The Stathole: Dumb Stats From The Past Week In Sports
Gentlemen and ladies of sports degeneracy. We made to late August - the Christmas Eve of the sports calendar. Your favorite football team is undefeated in the standings. Your fantasy draft has either just happened or is on the docket. Sunday parlays are about to fly. College football is right around the corner. We got baseball playoffs are around the corner, and let's add a dash of survivor pools / pick-ems as that little sprinkle of salt/pepper and oregano to put a touch of spice on the fall sports pizza that awaits.
Take a moment to appreciate what's in front of you. The dreams. The hopes. The wonder.
Cool. Let's get into some dumb stats from the past week in sports.
Let's start with the Dodgers. There's a lot of news about funny numbers surrounding this team and I'm here to tackle it head on as any sports media guy named Jeff would do.
Kyle Tucker's 26-consecutive hitless streak
If you're Kyle Tucker, I think you have to seize the opportunity to come out and say you went on a hitting strike to take a stand against white collar life insurance alleged impropriety. Job well done, Kyle. It's all over the news now so you can go back to hitting some baseballs.
0-26 isn't even that bad in the grand scheme of things. I ran a look up on the longest streaks of all time and he barely made to top 1,000 worst consecutive hitless at bats streaks. Although since my data doesn't delineate the order of at bats in a game, I just used streaks that don't start or conclude said streak containing a hit. For example Chris Davis's #1 rank (shocking) is actually 54 as he got out in his last three at bats the game before September 15, 2018 while getting a hit on his first at bat the game after April 12, 2019.
I guess what I'm saying is... the following list makes these batters look better than they really were. 
Well, I can't show you the batter list without having a little fun and doing the same thing for pitchers. Bruce Ruffin made it over three calendar years without a hit in the early 90s. Wasn't even that great at pitching to be honest.
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Couple more big MLB stats to get to this week. How about the Brewers tying the modern era record for biggest shutout with a 22-0 win over the Mariners. Here's your official High Score list:
This is all from 1901 or later though. There WAS a bigger shutout in 1883 when Hoss Radbuorn's Providence Grays beat Philly 28-0.
Meanwhile - PCA is still out there doing PCA things as he hit both a leadoff and walk-off home run in a game which has only happened a handful of times in MLB history. Then crazy enough, Randy Arozarena of the Mariners does that same thing a week later.
Giphy Images.Like PCA - Arozarena would go on to homer again in the following game to lead off. They would be the only two to ever do this. Just a brain-breaking stat.
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Let's talk football!
Where are you going Browns fans? Fine - we don't have to talk about your team. We can talk about another Brown instead.
AJ Brown - Cancer to the Eagles by getting more targets???
This stat looks 100 percent like something I would cook up to send to PFT to give shit to Max about. In fact, I'm not ruling doing that yet. Got to hand to Cowherd here though. This is daytime sports talk.
Tired: "Teams that give their running back 20+ carries win more often"
Wired: "Teams that give their star receiver more targets lose more often"
What do teams do when they are winning? They run the ball. What do teams do when they are losing? Hint. They don't run the ball. I hit the stats myself on here to find some other receivers who also should have been targeted less than eight times per game in their career. Found a few names of some bums who shouldn't have gotten so much attention. Much like AJ Brown.
There you go Browns fans. This stat should get you all very excited about the prospect of winning some games this year.
I will say I think there might be a method to their madness in naming Watson the starter. They don't play a home game until Week 3. If you start Shedeur, there's a good chance he'll be bad enough that you have to bench him by then. This way, you can probably get Shedeur in Week 3. That's something to be hopeful for!
But it will interesting to see if Deshaun can quiet the boos. I think Michael Jordan said there's no greater feeling than quieting a crowd. Watson has positioned himself to do this no matter where he plays! Chess not checkers. The fine print here is that he does actually have to play good.