Dan Petry faced 644 different batters across the 1979-1991 seasons, and while he certainly doesn’t remember them all, his level of recollection is impressive. Now 67, the former All-Star right-hander proved as much when he became the latest pitcher-turned-broadcast analyst to tackle one my a matchup-focused career quizzes. As did David Cone, Mark Grant, Mark Gubicza, and Jeff Montgomery — those pieces can be found here, here, here, and here — “Peaches” reached into his personal memory bank to take a stab at answering my questions, and to provide entertaining anecdotes while doing so. Our conversation took place at Fenway Park this past weekend.
I began by asking him which batter he faced the most times.
“It would have to be somebody in the American League East,” replied Petry, who played the bulk of his career with the Detroit Tigers and is now Dan Dickerson’s primary partner in the team’s radio booth. “I’ll say Robin Yount.”
It was indeed Yount, who stepped in against Petry 89 times. I proceeded to ask which player recorded the most hits off him.
“That might be a trick question, because maybe it is Robin Yount,” said Petry, before going with a different answer. “But I think a lot of my answers are going to be George Brett, so I’ll say George Brett.”
He should’ve trusted his initial instinct, because Yount was the answer again. The Hall of Famer logged 24 hits in 83 at-bats against the right-hander, who went 119-93 as a Tiger and 125-104 overall, while tossing 2,080 1/3 innings over 370 big league outings.
You Aren’t a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren’t yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren’t logged in). We aren’t mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won’t bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you’ll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we’ve also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
“He is a guy who I’ve always, to this day, have so much respect for,” Petry said of the Milwaukee Brewers icon. “I remember when he was just a teenager. At that time [when Yount was in the majors at age 18], I was a teenager also, and thinking about whether I would ever get that opportunity to play, like he was doing. So, just getting to face him was among my most competitive moments.”
How about the batter to whom he surrendered the most home runs?
“Again, I would probably have to guess George Brett,” replied Petry, naming the player who, with six, is tied with Greg Walker for the second-most gophers off him. “But Mark McGwire was a guy where it seemed like he either hit a home run off me, or I walked him.”
Big Mac, who had three home runs and three walks in 16 plate appearances, wasn’t the correct answer. Fred Lynn has that distinction, having taken Petry deep seven times.
“I remember some in Tiger Stadium, with the overhang in right field, but I wouldn’t have thought that,” admitted the erstwhile hurler. “I remember giving up home runs here [at Fenway Park], but more so to Dwight Evans and Jim Rice, not so much to Fred Lynn. Again, a couple at Tiger Stadium, and not seven of them.”
Lynn never did go deep against Petry at Fenway Park, nor did he do so while playing with the Red Sox. Three of the homers came at Tiger Stadium, three more at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, and one at Anaheim Stadium.
The batter he walked the most times?
“Oh boy. How about Wade Boggs?” Petry replied, nailing the correct answer. “That jumped right to my mind. He didn’t mind hitting with two strikes — he probably hit .400 with two strikes — and he took a lot of pitches. I also walked a lot of guys.”
Boggs drew 21 walks, while Evans, with 16, had the next highest total. I asked Petry about the latter, who slashed .368/.500/.649 with four home runs in 74 plate appearances against him.
“He had a great approach,” Petry said of the arguably Hall-worthy outfielder. “He knew that I was going to throw a lot of sliders, and I remember him not chasing very often. He was very disciplined against me; he would spit on a lot of good sliders that I would throw to him. He was another one of those Red Sox players who, when you came to Fenway — and Fenway is a tough place to pitch, anyway — was a challenge. You think about that lineup they had: Evans, Lynn, Rice, Carlton Fisk… it was a great lineup.”
The batter he struck out the most times?
“The first name that jumps into my head is Reggie Jackson, but I don’t think that’s right,” responded Petry. “Somebody from the Texas Rangers. Oddibe McDowell?”
That qualified as the broadcast analyst’s biggest miss. Petry dominated McDowell to the tune of allowing just four hits in 21 at-bats, but he fanned him just four times. There were two correct answers, with a dozen strikeouts each: Todd Cruz and the aforementioned Mr. October.
Why did Petry have so much success against Jackson, who went just 8-for-46 (.174) against his offerings?
“I actually told a story to Dan Dickerson about Reggie Jackson yesterday,” Petry said. “I went the longest time in my career without giving up a home run to him, and finally he got me — late in his career, and late in my career. That would have been a great bragging piece, that I never gave up a home run to Reggie Jackson.”
Which batter went 2-for-3 with a pair of home runs against him? I wasn’t sure if that would be an easy one to answer, or an extremely difficult one. It turned out to be a little of both.
After initially saying Ken Phelps, then adding, “No, I faced him more than three times,” Petry was much more confident when he answered: “Oh, Kevin Maas.”
The Maas guess was a good one — the flash in the pan Yankees slugger went 1-for-2 with a walk and a home run — but it wasn’t the right answer. A hint elicited an immediate nailing of the correct name.
“Cecil Fielder,” Petry replied after being told that one of the hits was a grand slam. “It was here. I pitched for Boston for about six weeks. The Tigers came to town, I came out of the bullpen, and he hit one up into the net, right down the left-field line. He was laughing all the way around the bases. This was in 1991, and I had played with the Tigers earlier in the year before getting traded to Atlanta, and then here, so I knew Cecil very well. My boys played with Price [Fielder]. Prince would come over to the house and run around with my kids.”
The batter he put on base with a hit-by-pitch four times proved to be an easy question.
“Brian Downing,” Petry promptly replied. “He stood right on the plate and leaned his arms over. I was never afraid to pitch inside, because I needed to open up the outside part of the plate for my slider, and he would lean into it. This was before hitters had all the padding. I never drilled him; he was just kind of sticking his arms out there to get on base. And he had big arms. I actually played with him for two years with the Angels, so there was no animosity. It was just part of the game.”
A question that did prove difficult was the player with the highest batting average among those who logged 15 or more hits off him.
“I mean, I always say George Brett to everything, because he was so good,” said Petry. “But… I don’t know if he got 15 hits against me, but how about Don Mattingly?”
Close, but no cigar. The New York Yankees legend went 21-for-47, for a .447 average, which was second-highest mark. Petry then surmised Cecil Cooper, who went 19-for-54, for a .352 average. The correct answer was yet another left-handed hitter, one whose .537 average came via 17 hits in 30 at-bats. Petry rattled off the name quickly when I told him that it was a Seattle Mariner.
“Oh, that’s right. Alvin Davis,” he said. “You know, the Mariners were one of those teams that… and Phil Bradley (10-for-25) was another one. He was a right-handed hitter. They were tough outs. Alvin Davis was a tough out for all of us, so it wasn’t just me. But left-handed hitters gave me trouble, because I couldn’t always throw a changeup. If I had a good changeup, I was in great shape, but it was flip a coin if I was going to have a good changeup.”
One more question seemed in order. As he brought up Brett multiple times, does Petry have a favorite story about the batter against whom he yielded 20 hits in 58 at-bats?
“I don’t have a favorite one, but there is one that still kind of haunts me a little bit,” Petry told me. “I hit Willie Wilson [with a pitch] in the cheek at Royals stadium. I remember walking in as he was on the ground, and [Brett] and I were standing next to each other. I said, ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’ He didn’t say a word. I think those were the only words I’ve ever spoken to him in my life. There was just that face-to-face interaction, which I remember to this day. It was a scary moment. But George Brett was just so good. He was so, so good.”