Ryan Zimmerman, Rico Carty and Carlos Beltran
Posted by Raphy on May 13, 2009
Ryan Zimmerman has captured national attention with his early season hitting streak. However, his streak is not the earliest of its kind. In 1970 Rico Carty went 0-4 on opening day and then proceeded to get a hit in 31 straight games.
If you are unfamiliar with Carty you can read a little bit about him in the 1970 issue of Baseball Digest.
One thing that I did notice while looking at these 2 streaks is there is another player this year who has been almost as prolific as Zimmerman in getting base hits, but has not garnered the attention because he has not strung together a tremendously long streak. Here are the players (since 1954) who have the most games with a hit in their teams first 32 games.
Year Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+----+-----+-------------------------+ Ryan Zimmerman 2009 31 Ind. Games Rico Carty 1970 31 Ind. Games Ichiro Suzuki 2001 30 Ind. Games Derrek Lee 2007 30 Ind. Games Al Kaline 1955 30 Ind. Games Toby Harrah 1982 30 Ind. Games Carlos Beltran 2009 30 Ind. Games
Zimmerman and Carty are there, but Carlos Beltran - 2009 is right behind them. In fact, with his hit today Beltran has become the sixth player since 1954 with "31 hit games" in his teams first 33. Zimmerman, who is one of the six, is trying to become the first to 32. Here are the other 4:
Ichiro Suzuki 2001 31 Ind. Games Al Kaline 1955 31 Ind. Games Toby Harrah 1982 31 Ind. Games Rico Carty 1970 31 Ind. Games
May 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Just when I think Beltran is hugely overrated, I see something like this. Good find, Raphy.
An hour or so ago, I was looking at the box score from the game in which Beltran made his debut. It's wild and crazy. I will write a post about it next week.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
July 2, 2008: Raphy makes a post that mentions Tim Redding's consecutive-no-decisions streak. It ends two starts later.
July 13, 2008: Raphy posts about Tim Redding's streak of starts in which he pitches 5 to 6-and-one-third innings. It ends in his very next start.
May 13, 2009: Raphy's post concerns earlier hitting streaks, like that of Ryan Zimmerman. The streak ends the same day on which he makes the post.
These are the facts. I will leave it up to someone else to draw conclusions about the effect of Raphy's posts that feature Nationals' ongoing streaks.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
May 13, 2009: Bunnywrangler's deep obsession with Raphy reaches dangerous new heights!
🙂
May 13th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
OK BunnyWrangler lets test your theory:
Ryan Zimmerman has played 478 consecutive games without sending BunnyWrangler a 1 million dollar check:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/z/zimmery01.shtml