More Moyer Facts

In case you missed it, the Philly Inquirer ran an insightful interview with the Phils' 45 year old lefty Jamie Moyer today. The article pointed out that over his career, Moyer has faced a challenging group of Hall of Fame hitters and he reviewed his perspective of facing each one. Some of the names on the list include Mike Schmidt, Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, and some other pitchers' nightmares.

I'd like to add on to that list with a few facts and some names of players Moyer has faced over the years...

-According to Baseball Reference.com, my calculations show that Moyer has faced a total of (get this) 2,149 different batters in his career. There's no other way to say that that is an insane number of batters to face.

-Furthermore, Moyer has faced a whopping 15,102 batters in his career during the regular season

Now, here are some other results he's had against various batters throughout his career:

-He has faced Garrett Anderson the most times (107 plate appearances), and Moyer has not fared well, allowing him to hit .317 with 5 homers and 17 RBI's.

-Scott Brosius has the distinction of having the lowest batting average against Moyer out of any player who has faced him 50+ times (currently listed as 50 plate appearances), and having an average below .200. He's hit a meager .146 against Moyer throughout the years.

-Moyer has never faced Nick Punto.

-In 50 plate appearances, Juan Samuel had Moyer's number, hitting .364, compared to a .259 career average.

-Steve Jeltz faced Moyer 13 times and managed a Mendoza line against him. He hit .200 on the button against the veteran lefty.

-The highest batting average against Moyer for any player with a minimum of 10 at bats goes to Alan Ashby, who had 11 plate appearances and hit .636 against the lefty. Ouch.

-The most home runs agains Jaime Moyer by any one batter is 10 by Manny Ramirez in just 57 appearances. Wow.

-Tim Salmon struck out the most times out of anybody with 17 K's in 99 at bats. Scott Brosius is second with 16 in half as many appearances. Back to the batting cage fellas.

-In all, Moyer has faced 18 current Hall of Famers. Taking out the pitchers on this list (Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton), the 15 remaining Hall of Famers hit a total of .331 with 8 homers and 44 RBIs and 1 triple against him in a total of 284 at bats. All things considered, that's not too bad. That's 1 homer in 35 at bats and not a ton of RBIs. It appears that Moyer has managed to make his living by allowing the "big dogs" to basically scatter around some hits, but not do a ridiculous amount of damage against him. That's cool.

So there's your update on our favorite 40-something fella on the Phils. I hope he's able to continue his consistent pitching this year, and maybe in a few years we'll be able to go back and look at the numbers again to see how things have changed.