Ruben Amaro appears to not understand difference between at-bats and plate appearances

Ruben Amaro has been running things in the Phillies organization for nearly six years, and little things like this might explain why the team has struggled lately under his watch.

Amaro joined Tom McCarthy and Jamie Moyer in the broadcast booth Thursday and was talking about how Jimmy Rollins is nearing Mike Schmidt’s franchise record for hits. Rollins is now at 2,233 career hits, while Schmidt had 2,234 hits (all with the Phillies).

In a truly embarrassing moment, Amaro was totally at a loss to explain how Rollins and Schmidt could have nearly the same amount of hits and at-bats (and therefore batting average), while Schmidt has nearly 800 more plate appearances.

Here’s what Amaro said via Crossing Broad:

“Yeah, we were checking it out. In fact Schmitty was in the booth yesterday when we were talking about it, and, um, I think it’s about a thousand difference in, ah, plate appearances. Pretty amazing. But their batting averages aren’t that different, which is kind of… weird. I don’t quite understand it.”

Oh jeeze, Ruben. You don’t understand it? Schmidt walked almost 800 times more than Rollins. Which would also explain his higher on-base percentage, in case you’re unfamiliar with that metric. The other less frequent occurrences that would explain the difference in plate appearances include sacrifices, hit-by-pitches and catcher’s interference calls.

Since I know there’s no way you’d believe an actual Major League Baseball GM wouldn’t understand the difference between at-bats and plate appearances, we’ve included the audio below as proof, as shared by Crossing Broad:

I want to give Rube the benefit of the doubt here, but there really is no explanation. How could an ownership group allow a guy with this lack of statistical knowledge to continue making all the important decisions about the franchise? That is really, really bad.

H/T LBS tipster David