Illustrating Plate Appearances To Ruben Amaro

Crossing Broad recently uncovered that Phillies GM (General effing Manager) Ruben Amaro Jr. doesn't really understand the difference between plate appearances and at bats. While discussing Jimmy Rollins' run at Mike Schmidt's Phillies' hits record, RAJ dropped this unknowledge bomb on us...

“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.”

That man runs a Major League Baseball front office. Into the ground but the fact remains the same. The 28-36 Phillies are only 6.5 games out of first in the NL East. So, maybe they can turn things around. I designed this to help Ruben Amaro Jr. with his unsurprising lack of understanding baseball terms.

Obviously, there are some other factors that can play into the discrepancy of PAs and ABs but baby steps. Hope this helps!