THT: Brown: Putting pressure on the defense

“Using the Three True Outcomes, a look at five players who specialized in making the defense work”...or why my Bobby Richardson “Challenge the Yankees” card had more rips in it than a Richard Hell pus-enhanced t-shirt.

He finds himself here because for the 1963 season, he cut his walk to 3.6 percent and strikeout rate to 3.5 percent, but remained in line with his average output as a hitter. Over his 12 year career, Richardson hit .266/.299/.335 with 34 home runs.

While Richardson was a revered member of those World Champion Yankee teams, he was an out machine. He finished second in outs in 1963 which was the only year from 1961 to 1965 where he did not lead the league in that category. It didn’t help that he routinely hit leadoff or second later in his career.

While the 1963 Yankees won the AL pennant for the fourth straight year, they certainly carried a bunch of low OBP players. Richardson at .294 along with Clete Boyer at .295 and shortstop Tony Kubek at .294 helped hold the Yankees team OBP to .307 which ranked them seventh out of 10 teams in the league.

That Kubek led off and Richardson hit second for Ralph Houk’s team would melt the internets if that happened today. I’m pretty sure Tom Tresh wasn’t happy about his lack of RBI opportunities.