Sports Staturday: Sip Some Coffee And Recap The Last Week In Sports With Some Wild And Irreverent Stats
Welcome back for a third consecutive Saturday morning edition of Sports Staturday. I'm really enjoying writing these and glad to see at least some people seem to enjoy reading them. That's really all I need as motivation to keep going right now.
But I am going to continue to quickly set the stage for what this blog series is for new readers stumbling in. The idea is to flow through some stats from the past week in sports while entertaining you along the way. Some stats will be wild. Irreverent. Some stupid. Maybe more than some. But I didn't crush scraping a bunch of sports data to not look up fun stuff. So grab a nice hot cup of coffee. Post up on that comfy couch and feel the crisp fall air push steam up your nostrils. Give yourself a moment.
This is Sports Staturday.
Let's wrap up some baseball for the season. Simply the best playoff series I can recall in my limited baseball casual fandom. Watching my Cubs win in 2016 was special, but the rain delay kind of spoiled the suspense. I've never seen a Game 7 like this year. Between the throw to home where Kirk's foot came off the plate only to come back down to tap it just in time, or Yamamoto getting out of a 1-out jam with runners on 2nd and third a mere half-inning after the Jays also go out unscathed in the same situation. And let's not forget the collision on the deep fly ball that. That was the moment I wondered if all the script writers jokes we make in sports might have some truth after all. Absolute cinema.
11 innings in Game 7. And with the 18-inning Game 3 thriller that makes a modern era record-breaking 74-innings for a World Series.
Now this stat should make you wonder something. Why did they need to qualify this with "modern era"? Well, you're about to find out. There was a World Series with more innings. Even more games! In fact there were a few years in which there was a best of nine games. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Not until I started searching around after all of this.
But the instance I'm referring to wasn't a best of nine. It was a best of seven. But here's the thing. It went eight games. That's right. Eight. It was still a best of seven. It just went eight games. You get it, right?
Alright, let's jump to hoop....
Oh, you don't get it?
Boston/New York. 1912. Game 2 ended up going into extra innings. Fred Snodgrass got hit by a pitch in this game. I say this to bring it to your attention this was a real name someone had in the early 1900s. There's nothing better than old baseball names. Shout out to any Snodgrass descendants that made it into the 2000s. Hard not to believe they didn't all go extinct. The system is stacked against you when reality sets in on your betrothed seeing what their name looks like on paper.
We're getting off track.
Back to the 8-game thing. Pretty simple explanation here. It got dark. So they went home. That's pretty much it. Lights weren't quite a thing outdoors until around the 1920s or so and they just decided to call it after 11-innings so they could all get home before the squirrel stew got cold. No microwaves either, remember.
Fun fact - it took MLB another two decades to put lights in stadiums. I mean, what's the big deal? It's just the World Series.
Here's the final game score of that Game 2. The Boston Red Sox took this eight pieces of seven series over the New York Giants 4-3-1.
The NFL trade deadline has now passed and we got some fireworks as Jerry Jones primed Dallas fans the night before that big things were coming to bolster the defense. And wouldn't you know it. He led off trade day by hauling in Logan Wilson, a Cincinnati Bengals defender who couldn't find playing time.
In a way, I guess that's a good thing. Can't blame that mess on him. But it was clear Jerry knew fans weren't too impressed when he gave the ole "oh, but that's not all I got you!" routine.
And off Jerry ran right on back to the defense store before they closed and asked for the highest priced option available no matter the cost. Quinnen Williams it was.
But I'm really here to talk about a different Jets fire sale trade. Well, not really the full trade. Just a player. AD Mitchell who woke up on Tuesday with a record of 7-2 and laid in bed 1-7.
Tip of the cap to the Colts for this trade. They could have benched Mitchell or cut his playing time for single-handedly losing the Colts a game on the fumbleration. Technically, I guess that'd be zero-handedly. But no. The Colts played the long con and trotted him out there to show other teams he'd be worth trading for. And with the Jets now being in full on tank formation, who better to bring in than a guy that has a proven ability to lose you games?
Let's call this what it was. A revenge trade.
I went ahead and pulled all midseason trades to see where this ranks in most wins lost for a player in a trade. Six is pretty rough since the trade deadline is Week 9 and a lot of teams might have even had a bye. I found just one that tied at six wins lost and one other even worse.
Jimmy Garoppolo: Traded October 31, 2017 from the 6-2 Patriots to the 0-8 San Francisco 49ers
Tom Pennington. Getty Images.I'll defer to Patriots fans here, but I don't know if this was really a revenge trade. Jimmy was obviously a back-up to Brady and wanted to have a chance to start somewhere. Not likely an opportunity a winning team is going to be in a position to offer.
