Notes and Essays, 7/27/26
N1: Scott Spiezio, in the big leagues from 1996-2007, has a book coming out Tuesday.1 I had recently noticed him as the lesser of the two Scotts (with Brosius) who tried in vain to make the 1997 Athletics a bit more of a respectable defensive entity. Spiezio was a second baseman then but moved to first not longer after, and then again on to third. He also appeared in the outfield in six seasons. So he was your classic utlity man, a position you sometimes gave to take when your best average in a great hitting era was .2852 and your highest home run total 17.
Journeyman or not, the New York Post is able to cite him as two-time world champion. His second world series championship came with the Cardinals in 2006, but Spiezio (from appearances) had a more signficant role on the 2002 Angels. A switch-hitter, he made 125 starts at first base in the regular season for that team and was the starter at first for all seven World Series games.
With 2.5 bWAR , a .371 OBP, and a three-run home run to begin the Angels’ rise from the seeming dead in game 6, Spiezio proved up to the task, but I still found him unlikely as a first base starter on any team, let alone a championship one. But from the standpoint that both the 2001 and 2003 Angels had losing records, it would seem the 2002 team, despite their 99 wins, really just caught lightning in a bottle. I had thought the core of that team sometimes made you a skeptic on paper but gave the “old school” guys the last laugh, winning year after year. But really I may be conflating the 2002 Angels with the 2004-2009 Angels. Spiezio was gone by then, signing with the Mariners as a free agent, and over those six years the Angels won five divisions, with at least 92 wins a season, but didn’t make the World Series. To make no connection between the 2002 and 2004-2009 teams would probably be a gross error, but from their records, the Angels do sort of have the look of a team that won in the wrong year — not an unommon reality in this era of multiple playoff rounds.
But even in the best version of themselves, the Angels in this general era seem to have been forgettable at first base. Then went from 1988-2008 without their starting first baseman having 4.0 bWAR. This was bookended by Wally Joyner in 1987 and Kendrys Morales in 2009.
N2: He’s had monthly averages of .314, .255, .211, and .405, but right now Chandler Simpson’s .296/.329/.359 looks just like last year’s .295/.326/.345.
As I’ve said, there isn’t a whole lot going on with him other than batting average. He’s never hit a home run, for instance. So that lessens the noise considerably, and tends to make seasons look more like one another.
N3: An Esmerlyn Valdez home run off Jameson Taillon was quite the Strat-O-Matic outcome, at least if you use 2026 statistics.
Even with the betting that is now a part of baseball, I think there is much more of a preoccupation with this kind of concern in horse racing. There is always this general air of suspicion that “none of it means anything,” and that percentages alleged before a race had better show up in that race, or else. It’s not my world, but it seems that people who bet on specific baseball events always do start with the odds, rather than taking to heart the idea that they can simply and literally predict the event.
N4: The Twins hit 3 triples yesterday. Trying to put that in perspective, they have only 17 all season. Team triples seems to fit an individual-player home run framework, as we could see a player with 14 home runs at the end of July hit 3 more in a game.
Looking at the relation further, the Marlins and the Diamondbacks are this year’s team triple leader, with 24. That is comparable but well off Yordan Alvarez’s total of 34 dingers, though, and suggests that triples for a team might be more difficult than home runs for an individual.
2021-2025 seems to give a similar picture, as the top triple team had between 37 and 47. But you only need to go back to 2018 to find the top triple-hitting team (the Diamondbacks with 50) outdoing the top home run hitter (Khris Davis with 48). And just two years before that, the Diamondbacks hit 56 triples, and the Giants 54.3
As it turns out, for whatever reason, of late 3-home run games by individuals and 3-triple games by teams have been no contest, with individuals dominating. Including 4-home run games,4 since 2020, home run cases lead, 92 to 26.
One thing that concerns me in this whole analysis is that a top triple team might not stand out from an average triple team as much as a top home run hitter stands out from an average home run hitter. You could argue that, in terms of triples, every team is sort of an average triple team. And I think that may be why, on the individual game level, my home run group dominates the way that it does, and the ratio of the league leaders isn’t so much of a guide. To this point, it is interesting to note that the individual HR/3B ratio this year is less than the 9-to-1 that an exact conversion from an individual to a team would seem to dictate. The ratio of HR/3B has been 8.63.
If you break home runs down into nine units, they should then be the smaller number. But in game counts with the same required number, home runs have run ahead.
N5: Trivia….Freddy Peralta both exactly 10th this year in hits and walks allowed. He’s the only guy in the top in both (combining AL and NL, and admitting that Peralta is exactly tied for 10th in walks).
Sandy Alcantara has given up the most baserunners, though, 12 more than Peralta.
The book is about Spieizio’s substance abuse problems that he says began in the wake of a back injury while with the Mariners. I would have guessed he had “tell-all” material about those 1997 A’s of McGwire, Canseco and Jason Giambi, and about the Angels bullpen of 2002, which I believe Howard Bryant had a source telling him was steroid-suspect. Maybe the book does allude to drug use on these teams, but as for Spiezio himself, the Post says he presents himself as a clean liver, and it was in the Mariners days that his spiral began.
Except for his 9 games in 1996.
The most triples for a team this century in a season — the 61 of the 2001 Rockies.
You might wonder about 4-triple games. There haven’t been any since 2020. But the amazing thing is, the last time there was one, it was a 5-triple game — Jose Peraza, Phil Ervin, Eugenio Suarez and Nick Senzel (twice) combining for 5 for the Reds in Colorado on 7/13/19.