A week or two ago, when Mookie Betts recorded his 200th hit of 2016, I put together a post on 200-hit seasons in Boston Red Sox history. Well, I guess I should have waited a bit longer to hit publish on that one, because over the final weekend of the season a second Red Sox player achieved the mark!
Dustin Pedroia ended up with 201 hits on the year, the second time in his career that he's topped 200 in a season. Neither Dustin's 201, nor Mookie Betts' 214 hits were enough to take top spot in the league this year though. That honor for 2016 goes to Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros, who raked in 216 hits!
This gives me a nice excuse to show off a rookie card I've been sitting on for a few months now...
Nice card, huh? I've wanted a decent Altuve rookie for at least a couple of years now, and with my love for the Cognac Diamond Anniversary parallels this one was an easy pick. I wasn't necessarily looking for a graded copy, but this particular card was available for a real steal that was less than any raw copy I could find.
I'm hearing Jose's name less and less when it comes to 2016 AL MVP (lately all the talk seems to be Trout vs. Betts), but I guess you never know. Any way you slice it though, it was quite a 2016 season put in by both of the second basemen featured in this post.
Can't wait for post-season baseball to start this week!
The Starrs Are Aligned
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When it comes to blogging... my timing is terrible. I'll see things on ESPN
or on other blogs that inspire a post, but I don't have scans ready to go.
On...
4 comments:
Great Altuve! Congrats on that steal of a deal.
Thanks Tim!
It is amazing how good Altuve is now. I was listening to a story where his hitting coach showed him that he was one of the worst offenders of swinging at pitches outside the zone last year. This lead to him being more patient and helped his walk rate and the power numbers soared.
Little known related stat - Altuve and Betts took a total of 22 hours and 14 minutes combined at-bat time. Pedroia took 56 hours and 31 minutes, and eighteen pairs of batting gloves that don't fit...
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