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Chooch to the Third Power

Carlos Ruiz average rises when he faces a pitcher more than once.

When we learned that Carlos Ruiz was gracing the regional cover of Sports Illustrated this week (right), we knew we had to kick off the second half of the baseball season with a stat of his. (Truth be told, we'd be happy doing one on him every day and changing the title of the blog to ChoochStats. But then, the rest of the Phillies would probably be jealous.)

So we scoured Ruiz' pages on baseball-reference.com and came across a beauty – his statistics based on repeated appearances against the same pitcher in the same game.

This season, he's batting .320 when he faces a starter a second time and .294 when he bats against him a third. For his career, Ruiz is at .311 against a starting pitcher whom he faces for the third time in a game. And he just owns relievers he has gotten to face twice on the same day.