Moving on to the American League this week in my on-going "expanded league leaders" thread, which has us expanding on the 1975 card celebrating the top-3 batters in the Junior Circuit for 1974:
Of
course we lead off with Hall of Famer Rod Carew, who hit a blistering
.364 during the 1974 season, also leading the league in hits with 218
and on-base-percentage with a .433 mark.
It was the fourth batting title for the Minnesota twin, outhitting the second place finisher by 48 points!
Those
numbers would get him a seventh-place finish in the MVP voting at
season's end, but as we all know, he wasn't nearly done tearing up A.L.
pitching, going on to win three more batting titles, including a
career-best .388 mark in 1977 when he'd also bring home the MVP Award at
last.
Speaking of the second place finisher in the A.L.
batting race for 1974, we come to Chicago White Sox second baseman Jorge
Orta, a fine batter who put in a very nice season, hitting .316 with
166 hits, 31 doubles, 73 runs scored and 67 RBI's in his first true full
season in the Majors.
Orta put in a solid 16 year Big League
career between 1972 and 1987, switching to the outfield before becoming a
full time DH the last five years of his career.
By the time
he was done, he finished with a very respectable .278 batting average,
with 1619 hits over 5829 at-bats in 1755 games.
Coming in
third hitting at a .310 clip is Kansas City Royals DH-extraordinaire Hal
McRae, who reached the .300 mark for the first time in his excellent
19-year career.
He'd reach the .300 mark six more times before
he was through, hitting a career-best .332 in 1976, but falling just
short of the batting title, losing to teammate George Brett on the last
game of the year, under a somewhat controversial situation.
McRae
was a workhorse of a hitter, finishing his career with over 2000 hits,
191 home runs, 1097 RBIs and a very nice .290 batting average in 2084
games between 1968 and 1987.
Next week, we move on to the N.L.'s top Home Run hitters for 1974! See you then!