Then again…where there's smoke, there's fire. It's also possible the Patriots had some sick sado Halloween punishment kink as they hold the record for taking the most wins away from a player via any trade with seven.
Jamie Collins: Traded October 31, 2016 from the 7-1 Patriots to the 0-8 Cleveland Browns
Maddie Meyer. Getty Images.I went ahead and looked at the other end of the spectrum too. Most wins gained from a trade. One includes Mohammad Sanu in 2019, going from the 1-6 Atlanta Falcons to the 7-0 Patriots.
Again with the Patriots. This seems on brand too as it suggests 7-0 wasn't quite good enough for Bill Belichick to actually be happy with his dynasty. Moves had to be made.
One more random NFL thing. A stat that doesn't matter. Caleb Williams did something pretty random last Sunday that quickly got lost in the absurdity of the game. He became the first quarterback since 1956 to throw at least six passes with two receptions in a game. Basically means he's the first starting quarterback to catch two passes in the modern game. Jerry Reichow is the guy that did it in 1956. Like you'd ever have known who that was.
One more, one more random NFL thing. Anyone else notice the three quarterbacks that lit it up the most during the Sunday day slates? Sorry Darnold, had to kick you out of this. That'd be the three oldest quarterbacks in the league. Rodgers (42), Flacco (40) and Stafford (37). OK - Rodgers wasn't really amazing, but beat one of the AFC's top teams and Flacco threw for a 40-year old record 470 yards.
Anyway, this all happened on Fall Back Sunday which tells me this is the day to bet on the elders after they get an extra hour of sleep to keep up with the kids. Put that in the notes for next year.
Now that we're done with that one last one more thing, I have something to admit. I wrote everything up to this point before Thursday Night Football which - despite the home team winning - turned into a second week of continuous crowd shots of disgruntled fans.
Alas - there is one final, one more, one last NFL thing. Even though this was the worst football game I've endured watching since Broncos / Colts Thursday Night Football co-starring a half-embalmed Matt Ryan trotting around looking for a good place to fall, I noticed a little diamond in the rough.
The all-star in this game for the Raiders. Punter A.J. Cole, who had the best first two punts in a game as humanly possible, coffin cornered the first to the 1-yard line and used some voodoo wind magic to get the second to do the same after landing in bounds. I show him having three existing punts downed at the opponent 1-yard line, so this puts him at five total now. 40% of which occurred in the first two drives of Thursday's game.
So let's ask ourselves. Is A.J. Cole the Koffin Korner King?
Not even close.
Cole isn't even the first player to start a game with two coffin corners to the 1-yard line. At least in recorded data history going back to 1999, as Mike Scifres started off with two of his own in Week 9, 2013 for the Chargers. They would also go on to lose the game which is probably pretty depressing to hear if you are some sort of pro punter's rights advocate.
As good a punter as I recall Scifres was back in the day, he's not the Koffin Korner King. He would go on to kick seven in his 13-year career which trails our King by 10. I have to admit, despite his playing in this Scifres era, I only vaguely recall hearing the name Dave Zastudil. As Shaq might say - I was not familiar with his game:
I did some extra reading on him to make up for this blasphemy, and it appears he was never really talked about much since he didn't have a booming leg. But that doesn't mean people didn't take notice to his short kicking game prowess:
I might have to do a stand alone blog on this soon. I checked his PFR chances of making the Hall of Fame and might need to run a campaign to get those figures up.
Shout out to the Raiders organization for responding on Friday in a very Raiders way to their special teams starting the game with two coffin-corner punts.
OK, NBA now. I know we're all enjoying watching the ESPN games on whatever variant of methstreams is your brand of computer malware poison. And Luka Doncic is on an early season tear with 200-points in his first five games. This has helped the Lakers to a 7-2 record for second place in the West to the 8-1 champion Thunder. All while LeBron has started the season on the bench due to injury.
I'll be honest - If you were to tell me there'd be a Lakers record involving 200-points I'd have guessed they gave that up in a game. But 200-points is good for third most ever, topping Jordan's best (197). I'll have the court reminded that Jordan did play defense though…
He also didn't take four out of the first nine games of.a season off to "manage" an injury. But this Lakers squad even without Luka and LeBron has still performed well. Will be interesting to see what comes of LeBron's return, whenever that is.
That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed that second cup of coffee it probably took to get through all this. Back next week.
Want more Sports Staturday? Catch up on last week:
