Pickoffs!

[Frobby]

A post by ELMERO in another thread got me to looking at this topic.    I looked at some former O's pitchers and players who I thought would be high on our pickoffs lists.   These numbers are for the players' entire career, not just on the Orioles.

Pitchers

Flanagan 54

McNally 39

Cuellar 34

McGregor 27

Stewart 18

Palmer 15

Leonhard 12

Bedard 7

Mussina 5

A couple of comments:  Flanagan's 54 is nice total.    I saw an unofficial list of the top 20, and 55 came in 20th.   However, it's not clear to me how far back that list went.   The totals for relief pitchers Sammy Stewart and Dave Leonhard are quite outstanding.    Stewart, a RH relief pitcher, was the best I ever saw at whirling around and picking off runners at 2B.  Leonhard, who accumulated his 12 pickoffs in only 337 total innings, had the best pickoff move I ever saw for an Orioles pitcher.    In his career, he allowed 8 stolen bases and 22 were caught stealing.

Batters

Roberts 48

Aparicio 40

F. Robinson 33

Anderson 28

Bumbry 24

Blair 21

Belanger 13

Jones 11

Markakis 10

Mora 10

BRob's easily the leader among Orioles players, but you have to put it into context.   He had an 80% success rate on stolen bases, which is excellent.    31 of those 48 pickoffs are classified as "pickoff/caught stealing" and are factored into that 80% success rate.    Even if you counted the other 17 pickoffs as stolen base attempts, he'd still be at 76%.

I want to note that there could be other prominent Orioles high on these lists that I didn't bother to look up.   Nothing scientific about what I did here, I just looked up some guys who I thought were likely to have high totals.

 

[AuburnAL]

I'm pretty sure Tippy Martinez has at least 3 pick offs.

[weams]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

A post by ELMERO in another thread got me to looking at this topic.    I looked at some former O's pitchers and players who I thought would be high on our pickoffs lists.   These numbers are for the players' entire career, not just on the Orioles.

Pitchers

Flanagan 54

McNally 39

Cuellar 34

McGregor 27

Stewart 18

Palmer 15

Leonhard 12

Bedard 7

Mussina 5

A couple of comments:  Flanagan's 54 is nice total.    I saw an unofficial list of the top 20, and 55 came in 20th.   However, it's not clear to me how far back that list went.   The totals for relief pitchers Sammy Stewart and Dave Leonhard are quite outstanding.    Stewart, a RH relief pitcher, was the best I ever saw at whirling around and picking off runners at 2B.  Leonhard, who accumulated his 12 pickoffs in only 337 total innings, had the best pickoff move I ever saw for an Orioles pitcher.    In his career, he allowed 8 stolen bases and 22 were caught stealing.

Batters

Roberts 48

Aparicio 40

F. Robinson 33

Anderson 28

Bumbry 24

Blair 21

Belanger 13

Jones 11

Markakis 10

Mora 10

BRob's easily the leader among Orioles players, but you have to put it into context.   He had an 80% success rate on stolen bases, which is excellent.    31 of those 48 pickoffs are classified as "pickoff/caught stealing" and are factored into that 80% success rate.    Even if you counted the other 17 pickoffs as stolen base attempts, he'd still be at 76%.

I want to note that there could be other prominent Orioles high on these lists that I didn't bother to look up.   Nothing scientific about what I did here, I just looked up some guys who I thought were likely to have high totals.

 

What's Manny's total?

[backwardsk]

I would imagine that some lefties get "cheated" here because if the runner goes on first move and get caught in a 1-3-6, it is usually scored a CS.

[Frobby]

18 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

I would imagine that some lefties get "cheated" here because if the runner goes on first move and get caught in a 1-3-6, it is usually scored a CS.

I don't think so.    There is a category on BB-ref "PCS" for pickoff/caught stealing, that is a subset of all pickoffs.   In Flanagan's case, for example, 34 of his 54 pickoffs were PCS.

[Aristotelian]

Interestingly, I looked up Tillman, who is known for quick time to plate and holding baserunners. Only 2 career POs.

[Frobby]

26 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Interestingly, I looked up Tillman, who is known for quick time to plate and holding baserunners. Only 2 career POs.

Yeah but his CS% is stellar (59% thrown out) and almost nobody tries to run on him (only 19 SB in 46 attempts in 179 starts).     When you have those numbers the runners probably aren't straying very far.   

[Number5]

3 hours ago, AuburnAL said:

I'm pretty sure Tippy Martinez has at least 3 pick offs.

 

[Frobby]

Tippy had 12 pickoffs in his career, and was very tough to run on (33 SB, 44 CS).    I meant to include him on my list -- what an omission!

[Since'54]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Tippy had 12 pickoffs in his career, and was very tough to run on (33 SB, 44 CS).    I meant to include him on my list -- what an omission!

According to Wikipedia, Tippy's three consecutive pick-offs occurred because the Birds used Len Sakata as a catcher for that inning and the Blue Jays figured they could run wild against him. Three times the Blue Jays put a man on first. Three times he took a huge lead. And three times Tippy picked him off.  Later, according again to Wikipedia, Sakata won the game with a home run.

I'm finding these stats a little tough to research,  but your post made me think of a very early Oriole named Bill Wight. I was listening to the radio when he entered his first game after Baltimore traded for him around 1955. Somebody reached first and was left standing off-base open-mouthed and bug-eyed when Wight threw to first. The announcer couldn't believe what he had seen.  There are several references to Wight on the internet as having one of the all-time best moves to first.  I 'll look for more info later on.

 

[Frobby]

21 minutes ago, Since'54 said:

According to Wikipedia, Tippy's three consecutive pick-offs occurred because the Birds used Len Sakata as a catcher for that inning and the Blue Jays figured they could run wild against him. Three times the Blue Jays put a man on first. Three times he took a huge lead. And three times Tippy picked him off.  Later, according again to Wikipedia, Sakata won the game with a home run.

I'm finding these stats a little tough to research,  but your post made me think of a very early Oriole named Bill Wight. I was listening to the radio when he entered his first game after Baltimore traded for him around 1955. Somebody reached first and was left standing off-base open-mouthed and bug-eyed when Wight threw to first. The announcer couldn't believe what he had seen.  There are several references to Wight on the internet as having one of the all-time best moves to first.  I 'll look for more info later on.

 

I listened to Tippy's game on the radio, and I can assure you, that's how it went down.

As to Wight, according to BB-ref he had his first pickoff for the Orioles in his 3rd game with the club, not his first.   But it was a game in which he pitched in relief (he was normally a starting pitcher), so it's probably the game you remember.    Box score here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL195507261.shtml    Wight picked off 42 baserunners in his career.