Quote:
Originally Posted by Splitter24
And, BTW, if his stats don't back it up, whose stats from that era do? Which AL hitter did, then? Did anybody?
|
How about George Brett, who was nearly an exact contemporary of Rice and was intentionally walked nearly three times as often.
The '85 Royals weren't exactly Murderers Row or anything, but Brett was intentionally walked more times
that season than Rice was in his three highest seasons combined.
In 1978 Rice batted in front of the 38-year-old Carl Yastrzemski the whole year and despite an OPS+ almost 50 points higher he was only IBB'ed seven times. This was a guy who was the first player to 400 total bases in a generation and AL pitchers were almost unanimous in saying "hey, I'd rather pitch to you than a 38-year-old DH with a .423 slugging percentage."