Ruben Amaro is a confused man.
Ruben Amaro forgets the difference between at-bats and plate appearances
A man who is paid a lot of money to run a baseball team seems unsure of how walks are calculated.
Just last week, the Phillies' general manager was forced to deny claims that he accidentally traded a prospect after reports surfaced that the team included Domingo Santana, now a top prospect for the Astros, in a 2011 trade that netted them Hunter Pence because of a clerical error. Now, Amaro seems to have forgotten how at-bats and plate appearances differ. From Amaro's interview in the Phillies' TV broadcast booth Thursday (via Crossing Broad's Kyle Scott):
“Yeah, we were checking it out. In fact Schmitty was in the booth yesterday when we were talking about it, and, um, I think it’s about a thousand difference in, ah, plate appearances. Pretty amazing. But their batting averages aren’t that different, which is kind of... weird. I don’t quite understand it.”
Amaro is referring to Mike Schmidt, who still has almost 900 career plate appearances on the other subject of the conversation, Jimmy Rollins. Rollins entered Thursday two hits away from tying Schmidt’s franchise record, but Amaro just seemed blown away that they had similar batting averages because of the gap in plate appearances, which is largely because Rollins remains a little fewer than 800 walks shy of Schmidt’s lifetime total.
Never change, Rube.
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