In tonight's Braves-Marlins game, the Marlins play-by-play man said his broadcast partner Tommy Hutton "had a very good career" against Hall of Famer Tom Seaver.
Now if you didn't see Hutton hit, you don't really know how unlikely this seems to be. Hutton played 12 seasons in the majors, but only had 1,919 plate appearances, which is only 160 a year. That's called hanging on. His OPS was .673, which was bad even by the standards of the 70s. Hutton was an above average hitter in only one of those 12 seasons.
But it's true that Hutton tore up Seaver. First of all, Hutton faced Seaver more than any other pitcher (62 PAs). The next closest was not very close: Rick Reuschel at 42 PAs.
Second, his slash line was 320/435/540 for a 975 OPS. Compare that to 248/339/334 in his "normal" life as a hitter. He had 3 homers against Seaver in 50 ABs, for a 6% home run rate. Hutton only hit 22 homers in 12 years, in 1655 ABs, for a 1% home run rate.
Third, he had 15 RBI against Seaver in those At-Bats, which is 1 RBI for every 3.3 ABs. In his normal hitting life he had 186 RBI (about 15 a year!), which is 1 RBI for every 8.89 ABs.
Perhaps even more amazing is that in Hutton's last three years, he was 0-for-10 against Seaver. So if you think those numbers above look good, imagine if he retired at the end of 1978. He only had 150 ABs in those last 3 years anyway.
Of course that's just 62 PAs. It doesn't mean Hutton would hit like that against Seaver over a full season. But even if you calculate the uncertainty of his numbers based on the small sample size, the low end of the estimates would be a 254/372/406 slash line, which is still significantly better than he did against everyone else.
Okay, so he wouldn't wallop the HoFer over 162 game seasons, but still, he actually did hit rake against Seaver when given the opportunity.
Apart from being a Seaver killer, how did Hutton stick for 12 years with a weak bat? He was a decent pinch hitter. Almost 20% of his at bats came as a pinch hitter, and he hit .266, quite a bit better than his non-pinch hitting average. And he had 46 RBI as a pinch hitter, which was 25% of his career total.
