Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 20, 2005
Birthday Twins

It's really too bad that Frank Thomas can't play and Bagwell probably won't play much. The two have the exact same birthday, born on May 27, 1968. Both were outstanding offensive first basemen (Bagwell was a great defensive player as well). Both won MVP awards in 1994. Baseball Reference lists Thomas as the second most similar player to Bagwell, and Bagwell as the most similar player to Thomas. Bagwell has 449 career home runs, Thomas 448. They've each played their MLB careers with one franchise. Despite their greatness, neither of their teams ever made it to the World Series until now.

Apart from Thomas being five inches taller than Bagwell, you might think they really were twins!


Posted by David Pinto at 09:13 AM | World Series | TrackBack (1)
Comments

Apart from Thomas being five inches taller than Bagwell, you might think they really were twins!

Great line! :-)

Posted by: Iain at October 20, 2005 09:35 AM

can bagwell dh???

Posted by: ken at October 20, 2005 11:11 AM

Why would you not DH Bagwell in games played in Chicago? He can't play defense so you might as well maximize the value of his bat. Bill

Posted by: Bill McKinley at October 20, 2005 11:34 AM

Would it be a first, if two guys with the same birthday played in the same World Series game?

Posted by: Devon at October 20, 2005 11:52 AM

What I've heard is that Bagwell wants to DH, but Garner hasn't decided yet.

Posted by: David Pinto at October 20, 2005 11:58 AM

i am guessing that phil garner wants baggy to dh against lefties and mike lamb against righties. phil LIKEY the platoon

also please note that baggy has two 30-30 seasons and frank does not - he wasn't a great baserunner and he didn't steal

Posted by: lisa gray at October 20, 2005 03:29 PM

I saw frank steal a base once. It was like watching a 747 take off; it just didn't seem possible.

Posted by: Scott Janssens at October 20, 2005 05:04 PM

Would it be a first, if two guys with the same birthday played in the same World Series game?
Posted by Devon at October 20, 2005 11:52 AM

Extremely doubtful. Remember that if 23 players play in a game, the odds are 50-50 two of them share the same birthday, and players are generally between 20 and 40 years of age. There must be plenty of times it's happened that two players in a World Series game were born in the same day and year.

Posted by: Syd at October 20, 2005 05:12 PM

50/50? like 1 out of 2 or 2/1 odds? I thought it was something like for any group of people larger than 20 it was a pretty chance that two people share a birthday...

Posted by: katerba at October 20, 2005 11:03 PM

To garner at least a 50% chance (x = 0.5) that at least one one guest has the same birthday as you? You'd need 253 guests.
http://noca.leaver.org/birthday/

Posted by: katerba at October 20, 2005 11:08 PM

man, it's been so long since stats....the above is for A defined, given day. for any given sunday(or monday....)
to answer the question, it's 23 people. The probability of any two people sharing a brithday within a group of 23 people is 0.5073.
http://noca.leaver.org/birthday/other.html
So yeah, it's a pretty good chance that between 50 players split between two rosters that two would share a birthday. Especially once you include the DL. heh.

Posted by: katerba at October 20, 2005 11:14 PM

Maybe they are twins. If Ahnold and DeVito can be twins....why not?

Posted by: Rally Monkey at October 21, 2005 09:29 AM
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