Batter's GIDP

How long have we kept this stat?

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Batter’s GIDP

Have you ever considered the fact that we haven’t always kept track of how many times hitters have ground into double plays?

I bet you didn’t know that we didn’t keep track of this. But it’s true. In fact, I’ll show it to you.

While I was doing my initial research on the origins of National Pastime, I came across a fact that surprised me. Take a look at the 1930 Philadelphia Athletics on Baseball Reference:

Notice something missing?

That’s right — there are no GDP counts for batters. None at all.

In fact, if you hover your mouse over that GDP box, it comes up with this explanation:

Now, I’m going to tell you that I can’t find grounded into double play statistics for the 1933 season. In fact, I can’t find them for the 1938 season — not for the Philadelphia Athletics, anyway:

Man, that roster changed a lot, didn’t it?

The 1939 Athletics do have those stats, though:

What Gives?

Why would this be the case?

I want you to think back to my article about boxscores a few days ago. Remember the list of things that were missing?

Let’s look at one of those 1930 boxscores I mentioned in that article:

From The Enquirer (Cincinnati), September 27, 1930, page 12

Now, as you’ll recall from that article, every single one of those boxscores was the same. They contained exactly the same information, which was only formatted differently based on the whims and personal preferences of the sports editor in question.

As you can clearly see here, there is no information about which player grounded into a double play.

The double play information here is about defense, not offense. One double play was made in this game, going English to Blair to Kelly, which means that the Cubs turned it. It’s not clear which Cincinnati player hit into the double play.

Now, we can figure that out, thanks to the research that Retrosheet has undergone. It came in the top of the 2nd inning. Here’s the account from Baseball Reference:

Remember, though, that you couldn’t run over to Baseball Reference back in 1930 or 1931 to check out who hit into a double play.

Modern Developments

We ought to be thankful for the statistical access that we have.

I really mean that. I’m guilty of teeing off on sabermetrics and what I consider statistical foolishness from time to time. However, I’m absolutely grateful to have the access to this kind of information for free.

It wasn’t that long ago that something as simple as how many double plays each pitcher was responsible for was considered proprietary information. Consider this piece about Bill James and his 1977 Baseball Abstract from The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz:

This is from page 103 in my electronic copy; not sure what page it is in the print version.

Bill James could get GIDP data if he wanted to, but only from The Sporting News Baseball Guide as published at the end of the year. In fact, even the 1943 edition of The Sporting News Baseball Guide (the earliest I could find online; I’ll keep hunting for that 1942 edition) had a complete listing of GIDP by batter… well, sort of complete:

From Spink, J. G. Taylor, Baseball Guide and Record Book 1943 (Sporting News: 1943), page 18

That’s right — these statistics were only available for players who had appearances in 10 or more games in 1942. And, yeah, that’s kind of a problem if you’re trying to make a baseball simulator that can assign double play balls to the right hitter.

There is a new hope, by the way. If you check out Retrosheet, you’ll see that some of those old GIDP blanks have been filled in:

For anything from the pre-Retrosheet era, though, you’ll need to adjust your expectations accordingly.