The on-air conversation occurred during Brock Holt's pinch-hitting appearance in the bottom of the sixth:
Joe Castiglione: Red Sox pinch hitters 21-for-58, that's a .362 average with an OPS of 1.146.Silly me, I looked it up.
Flemming: Hmmmm.
Castiglione: Five pinch homers.
Flemming: Most in the big leagues by a lot.
Eight teams have hit more pinch-hit home runs than the Red Sox. And two teams have hit almost twice as many as Boston.
The Dodgers have hit 9. The Giants have hit 9.
The Rockies have hit 8.
The Diamondbacks have hit 7. The Mets have hit 7. The Pirates have hit 7.
The Reds have hit 6. The Padres have hit 6.
And Atlanta, the Marlins, Phillies, and Cardinals each have hit 5.
You may have noticed that all 12 of those teams are in the National League, where they pinch-hit far more frequently. (The Giants leads MLB with 189 pinch-hit at-bats, while the Red Sox have only 58. The Orioles lead the AL with 62)
Perhaps Flemming meant to note that the Red Sox lead the American League in pinch-hit home runs "by a lot", but mistakenly said "big leagues"?
The Red Sox do, in fact, lead the AL with 5 pinch-hit home runs. But the Rangers have 4 and the Athletics have 3.
A team with 5 pinch-hit homers does not lead a team with 4 pinch-hit homers "by a lot". And when a team is tied for ninth in the big leagues when it comes to pinch-hit homers, that team does not have "the most in the big leagues by a lot" (or even "by a little").
2 comments:
For the brief few minutes I was listening to the radio broadcast last night (B7, I believe), they may have said the SAME EXACT THING, though it's possible (and it was said rather quickly) that they have the most pinch hits, or the highest percent of pinch hits, or something to that effect.
They do have the most pinch-hit hits in the AL, by a decent amount (22-16). And average (it's easy to eyeball it.)
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