Rod Carew

[Greglw3]

In my opinion, Rod Carew is not only the greatest player in Twins history, but he’s also one of the greatest hitters of all time since the game was started in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright with The New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club [Wikipedia] (Note that Base Ball is not a typo but was the official way of referring to the sport at its inception, two words).

I’m basing this partly on the margins by which he beat the competition while winning his 7 batting titles in 12 years with the Twins.

In his greatest season, when he hit .388 with 239 hits, he won the batting title by 52 points over teammate Lymon Bostock.  Such great players as Carlton Fisk, Jim Rice and George Brett were left in the dust by Carew’s torrid season. Rice, at .320 was 68 points behind Carew and Brett at .312 was 76 points behind Carew. Carew completely and totally dominated fellow Hall of Famers in 1977.

Did you know that the American League batting Champion is known as the "Rod Carew American League Batting Champion"? [Wikipedia]

Rod Carew won the 4th most batting titles in baseball history while going on a hitting blitz in the 1970s that included .350, .359, .364, .388 averages in a 5 year period. Ty Cobb won 11 or 12 (it seems the 1902 title was contested and unsettled between Nap Lajoie and Cobb) and Carew has the 2nd most for the American League, all time.

Honus Wagner and Tony Gwynn won 8 batting titles each in the NL, although for one of Gwynn’s batting titles, in 1996, he did not have enough plate appearances to qualify, so 4 hitless plate appearances were added to his stats and he barely beat out Ellis Burks, .349 to .344.

Carew is tied all-time with 3 other players in winning 4 consecutive batting titles. Honus Wagner, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn are the other 3 and Nap Lajoie if you add his contested batting title with Ty Cobb.

The greatest margins of victory for any batting champions were Nap Lajoie’s .426 - .340 lead over Mike Donlin in 1901, an 86 point margin in the AL, and Cap Anson’s .399 average was 71 points higher than Joe Start in the NL 1881 season.

Now let’s compare Honus Wagner’s margins of victory for his 8 batting titles with Carew’s for his 7.

Wagner: 1900 (+14), 1903 (+4), 1904 (+20), 1906 (+12), 1907 (+22), 1908 (+20), 1909 (+29), 1911 (+1).

Carew: 1969 (+23 over Reggie Smith .332 - .309), 1972 (+6 over Lou Piniella .318 - .312 in the year of the pitcher), 1973 (+44 over George Brett .350 - .306), 1974 (+48 over Jorge Orta .364 - .316), 1975 (+28 .359-.331 over Fred Lynn), 1977 (+52 .388 - .336 over Lyman Bostock), 1978 (+9 .333 - .324 over Al Oliver).

Wagner had a cumulative 122 point lead for the 8 years, winning his batting titles by an average of 15.25 points per season.

Carew had a cumulative victory over the second place finishers of 210 points for an average margin of victory for his 7 batting titles of 30 points compared to Wagner’s 15.25!!!

Notice that the closest Wagner ever came to Carew’s 52 point margin in 1977 was his 29 point margin in 1909. Carew blows away the greatest margin of victory of the man who tied for 2nd most batting titles in AL/NL history.

Note that Oscar Charleston won batting titles in The Negro Leagues and in The Eastern Colored League.

Using margin of victory in the batting titles to compensate for different eras, Carew blows away Honus Wagner 30-15 (rounded). I believe this is enough to claim that Rod Carew is one of the top 3 pure hitters in baseball history. I won’t do it now but it would be interesting to calculate the average margins for Cobb and Gwynn. I may do it if this catches on with Twins fans. It doesn’t seem far fetched to claim Carew is the greatest pure hitter in baseball history depending on how the Cobb and Gwynn Calculations come out.

Another citation for one of the greatest hitters/player of all time are that Carew was Rookie of the year in 1967 and was an All-Star in his rookie year. Starting with that first All-Star appearance in 1967, Carew would be an All-Star for 18 consecutive seasons, missing only in his age 39 season, his last, played for the Angels.

Carew also had 6 top 10 MVP finishes including winning the award in 1977 with that .388 average in which he had a .449 OBP! He scored a league leading 128 runs for Gene Mauch’s team that year. He also had 100 RBIs, 694 PA, 38 Doubles, 16 Triples and 14 Home Runs.

It’s also worthy to note that Carew won the 1977 MVP award despite playing on a 4th place team in a 7 team AL West!

Carew stole over 35 bases for 4 consecutive years from 1973-1976 including a 49 steal season and a 41 steal season. And, of course, he stole home 7 times in one season!

I admired Rodney Cline Carew so greatly, that even though a natural righty, all wiffle ball, softball and possibly baseball games I played from my 20s until late 30s, I would replicate his wide open stance and bat left handed.

It may go without saying that I think every Twins fan should be extremely proud that Carew is one of our own and one of the best that ever lived!

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[mikelink45]

I loved watching Carew bat.  He was an artist.  And yes - BA counted as a great accomplishment.

[BillyBallLives]

I was a hot dog vendor at the Met in 1977.

When Carew came to the plate it was useless to try to sell anything...fans just wanted to see him hit.

I'd park myself in an ideal spot behind the plate and watch the at bat myself. 

[tony&rodney]

As shown by my byline, I'm a huge Rod Carew fan as well. I have often quoted his dominance over every batter in baseball using the measure of batting average, specifically that 1977 season. It irked me that George Brett, a very fine player and fellow Hall of Fame member, received more national press than Rodney when George  hit  .390 with 515 PA and 175 hits versus Carew's 694 PA and 239 hits or if you prefer GB=9.4 WAR vs. RC=9.7WAR.

An interesting point that started Carew's career is that Calvin Griffith "ordered" the manager to start Carew from Day One of the regular season. Rod had only played as high as "A" ball to that point. Cal knew baseball talent.

[Hubie29]

My all time top 3.

1.  Carew

2.  Killebrew

3.  Oliva

I loved watching Carew.  How can you forget that lean back crouch and flick into left field. Then a sprint down the line and losing his helmet.  And the chaw!