hank Aaron award.
• The Reds have had the third most players hit HR (706 players) for their franchise - behind the Cubs and the Braves.
• The baseball-reference blog is kind of geekily awesome.
• We're close to the highest ratio of strikeouts to walks in the history of the game.

I'm thinking that we're at - or near - the death of the print sports encyclopedia.  There's just no way that a print encyclopedia can keep up with this kind a website.