This is Randy Bush. He played with the Twins in the 80s and early 90s. He was born in the great state of Delaware before making the logical decision, playing in college at the University of New Orleans. He then spent his entire professional career in Minnesota, first as an outfielder, then as a DH/pinch hitter. It seemed like he was always pinch hitting.
Anyways, the other day, I was hunting down something on baseball-reference, and as part of it, I had to look up Bush’s home run history. Left handed Randy Bush was your prototypical platoon player. OK, maybe not prototypical. Definitely someone who shouldn’t have been used against left handers. He hit 96 career homers, for example, and all of them, every single one, was against a right handed pitcher. Apparently Twins management saw pretty quick that he wasn’t the best choice for playing time against lefties. He had a total of 100 at bats in his entire career against lefties, and only had 15 hits for a .150 average. Would something like this, the Randy Bush phenomenon, happen today? Ever? Managers would generally be able to pitch around him all the time, what with the propensity for most managers to use a pitcher per batter, right? So, here’s to Randy Bush, king of the platoon players
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