Ruben Amaro appears not to understand how walks affect at bat totals

Last year Ruben Amaro said he didn’t care about walks, he cared about production. Maybe his apparent indifference to them is based on his failure to understand how they work.

That’s the takeaway from an appearance he made on the air during yesterday’s Phillies game. He was talking about how Jimmy Rollins is about to pass Mike Schmidt as the all-time Phillies hit leader. Amaro noted that Schmidt had nearly 900 more plate appearances than Rollins yet, magically, their batting averages aren’t very different despite the identical hit totals. The transcript of his comments via Crossing Broad:

“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.”

One would think that how walks, plate appearances and at bats interact would some something within the comprehension of a major league general manager, but maybe Amaro is more of a big picture guy and he leaves that complex stuff to subordinates.

In reality: I fail to believe that a major league GM doesn’t understand how walks affect at bat totals. I TOTALLY believe that Amaro would say such a thing to drive Phillies fans crazy, though. He’s the GM most likely to troll people, and it’s not even close.

Anyway, here’s the audio. Listen to the commentary added by Kyle from Crossing Broad at the end: