The Hits He Took Away

Run the numbers on this and it holds up.

Mark Belanger hit .228 across about 5,800 at-bats. To finish a career at .300, he would have needed roughly 415 more hits, which comes out to about 30 a season across his years as Baltimore's everyday shortstop. Thirty hits a year, erased. For a man who led his league in defensive WAR six different times, tied with Ozzie Smith for the most in history, that is not a wild guess. It might be light.

But here is the better version of the argument, the one the box score will never show you. Those hits did not disappear. They went somewhere. They went into other men's numbers.

In the thirteen seasons Belanger was the Orioles shortstop, Baltimore produced 22 twenty-game winners and six Cy Young Awards. Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally, Mike Flanagan, Steve Stone. Great arms, all of them. They also had a man behind them who turned base hits into outs so quietly that people started calling it pitching. Detroit's manager once said facing that Orioles infield was like trying to throw a hamburger through a brick wall.

Belanger used two small black gloves a season and broke them in with spit and coffee, and he got angry if anyone else touched them. He was never going to hit. He never had to. The hits he took away never showed up in his batting average. They showed up in Jim Palmer's ERA.