“Baseballiest” Stats of 2014

As you know, baseball is a numbers-driven game. Fans and sports media alike love talking about averages, ERAs, WARs and the like. Frankly, it’s rare a player is talked about — whether good or bad — without a slew of numbers being thrown out there. So we’ve decided to break down the 2014 Durham Bulls season with some of the “Baseballiest” stats we could find. These range from oddities to things we simply just found interesting enough to share. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do, and if you don’t, well, there’s no way we’re going to know that now is there?

RHP Matt Andriese became the first Bulls pitcher since at least 1998, when the team jumped to the Triple-A ranks, to win back-to-back Bulls games as a starting pitcher. Andriese pitched on July 12, the Bulls were rained out on July 13, and the All-Star Break was the 14th-16th. Andriese took the bump on the 17th and defeated the Gwinnett Braves, winning consecutive Bulls games.

From 5/23–6/7, Andriese turned in 23.0 straight scoreless innings, the longest stretch by a Durham starter since Mitch Talbot tossed 24.0 straight scoreless frames in 2008.

RHP Alex Colome made 15 starts with the Bulls this season. In 10 of those 15 he allowed 0 or 1 earned run. In the other five starts, he allowed a combined 29 earned runs (9, 5, 7, 3, 5).

RHP Jeremy Hellickson rehabbed with Durham from 6/12–7/7, and went 1–4 with a 7.23 ERA. In five starts with the Bulls this season he allowed 20 runs (15 earned), which was 37% of the amount of runs he allowed as a member of the Bulls in 2009–10, when he made 30 starts and went 18–4 with a 2.47 ERA.

RHP Nathan Karns had perhaps the most consistently inconsistent season ever. See below:

• Over his first 6 starts, he was 2–2 with an 8.20 ERA, the 2nd-worst ERA in the IL
• Over his next 6 starts, he was 1–0 with a 1.45 ERA, the 6th-best ERA in the IL
• Over his next 4 starts, he was 1–3 with a 13.22 ERA, the worst ERA in the IL
• Over his next 6 starts, he was 5–0 with a 1.83 ERA, the 4th-best ERA in the IL
• Over his final 5 starts, he was 0–4 with a 6.92 ERA, the 4th-worst ERA in the IL

Prior to his promotion to Tampa Bay on 6/7, RHP Kirby Yates held left-handed hitters to a .050 average (2-for-40).

Despite playing in just 30 of Durham’s 144 games (20.8%), C Mayo Acosta caught five of the team’s 15 shutouts (33%).

INF Mike Fontenot hit three home runs in 113 games this season. All of them came on the road at Norfolk.

Speaking of Fontenot, he hit 34 points better when he was behind in the count (.299) than when he was ahead (.265).

OF Mikie Mahtook hit a career-high 12 home runs this season. After going the first 35 games of the season without a home run, he hit eight over his next 42 games. He then went 42 games without a home run, before hitting four over his next six games.

OF Jeremy Moore hit .183 for Double-A Montgomery, totaling four multi-hit games until his promotion to Durham on 6/24. With the Bulls, he had five multi-hit games in his first 12 contests, and had more hits in his first 16 games (23) than he did with Montgomery in 38 games (22).

In the postseason, INF Wilson Betemit hit just .125 but registered an on-base percentage of .500. He went 1-for-8 at the dish, but walked six times.

On 4/6, INF Ray Olmedo suffered the first four-strikeout game of his career in his 1,644th game.

On 7/27 manager Charlie Montoyo was ejected for arguing a play at home plate, the first time he was ejected since 2010, a span of 584 games. On 8/12 in Rochester he was ejected again, ending his new streak at 12 games.

Despite getting shut out 11 times this season, the second-most in Triple-A Baseball, Durham was never shut out by an IL South Division rival, spanning 64 games.

This season the Bulls were no-hit for the first time since 2012, as the Rochester Red Wings shut them down. However, the game spanned 18 days, over 600 miles and two ballparks, with the Red Wings serving as the road team in their home ballpark. On July 24 in Durham, Rochester’s RHP Alex Meyer threw 3.0 hitless innings before the game was suspended in the middle of the fourth frame. The game was completed on August 11 in Rochester, as LHP Logan Darnell completed the feat by tossing 6.0 hitless innings.