Post by Blunashun on May 23, 2018 14:59:09 GMT
Baseball was measured in a much different way when we were kids. Batting average was the main statistic. I still cling to that stat in some ways. Yes, OB% is more important. But batting average still has a place. If you can consistently bat .300, how can anyone say that's not important? You're putting the ball in play & many of those aren't caught. I'm not talking about a Norm Cash type anomaly. More like a Roberto Clemente annual rite of passage.
Although always a Dodger fan, I looked up to Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays & Hank Aaron. Maybe especially Aaron. He was quiet. He played in cities that didn't garner a lot of attention. He wasn't in the World Series every year. He wasn't flashy like Mays. He just quietly churned out the stats year after year. He was a machine. The Dodgers didn't have anyone comparable to these guys.
One player I didn't have a lot of respect for was Harmon Killebrew. Still have his baseball cards though. How can anyone bat .240ish when yearly over 40+ of his hits could only be caught by someone in the stands? Didn't seem possible. How can a guy with close to 600 homeruns have less than 300 doubles? Just how slow & one dimensional are you?
For some reason he came to mind this morning & I went back & checked. Not once in his hallowed career did he have a 30 double season. Twice he scored 100 runs in a career in which he plated himself over 40 times on eight separate occasions.
Today I can look at his 120 point differential between batting average & OB% & see I was too rough on him. That he truly belongs in the Hall of Fame. But that doesn't mean there aren't still mixed emotions about him. How many pop-ups & ground-outs must he have had? He only had a couple of outlier seasons where his strikeouts seemed ridiculous, by the standards of the day. So there must have been a WHOLE lot of pop-ups & ground-outs.
Although always a Dodger fan, I looked up to Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays & Hank Aaron. Maybe especially Aaron. He was quiet. He played in cities that didn't garner a lot of attention. He wasn't in the World Series every year. He wasn't flashy like Mays. He just quietly churned out the stats year after year. He was a machine. The Dodgers didn't have anyone comparable to these guys.
One player I didn't have a lot of respect for was Harmon Killebrew. Still have his baseball cards though. How can anyone bat .240ish when yearly over 40+ of his hits could only be caught by someone in the stands? Didn't seem possible. How can a guy with close to 600 homeruns have less than 300 doubles? Just how slow & one dimensional are you?
For some reason he came to mind this morning & I went back & checked. Not once in his hallowed career did he have a 30 double season. Twice he scored 100 runs in a career in which he plated himself over 40 times on eight separate occasions.
Today I can look at his 120 point differential between batting average & OB% & see I was too rough on him. That he truly belongs in the Hall of Fame. But that doesn't mean there aren't still mixed emotions about him. How many pop-ups & ground-outs must he have had? He only had a couple of outlier seasons where his strikeouts seemed ridiculous, by the standards of the day. So there must have been a WHOLE lot of pop-ups & ground-outs.