{"id":77060,"date":"2025-08-12T11:45:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T11:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77060\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T11:45:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T11:45:14","slug":"this-baseball-team-recently-broke-a-79-year-old-record-why-didnt-anyone-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77060\/","title":{"rendered":"This baseball team recently broke a 79-year-old record. Why didn\u2019t anyone notice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Baseball\u2019s about to get started again, but before the Cubs and Dodgers take the field in the Tokyo Dome on Tuesday, let\u2019s take one more look back at last season, when baseball history was made, a decades-old record was smashed\u2014and nobody noticed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about the Baltimore Orioles who, in 2024, hit into 71 double plays.<\/p>\n

Quick explainer: A double play happens when the batter hits a ball, typically weakly and on the ground, and not only does he get thrown out, but his teammate who was already on base gets thrown out as well. It\u2019s the most demoralizing thing that happens on a baseball field, snuffing out a promising rally in an instant. So fewer is better.<\/p>\n

The 2024 Orioles\u2019 71 is the lowest full-season total in the history of Major League Baseball. No team hit into that few double plays when they only played 154 games. No team hit into that few double plays when they all wore wool pants. In fact, no team had ever hit into fewer than 75 double plays, a record set by the 1945 St. Louis Cardinals and equaled by the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays. The 2024 Orioles were, by a handsome margin, the best baseball team at not hitting into a double play that there has ever been.<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t hear about this on ESPN or in the New York Times. You didn\u2019t even hear about it from the Orioles themselves. That\u2019s because they didn\u2019t know. Sig Mejdal, the Orioles\u2019 vice president and assistant general manager, told me he knew the team\u2019s avoidance of the DP was a strength, but he didn\u2019t totally believe me that the team had set an all-time record until he looked it up himself. \u201cThe people I\u2019ve mentioned it to were quite surprised,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

What made the Orioles so good at not grounding into double plays? History offers little guidance. The list of least-GIDP-ing teams in history<\/a> has good teams, like the 100-win 2021 Rays (75 DP), and lousy teams, like the 99-loss 1967 Kansas City Athletics (79 DP). Some of these teams didn\u2019t hit into a lot of double plays because they barely ever had a man on first (the 1967 Athletics again).* Some of them, like the 1986 Cardinals (83 DP), stole tons of bases, which reduces the number of DP situations. But the 2024 Orioles had plenty of singles and walks, and not a lot of steals. They did hit the ball with elevation; their ground ball percentage of 40.3 percent was fourth-lowest in the majors. But that means three other teams hit even fewer ground balls, and yet many more of those turned into double plays. Frankly, I\u2019m stumped.<\/p>\n

To be fair to every other baseball team in history, double plays around the league are in modest decline. There were just 0.66 per team, per game in 2024, the lowest total in decades<\/a>. Maybe this has something to do with the banning of the shift, or the rule allowing video review of the \u201cneighborhood play\u201d (otherwise known as the \u201cWe\u2019ll just say the second baseman touched the bag because he had the vibes of having touched the bag\u201d play).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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But does it matter? We don\u2019t discount the slugging accomplishments of Pete Alonso or Aaron Judge because they play in the homer-happy 21st century. Every team had the opportunity to hit into the fewest double plays ever.\u00a0Only the Orioles did it.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not quite fair how unheralded this was. We pay attention to things that happen, especially when they happen unusually often or with unusual force. But we neglect the negative space of things that spectacularly, extraordinarily fail to happen. Those things are important! Nowhere more so than in baseball. Is there any moment more characteristic of the sport than the 3\u20132 count with the bases loaded in a tie game, when the whole stadium goes elbow-to-knee to see if the batter can successfully not hit the ball, successfully not even try to hit the ball, winning the game thereby?<\/p>\n

Anybody can cheer for Judge whanging his 50-somethingth ball into the stands. It takes a little connoisseurship to follow a reliever\u2019s scoreless-inning streak, or Luis Arr\u00e1ez going a whole month without striking out<\/a>, or Jim Palmer facing a bases-loaded jam 213 times in his 19-year career and never once giving up a grand slam.\u00a0Or the Orioles, coming up again and again with a runner on first and less than two outs and managing not to weakly ground-ball their way out of a rally.<\/p>\n

Regression to the mean spares no one, and the 2025 Orioles will likely hit into more double plays than they did in 2024. But let\u2019s pledge to go into the new season with a conscious appreciation of their achievement. I can\u2019t wait to see what they don\u2019t do this year.<\/p>\n

Correction, March 18, 2025: This piece originally misstated that the 1967 Royals had 79 double plays. The 1967 Athletics were the ones with 79 double plays. The Royals were not a baseball team until 1969. <\/p>\n

Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baseball\u2019s about to get started again, but before the Cubs and Dodgers take the field in the Tokyo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,363,99],"class_list":["post-77060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}