Comparing the 1913 and 2016 road trip sweeps

The Giants won every game on their last road trip, a feat that the team hadn't accomplished in a 7 or more game roadie since a newly elected Woodrow Wilson was still measuring drapes in the White House, though that was mostly because back then, people measured cloth for fun. But how do those road trip sweeps stack up against each other? Hey, let's find out!

The opponents

1913 - The New York Giants took 4 against a very good Phillies team, and then 4 again facing the very poor 1913 Brooklyn Dodgers, who at the time were also known by about a thousand other names, to the extent that on an individual Baseball Reference boxscore, they're called the Dodgers, but their 1913 team page calls them the Superbas.

2016 - The Giants swept the Diamondbacks in a 4-game series and the Padres in 3. Neither is an especially good team, though the Diamondbacks at least should be better. The Padres, well, they sure try hard.

Best game

1913 - The most dominant win was the July 1 game against the Phillies, where Hall of Famer Rube Marquard faced off against Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander, and threw a shutout in a 10-0 Giants win. Probably the best game was the 10-inning 11-10 game the day before, when after the Giants' starter (Jeff Tesreau) and first reliever (Hooks Wiltse) were ineffective, Christy Mathewson bailed the team out with 4 innings of relief, giving up just one run, with the Giants eventually winning it against (him again) Grover Cleveland Alexander.

2016 - They were all great! They were all wins! And they were very similar wins too, so it's tough to really pick one out. But let's go with the Johnny Cueto start in San Diego, because it's fun to watch Johnny Cueto pitch, and it's fun to watch Hunter Pence hit home runs that should not be humanly possible.

Biggest hitting stars

1913 - 3B/SS Tillie Shafer started 6 out of the 8 games and hit .458/.526/.625, which, adjusting for era, is Very Good. 3B Buck Herzog started 3 games (but got into 6), and hit .556/.600/.889, which, still adjusting for era, is Absurd.

2016 - Denard Span led the team with a.393/.469/.464 line over that stretch, though Joe Panik's .891 OPS (with two big home runs) and Hunter Pence's .918 deserve mention too. Also, Trevor Brown homered in every game he appeared in during the streak, a feat whose impressiveness is in no way mitigated by his having appeared in only one game.

Biggest hitting disappointments

1913 - Art Wilson and Grover Hartley were each hitless subbing for starting catcher Chief Meyers, but as it was then, so it is now: it's hard to be a backup catcher. As for the starters, probably the weakest line belonged to George Burns, who still hit .268/.286/.317 over that stretch. If that's the worst offensive performance by any starter on a team in 8 games, those are probably going to be a good 8 games.

2016 - Matt Duffy hit .080/.115/080, taking him from the path of Reformed Slumper to Relapsed Slumper. Angel Pagan wasn't much better, with a line of .105/.227/.105, but since the Giants won all of those games, it would be pure pettiness to complain about his having been left on the roster for almost two weeks when he was hurt.

Biggest pitching stars

1913 - The Giants only used 7 pitchers during the streak, and 3 out of their 4 starters were fantastic, with Christy Mathewson (22 IP), Rube Marquard (18 IP and 2 CG), and Al Demaree (15 IP) putting up ERAs of 2.45, 2.50, and 1.20, respectively. In all those innings, they combined to issue 3 walks, all of them from Demaree. Two of those guys went into the Hall of Fame, and the other one flamed out after a promising first season, proving that baseball's been doing that to pitchers since always.

2016 - There were two pitchers who started twice on the trip, and both were fantastic. Johnny Cueto threw 16 innings (including one complete game) with a 1.69 ERA, struck out 17, and walked 4. Jeff Samardzija threw 16 innings with a 1.13 ERA, struck out 11, and didn't walk anyone.

In a way, Jake Peavy was also the biggest star, as he had A Good Start, which has not been a common thing for him this year.

Biggest pitching disappointments

1913 - The fourth starter, Jeff Tesreau, pitched 11.1 innings with a 4.76 ERA, which even adjusting for era, is This Joke Is Dead. As for the bullpen, in those days bullpens were not a priority, so Hooke Wiltse's one bad appearance (3 IP, 4 R, 2 ER) was just par for the course.

2016 - No one. You could quibble with the bullpen, I guess, though the small sample size means that it's pretty meaningless. Santiago Casilla had a rough inning on May 12 that ended with him yelling at Bruce Bochy, and Hunter Strickland gave up a lead a couple days later, but they both rebounded nicely, so it's hard to get too irate over it.