Thursday, January 29, 2009

Sean Casey: So Close Yet So Far

If you've been following baseball transactions recently, you've seen that three-time All-Star first baseman Sean Casey retired earlier this week. He's not leaving baseball behind, however, since he's got a gig lined up with the new MLB Network.

I was looking up his career stats and noticed something interesting. In 1999, Casey had a career high in RBI with 99. He matched that total during the 2004 campaign. This makes him one of only five players in all of major league history to put up two seasons of exactly 99 RBI. The others were Kirby Puckett, Lee May, Bibb Falk, and Ty Cobb. If you don't feel like clicking all those links, he's the only player of the five who didn't ever reach 100 RBI in a season during his career.

Here are the other players whose career high in RBI was 99:
I know that RBI isn't a very good way to measure a player's ability. It's more a reflection of lineup spot, teammates, blah blah blah. Still, 100 RBI is a benchmark season in a player's career. If you drive in 100 runs, you get the important run-producer label. It's got to be tough to get so close to that mark and never clear the barrier.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that Lee May also had two seasons with 98 RBI.