(Photo by M.C. Martin/Flickr)
Today, Brandon Phillips had another great day at the plate, going 3-5 with a home run and 4 RBI. Of crse, kinda everyone had a good day at the plate today – it was certainly not Josh Tomlin and the Cleveland bullpen’s day.
I know it probably just co-incides with BP getting hot, but I had an unscientific feeling that he’s been pretty good in interleague in general this year, so I looked at his career splits and compared them with the splits of some of the other Reds with careers long enough to have some reasonable interleague numbers.
- Phillips: 501 PA, .801 OPS (.756 career OPS)
- Votto: 270 PA, .958 OPS (.971 career OPS)
- Bruce: 277 PA, .642 OPS (.809 career OPS)
- Stubbs: 139 PA, .555 OPS (.723 career OPS)
- Hanigan: 101 PA, .686 OPS (.738 career OPS)
- Ludwick:333 PA, .674 OP S (.782 career OPS)
- Heisey, 109 PA, .751 OPS (.752 career OPS)
- Cairo: 526 PA, .660 OPS (.679 career OPS)
So, no, it’s not a huge difference, and I would probably chalk it up in part to the time of year that interleague occurs, for example, I feel like Bruce is always in one of his slumps sometime in June – and I doubt interleague play is the cause. Still, BP is the only guy on that list with an interleague OPS higher than career, which is pretty notable.
Probably spurious, but maybe we can turn it into one of those word-of-mouth myths – “Oh yeah, everyone knows that BP just destroys American League competition! He’s the best there is when it comes to interleague play.*”
*Not intended to be a factual statement.
