Ramirez has three such plate appearances. Carew also had five hits when facing a reliever for a second or third time in a game. Ramirez has just 90 plate appearances this year with a comparable advantage. (As many researchers have noted, the lack of slippage in the fourth-time-around numbers is mostly selection/survivor bias, with the sample dominated by the best pitchers having good days, often against weak opponents.)Ĭarew, in 1967, had 35 hits when facing a starter for a third time or more. 'Twas Ever Thus (splits by time facing a pitcher, 1967) As I have written before, there was a third-time-around penalty for starters in the 1960s teams just didn’t have the statistics to prove it or the depth to act upon it. In 1967, pitchers were asked to work deeper into games than they are today because the distribution of talent was such that tired starting pitchers were, for the most part, still better than fresh relievers. They’re also, however, due to changes in pitcher usage. Ramirez’s Guardians will face 20 this year, again more than twice the number Carew’s Twins did in 1967. The differences in those numbers are in part due to a greater number of opponents. That number should rise in September, but so will the raw number of pitchers Ramirez will face. Ramirez has faced one pitcher, Drew Hutchison, more than nine times (11). Carew faced seven pitchers at least 15 times and 18 pitchers at least ten times. With a month left, Ramirez has faced 208 pitchers - more than twice as many as Carew did as a rookie. We’re about 80% through the 2022 season, and Ramirez has about 40 PA fewer than Carew did in 1967, so it’s a fair comparison. Let’s pick someone close, say, Jose Ramirez. 305 against those 18 hurlers, many of whom were among the league’s best pitchers.Īs Carew would no doubt tell you, there aren’t many hitters like him today. In a ten-team league with no interleague play, Carew faced 103 pitchers, 18 of them at least ten times. Rod Carew came up with the Twins in 1967 as a slap-hitting second baseman, and in a season dominated by pitchers, he won the AL’s Rookie of the Year award with a. Today, though, I want to use Carew, whose Hall of Fame career ended almost 40 years ago, to illustrate changes in the game that don’t get enough attention, particularly when old players have the mic. The larger issue - the boogeyman “analytics” - we’ll get to later this week. Carew, surprisingly for a 76-year-old, doesn’t like the way baseball is being played today and let Manfred know about it. Over the celebration weekend, Rob Manfred participated in a traditional dinner with Hall of Famers, and some of the details were written up by Rod Carew in Carew’s newsletter. Last week, Ken Rosenthal reported a controversy stemming from last month’s Hall of Fame ceremonies.
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