http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/269 This and that about baseball stats. Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:57:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/269/comment-page-1#comment-619 Johnny Twisto Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:30:02 +0000 http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/269#comment-619 Interesting. I never thought of this, but perhaps the expanded strike zone made Clemente a more valuable player during those years. He was known as a free swinger, so maybe expanding the official zone didn't affect him, as his personal strike zone had always been that big. So he could golf the low pitches or reach the high pitches that most hitters couldn't handle well, and had to take for strikes or just hit weakly. For a few years, his raw numbers were essentially the same as they had been right before 1963. (And then he had that power surge -- I can't remember exactly what happened there, though I'm sure Mike Emeigh has explained it on BTF multiple times.) Interesting. I never thought of this, but perhaps the expanded strike zone made Clemente a more valuable player during those years. He was known as a free swinger, so maybe expanding the official zone didn't affect him, as his personal strike zone had always been that big. So he could golf the low pitches or reach the high pitches that most hitters couldn't handle well, and had to take for strikes or just hit weakly. For a few years, his raw numbers were essentially the same as they had been right before 1963. (And then he had that power surge -- I can't remember exactly what happened there, though I'm sure Mike Emeigh has explained it on BTF multiple times.)

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