Things You Didn't Know About Angels' Hall of Famers

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim can really lay claim to only two players who went to the Hall of Fame who played a decent length of time with their club. While they it was California Angels, the team could say that Rod Carew and Nolan Ryan played for just more than a handful of seasons with it. Carew played 7 years for the Angels on his way to the Hall of Fame while Ryan toiled with them for 8 seasons. Here are some things that you might be surprised to learn about this pair of Angels' Hall of Famers.

1. Rod Carew played more games at first base in his career than he did at second!

The Panamanian-born Carew came up with the Minnesota Twins as a second baseman in 1967 but by 1976 he was playing the vast majority of his games at first base. Rod played second only twice while with the Angels, with the rest of the time spent at first or as the designated hitter. Over the course of his career he would be at second for 1,130 games and at first for 1,184. He never won a Gold Glove at either position.

2. Carew never won a batting title while with the Angels!

Hs last American League leading average came in 1978 with the Twins as he won his 7th and final batting crown before going to California the very next season. The closest he would come as a member of the Angels was the 1983 season, when his .339 standard was easily trumped by the .361 that Boston's Wade Boggs put up. Carew also was not a run-producer for California; the most RBIs he had for them was 59 and the most runs scored were his 88 in 1982. Indeed, Carew only scored over 100 runs in a season one time.

3. Carew was a .220 hitter in the post-season!

In his 50 at-bats in the playoffs, Carew garnered just 11 hits, well below his career average of .328. He also never played on a team that won a post-season series. His Twins lost to the Orioles in 1969 and again in 1970, while the Angels' team he was on in 1979 also lost to the Birds. His final playoff chance came in 1982 against the Brewers, but the Angels choked away a 2 games to none lead in the best of 5 series as Rod went 3 for 17 with no runs batted in. In his career, Carew had just a single RBI in the post-season.

4. Nolan Ryan has the 3rd most losses of any pitcher!

Ryan had 17 campaigns in which he lost double-digit ballgames, including all 8 with the Angels. He played with them during lean times for sure, losing 16 games on 4 separate occasions. In 1976 he even managed to lose 18 games while striking out 327 men. For his 27 year career, Ryan was 324-292, with only Cy Young and Pud Galvin being on the wrong end of a pitching decision more times than Nolan. Young was a loser 316 times and Galvin lost 310. The closest pitcher to Ryan in losses that played since the 1920s is Phil Niekro, who lost 274.

5. No pitcher has a better career hits to innings pitched ratio than Ryan!

His dominance here is astounding. For every 9 innings he pitched, Ryan gave up just 6.555 base hits. In contrast, the second best ever for this statistic, Sandy Koufax, is at 6.792 per every 9 innings worked. Ryan led the league in this category a dozen times, but it was his excessive number of walks that caused his record to be so mediocre overall in comparison to his talents. He led the league in bases on balls 8 times and for his career has way over 800 more walks issued than the next closest hurler, Steve Carlton.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ANA/hof.shtml