Many baseball fans, especially us old school guys, love statistics.

We pore over them and analyze them. We discuss which of the numbers is more important than the others and while we struggle to remember our phone number, we can tell you that Mike Schmidt hit 548 career home runs, had a .267 career batting average, won three MVP Awards and 10 Gold Glove Award,s despite getting off to an auspicious start with a .206 average in 13 games with the Phillies in 1972.

Oh, and that was the same season that Steve Carlton won 27 games, a full 47% of the Phillies wins that season.

Jim Haley is obviously a baseball guy, but not a stats guy. Heck, he can’t even tell you his own statistics. He did have a hunch early this season that he wasn’t hitting well. After all, even if you can’t quote percentages or numbers, you know if you’re getting on base or not.

Early this season, Haley was definitely not getting on base. He did have a five-game hitting streak early on that saw him go 7-19 (.368), but that tailed off quickly and his average dipped to a season-low .200 after an 0-3 in the first game of a July 3 doubleheader.

Haley went 2-4 in the nightcap to kick off what would be a four-game hitting streak. That built into hits in five of six games, six of eight games, and a 3-4 on July 19 made it seven of 10 games and pushed his average to .255 on the season. He finished July with hits in 13 of 18 games, batting .400 with three home runs, 12 RBIs and seven stolen bases.

There is no great story about how between games of that doubleheader he looked at video, or had some miraculous revelation about why he wasn’t hitting. He just kept playing and working on his game, and the hits started to come. Maybe hitting really is contagious because over the same month, the IronPigs had five players — who played in at least half of their games — hit .300 or better.

Haley came back down to earth and hit .267 in August, and has struggled in September to leave his season average sitting at .253 as we head into the final homestand of the season.

His 2024 season actually started at Reading, where Haley found himself demoted to Double-A when camp broke. But as to his routine, he didn’t worry about where he was playing or what the numbers said; he just went about doing his work and was back with Lehigh Valley in early May.

Haley grew up in Lansdowne, and went on to play college ball at Penn State where he hit .297 in three seasons, which was good enough to get him drafted by Tampa Bay in the 19th round of the 2016 Draft.

SWAN SONGS … The final homestand could be the end of the road for both Scott Kingery and Darick Hall in the Phillies organization since the Phillies have shown no interest in bringing either back to the majors. Kingery has had a strong season that warranted being recalled (25 HR, 66 RBIs, 25 SB, .269 AVG, 120 G), but the Phillies decided to promote infielders Buddy Kennedy, Kody Clemens, and Weston Wilson over adding Kingery to the 40-man roster. Hall has had somewhat of a pedestrian type of season, batting 14-66-.236 in 108 games with Lehigh Valley, but did cross two milestones when he became the Pigs all-time leader in home runs (74) and RBIs (271).

MAYBE NEXT YEAR … The IronPigs are officially out of the playoff hunt, and have fallen to 31-36 in the second half of the season, a full nine games behind division leaders Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Worcester, who are tied atop the IL East. Worcester is in town this week, meaning that they could conceivably clinch the division championship at Coca-Cola Park. Columbus, managed by former IronPigs player Andy Tracy, has a magic number of three to clinch at least a tie for the top spot in the second half of the season as it battles to stay ahead of the RailRiders and WooSox. The IL second half champion plays Omaha for the IL championship.

PACK ‘EM IN … It’s going to be interesting to see if the IronPigs can defend their Triple-A attendance crown from last season. With six games remaining on the home schedule, Lehigh Valley has drawn 535,995 fans, for an average of 8,000 per game. The Indianapolis Indians have drawn an average of 8,405 fans per game, and have wrapped up their home portion of the schedule. The Pigs need to average 8,728 fans per game to catch the Indians for the top attendance in all of Minor League Baseball.