Comments on: Harold Baines, Athletic-Killer http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/236 This and that about baseball stats. Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:07:41 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Andy http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/236/comment-page-1#comment-479 Andy Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:01:53 +0000 http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/236#comment-479 It's pretty remarkable how much more often OAK walked him than did any other team. Overall, he actually looks to have been most productive against DET, with 148 RBI in just 213 games, despite the 0.797 OPS. I think a lot of the "Yankee-killer" stuff we hear (and coincidentally I just posted, cheek-in-tongue, about how Julian Tavarez is a Yankee-killer this year) is because more people see/remember games against the Yankees against other teams. In the early 80s, only a small fraction of the baseball world was paying attention to CHW/OAK games or CHW/DET games, but a much larger fraction paid attention to ???/NYY games. It's pretty remarkable how much more often OAK walked him than did any other team. Overall, he actually looks to have been most productive against DET, with 148 RBI in just 213 games, despite the 0.797 OPS.

I think a lot of the "Yankee-killer" stuff we hear (and coincidentally I just posted, cheek-in-tongue, about how Julian Tavarez is a Yankee-killer this year) is because more people see/remember games against the Yankees against other teams. In the early 80s, only a small fraction of the baseball world was paying attention to CHW/OAK games or CHW/DET games, but a much larger fraction paid attention to ???/NYY games.

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