The Klein Variations

In our continuing search for unusual statistical accomplishments in baseball, I undertook to explore extreme performances for an individual during a season.  My focus was on the career of Chuck Klein, star of the Philadelphia Phillies in the late 1920 and early 1930s, who has appeared in a prior THC post, Baseball Scorecard 1939.
(Klein from Philly Sports History)

Klein posted phenomenal home/roads splits, hitting well over .400 from 1929 through 1933 in the comfy confines of the Baker Bowl while averaging more than .100 points less on the road.  His home/road splits became more extreme over time.  Below are the splits, home first, then road, including his 1928 partial rookie year.

1928:  .380/.330
1929:  .391/.321
1930:  .437/.332
1931:  .401/.269
1932:  .423/.266
1933:  .467/.280

Next step was to look at Klein's splits against left and right handed pitching.  Here I found a surprise.  Since Chuck hit left-handed, I expected him to be consistently better against right-handers, but he learned to hit southpaws better over time.  These are his splits, right handers listed first:

1928:  .374/.324
1929:  .391/.291
1930:  .405/.375
1931:  .370/.280
1932:  .362/.396
1933:  .367/.482  

Since his highest Baker Bowl average was .467 in 1933 and his best split was when he stroked .482 against lefties the same year, I decided to look at how Klein hit southpaws in his home park that year, when he won the Triple Crown, leading the National League in homers, RBIs, and average.  The next step was to go to Baseball-Reference and go through all boxscores and play by play accounts for the entire Phillies home schedule to determine how many left-handers Klein faced and how he performed against them.

The results?  Over 19 games and 47 at bats, Klein hit .532 with an on-base percentage of .560 and slugging .936.  Among his 25 hits, Chuck racked up eleven doubles, a triple, and two home runs. After going 1 for 5 in the Phillies home opener against lefty Watty Clark, Chuck hit .571 in his final 18 games against southpaws, going 18 for 24 at one point.  He also went 3 for 4 against future Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell.

Klein may have actually hit higher than .532 against lefties in 1933.  On September 23, the Boston Braves were in Philadelphia for a game in which Chuck went 3 for 4 with a double.  Braves lefty Tom Zachary pitched one inning in relief, giving up two hits.  This is the only game involving a lefty pitcher for which I cannot find play by play.  If one of Klein's hits was against Zachary (the pitcher who surrendered Babe Ruth's 60th home run in 1927) his average would be .542.

The 1933 Phillies were a bad team, finishing 60-92, landing them in 7th place in an eight team league.  Not surprisingly their attendance was awful, with an average of only 2,180 fans attending each home game.  The worst days may have been when the New York Giants came to town in early August and trampled the Phillies by identical 18-1 scores in consecutive games.