EXPANDED LEAGUE LEADERS: 1975 A.L. BATTING

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!

1975 IN-ACTION: JORGE ORTA

The next player featured in my on-going 1975 “In-Action” sub-set is a forgotten player who put in some solid seasons for the Chicago White Sox in the middle of the decade, second baseman Jorge Orta:

Orta came up for the White Sox in 1972 and immediately became a fixture for the organization, just putting in solid all-around years between 1973 and 1978, hitting as high as .316 in 1974 and driving in as many as 84 runs in 1977.
In 1974, when he hit that career high of .316, he finished in second place in the batting race in the American League, albeit a distant second, behind Rod Carew’s .364 average.
Nevertheless, Orta was a productive player for some time, though easily overlooked when you played in the era of Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Pete Rose and Johnny Bench.
Even his position contemporary, Joe Morgan, was getting all the attention, and rightly so with two straight MVP’s in 1975 and 1976, playing for the “Big Red Machine”.
By the time Orta retired after the 1987 season after four seasons with the Kansas City Royals, he’d finish with a nice .278 batting average, with 1619 hits over 5829 at-bats, along with 733 runs scored and 745 runs batted in, with 130 homers and 79 stolen bases.