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Wednesday, February 3, 2016

A Player From Both the First and Last Kellogg's Sets Was Traded on This Day

The Twins traded Rod Carew on this day in 1979 to the Angels.  He played 12 years with Minnesota and 7 more years with California.  He won 7 AL batting titles and finished his career with 3,053 hits.
I expected his hit total to be higher than that in 19 seasons.  Here is what I found.  He played 137 games in his first year and 127 games in his last year.  What surprised me was that his career average was only 130 games per season.  Eight times he played less than 130 games in a season.

If he averaged 156 games per season that would be a 20% increase.  That would probably have put him over 3,600 hits.  Those injuries and missed games really add up over a career.

In his healthiest season of 156 games he also had a career high 49 stolen bases.  


During the All-Star break in 1985 I have no idea what he did.  Why is that news?  He was all all-star every year from 1967 - 1984.

Why was he traded?  There were many other issues with Carew and the team besides the fact that he would have been a free agent after the 1979 season.  You can find out more about that elsewhere.

Rod is one of only three players to appear in the first and last main Kellogg's sets (Three Players in the 1970 and 1983 Kellogg's Sets).  Pete Rose was also traded before the 1979 season.

3 comments:

  1. Big Carew fan as a kid and I'm surprised he spent so much down time. Great info.

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  2. I had no idea he missed all of those games...didn't he steal home like seven times one season?

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  3. He did some amazing things. He even got mentioned in an Adam Sandler holiday song.

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