Sports Reference Blog

In honor of Gleyber Torres's ridiculous performance against the Orioles this season, we've made a subtle, but very useful, tweak to the Split Finder tools in the Baseball Reference Play Index.

Previously, when you selected split by opponent and selected "match any listed" you were served results that included all opponents .500 or better, all opponents under .500 and interleague opponents lumped together. While those are technically opponent split options, it didn't really match the spirit of the search, which was users searching for outstanding (or awful) performances against any single opponent. So we've made a tweak to "match any listed" opponent split searches and now show only splits vs individual teams in those searches.

Here's a few examples of searches you can now run easily, without having to sift through records against teams above and below .500:

• The record for most home runs vs. a single opponent in a season (since 1908) is Lou Gehrig's 14 in 23 games against the 1936 Indians. Gleyber Torres currently has 10 in 12 games against the 2019 Orioles. The teams will meet 7 more times this season (all in August).
• Since 1908, only one player has hit 100+ HR vs a single opponent. That player is, of course, Babe Ruth, who hit 123 against the Tigers and 108 against the Athletics.
• No one has randomly owned an opponent quite like Ken Singleton owned the Mariners. His 1.142 career OPS against them was 75% better than against all of his other opponents, the largest such margin by any player with 300+ PA vs. an opponent.
• The most strikeouts a pitcher has had against a single opponent in a season since 1908 is 73 by Walter Johnson against the 1910 St. Louis Browns.
• Warren Spahn threw 919.1 career innings against the Cardinals. That's the most IP any pitcher has against a single opponent since 1908.
• The record for HR in a season against a single opponent is 48 by the 1956 Yankees against the Kansas City Athletics. The 2019 Yanks have 36 in 12 games against the Orioles.
• The record for wins against a single opponent in a season (since 1908) is 21, done four times. In the divisional era (since 1969) that record is 17.

We hope you enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 31st, 2019 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Play Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.