Rod Carew

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Rod Carew

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Rod Carew

Rod Carew was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 1991, with 90.5% of the vote.

Five highlights of Rod Carew's career:

Rodney Cline Carew was born on a train in Panama. He was named after Dr. Rodney Cline, who happened to be traveling on the same train as his parents and helped to deliver him.

Rod Carew led the American League in batting average seven times, in on-base percentage four times, in hits three times, in runs scored once, and in triples twice.

Carew was named to the All-Star team in each of his first 18 seasons in the major leagues. He was named the American League Rookie of the Year in 1967 and the American League MVP in 1977, when he batted .388 with career highs in runs scored (128) and RBI (100). Carew received MVP votes eight other times in his career.

Carew stole home 7 times in 1969, one short of Ty Cobb’s single-season record (set in 1912). For his career, Carew stole home 17 times.

Carew collected his 3,000th career hit on August 4, 1985, becoming the 16th player to do so. He was the first Panamanian inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The first two tables below present Rod Carew's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1967	MIN	21	137	16.3	16.9	1.5	-0.1
1968	MIN	22	127	14.7	14.9	1.8	0.4
1969	MIN	23	123	16.6	12.9	5.6	4.1
1970	MIN	24	51	6.8	6.3	1.4	0.8
1971	MIN	25	146	18.4	17.7	2.8	1.0
1972	MIN	26	142	18.6	16.2	4.6	2.8
1973	MIN	27	149	20.2	18.8	4.1	2.1
1974	MIN	28	153	22.2	19.0	6.1	4.1
1975	MIN	29	143	18.8	16.1	4.9	3.2
1976	MIN	30	156	20.6	15.1	6.2	4.5
1977	MIN	31	155	19.7	13.6	6.8	5.2
1978	MIN	32	152	16.8	14.9	2.6	1.0
1979	CAL	33	110	11.3	11.6	0.1	-1.0
1980	CAL	34	144	15.5	14.0	2.2	0.7
1981	CAL	35	93	10.4	10.1	0.8	-0.3
1982	CAL	36	138	14.3	13.1	1.7	0.4
1983	CAL	37	129	11.6	11.2	1.0	-0.2
1984	CAL	38	93	8.7	8.3	0.8	-0.1
1985	CAL	39	127	12.1	11.5	0.9	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,468	293.7	262.1	55.8	28.4
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			14	0.9	1.4	-0.4	-0.5
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,482	294.6	263.5	55.4	27.9

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1967	MIN	21	137	16.4	16.8	1.8	0.1
1968	MIN	22	127	14.7	15.0	1.7	0.2
1969	MIN	23	123	16.2	13.3	4.8	3.3
1970	MIN	24	51	7.1	6.0	1.9	1.3
1971	MIN	25	146	18.1	18.1	2.2	0.4
1972	MIN	26	142	18.7	16.1	4.7	3.0
1973	MIN	27	149	21.0	17.9	5.8	3.9
1974	MIN	28	153	22.5	18.7	6.6	4.6
1975	MIN	29	143	19.3	15.6	5.8	4.2
1976	MIN	30	156	19.6	16.0	4.2	2.4
1977	MIN	31	155	19.8	13.5	7.0	5.3
1978	MIN	32	152	17.3	14.3	3.7	2.1
1979	CAL	33	110	12.1	10.8	1.8	0.7
1980	CAL	34	144	15.4	14.1	2.1	0.6
1981	CAL	35	93	11.0	9.5	2.0	1.0
1982	CAL	36	138	14.3	13.0	1.8	0.5
1983	CAL	37	129	11.7	11.1	1.2	0.1
1984	CAL	38	93	8.4	8.7	0.0	-0.8
1985	CAL	39	127	11.7	11.9	0.1	-1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,468	295.4	260.4	59.1	31.7
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			14	1.1	1.3	-0.1	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,482	296.5	261.6	59.0	31.4

Rod Carew won 7 batting titles - tied for the fourth-most in major-league history - and finished his career with a career batting average of .328 - fifth-highest since World War II. In fact, Rod Carew is so famous for his ability to get hits that the American League batting championship was officially renamed the Rod Carew Award in 2016.

Player won-lost records are calculated across nine components. Batters earn player decisions in seven components:

Component 3: Balls not in play: strikeouts, walks, hit-batsmen
Component 4: Balls in play, including home runs
Component 5: Hits vs. Outs on balls in play
Component 6: Singles vs. Doubles vs. Triples on hits in play
Component 7: Double Plays
Component 8: Baserunner Outs
Component 9: Baserunner Advancement

The most significant components are Components 3 and 4, which are the essence of the batter - pitcher matchup. Of the other five components, by far the most significant is Component 5: the ability to turn balls-in-play into hits (after controlling for hit type) - i.e., the ability to "hit 'em where they ain't", beat out ground balls for base hits, etc. This was the specific component at which Rod Carew was truly elite.

The next table shows the top 10 players in net Component 5 wins for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

		Top 10 Batters (Component 5)
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Roberto Clemente	88.8	65.4	0.576	23.4
2	Rod Carew	91.3	70.1	0.566	21.2
3	Lou Brock	89.0	68.5	0.565	20.5
4	Stan Musial	96.2	76.2	0.558	20.0
5	Tony Gwynn Sr.	91.5	75.5	0.548	16.0
6	Derek Jeter	97.4	81.6	0.544	15.9
7	Willie McGee	70.9	55.5	0.561	15.4
8	Rogers Hornsby	62.3	46.9	0.570	15.4
9	Kirby Puckett	64.0	49.5	0.564	14.5
10	Vada Pinson	81.8	67.9	0.546	13.9

Article last updated: June 14, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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