14 In National Pastime

Walking Like Van Beek

14 In National Pastime

You probably remember the mess we discovered when we looked at play result number 13 in National Pastime last time around:

Well, the good news is that 14, the walk number, isn’t quite as messy.

Remember that play result 14 is always a walk, no matter what. Like batter’s strikeouts, batter’s walks were not traditionally recorded in boxscores. Walk totals only appeared in statistics that came out at the end of the year.

Even though it’s not quite as crazy as the 13 situation, there are still a few strange things going on with the 14s. After all, without strangeness, it wouldn’t be National Pastime, would it?

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14 Despite No Walks

7 players received play result number 14 despite not receiving a single walk all season:

Naturally, all 7 of these players were pitchers. There were no position players carded in National Pastime that didn’t walk at least once in 1930. Every single National Pastime player received at least one 14.

This is extremely good evidence that Clifford Van Beek didn’t have walk statistics in front of him. Additionally, if you look at those cards closely, you can see a pattern emerging. All right handed batters have a 14 result on dice roll 35. On the single left handed hitter, the 14 result is on dice roll 36.

You might recall that we talked about National Pastime sample cards a little while ago:

If you look back, you’ll see that dice roll 36 for left handed hitters and switch hitters resulted in a 14 in our theoretical sample cards. However, the theoretical default dice roll for result 14 was 45, not 35.

Now, here’s the interesting part. There are 57 players in National Pastime who received a 14 result at dice roll number 35. 50 of these were pitchers who hit right handed. In fact, almost every single one right handed pitcher received a 14 at 35: I only have found 6 right handed hitting pitchers who received something else at 35.

The right handed pitchers with a 14 at 35 received a variety of other numbers. 13 received result 13 at 35, 12 received a 40, 9 received a 23 (remember that all 80 National Pastime pitchers have a 23 somewhere on their cards), 9 received a 22 (all 80 pitchers also have a 22), 3 received an 8, 2 received a 28, 1 received a 29, and 1 received a 38 (perhaps a misprint that was supposed to be a 28?).

I think this points towards Van Beek using a general model and pushing numbers around when needed. My guess is that the right handed pitchers defaulted to receiving a 14 on dice roll 35, and that this result only varied when something else on the card required a change.

This requires more research, but I think we’re on the right track. And I think it’s pretty obvious that Van Beek didn’t use the 1931 baseball guides.

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Max Bishop

Now, I might be wrong.

The National Pastime leader in 14s is Max Bishop.

And, judging from his 1930 statistics, you’d expect it to be Max.

Bishop drew 128 walks in 1930, accompanied by 441 at bats. I’d estimate that he would need a little over 8 14s on his card to replicate those results.

He wound up with 6 — far and away more than anybody else in the set:

However, Babe Ruth provides a counter example. Ruth, who was an obvious player to walk, led the major leagues with 136 bases on balls. He had 581 at bats, leading me to estimate about 7 14s for him.

He wound up with only 3:

Let’s pause for a second and look at these cards side-by-side:

Do you see the similarities? The following dice rolls follow a clear left handed hitter pattern:

• 12

• 16

• 21

• 26

• 32

• 36

• 41

• 43

• 45

• 46

• 52

• 61

• 62

• 65

These results seem consistent with the theoretical left handed hitter model card I wrote about in the post above.

The following dice rolls deviate from that pattern:

• 14 The pattern calls for a 34; Ruth has a 24.

• 23 The pattern calls for a 31; Bishop has a 13.

• 24 The pattern calls for a 28; Ruth has a 13.

• 34 The pattern calls for a 29; Ruth has a 13.

• 42 The pattern calls for a 13. Bishop has a 40; Ruth has a 14.

• 53 The pattern calls for a 32; Bishop has a 21.

• 54 The pattern calls for a 28; Bishop has a 13.

• 56 The pattern calls for a 33; Ruth has a 13.

• 63 The patter calls for a 31; Ruth has a 16.

• 64 The pattern calls for a 13. Bishop has a 14; Ruth has a 40.

I’m not surprised that Babe Ruth has 3 strikeout numbers in unusual places. It is odd, though, to see Ruth get a 14 on 42 instead of a 13. You’d think Van Beek would have given him a 13 on 42 and kept one of the other out numbers in its place.

What does it mean? I don’t know yet, but I do have a feeling that there’s a way to unravel this pattern.