Traffic Jam on the Interstate: 13 Batters Hitting Below .200
Posted by John Autin on June 3, 2011
Through games of June 2, thirteen batters are still hitting under .200 with at least 100 ABs, shown here in ascending order of BA (bold) along with their BAbip (unintentionally highlighted):
| Rk | Player | AB | Tm | G | PA | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HBP | SH | SF | GDP | SB | CS | Pos | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael Saunders | .231 | .168 | 137 | SEA | 45 | 152 | 14 | 23 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 10 | 45 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | .223 | .248 | .471 | *87 |
| 2 | Jorge Posada | .181 | .169 | 136 | NYY | 42 | 158 | 13 | 23 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 16 | 21 | 36 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | .285 | .338 | .623 | *D/3 |
| 3 | Adam LaRoche | .205 | .172 | 151 | WSN | 43 | 177 | 15 | 26 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 15 | 25 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | .288 | .258 | .546 | *3 |
| 4 | Reid Brignac | .235 | .173 | 110 | TBR | 39 | 116 | 10 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 29 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .209 | .182 | .391 | *6 |
| 5 | Dan Uggla | .186 | .175 | 212 | ATL | 57 | 232 | 20 | 37 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 16 | 18 | 45 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | .241 | .316 | .557 | *4 |
| 6 | Adam Dunn | .265 | .180 | 172 | CHW | 50 | 213 | 17 | 31 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 23 | 36 | 71 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | .329 | .326 | .654 | *D/3 |
| 7 | Vernon Wells | .200 | .183 | 142 | LAA | 35 | 152 | 18 | 26 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 13 | 7 | 30 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .224 | .303 | .527 | *7/89 |
| 8 | Mark Reynolds | .229 | .190 | 179 | BAL | 53 | 211 | 24 | 34 | 11 | 0 | 7 | 24 | 28 | 56 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 0 | .303 | .369 | .672 | *5/3 |
| 9 | John McDonald | .202 | .190 | 105 | TOR | 36 | 118 | 13 | 20 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 11 | 8 | 15 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | .252 | .295 | .547 | 45/6 |
| 10 | Jonny Gomes | .222 | .191 | 141 | CIN | 46 | 172 | 23 | 27 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 20 | 25 | 47 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 2 | .320 | .390 | .710 | *7/D |
| 11 | Chone Figgins | .215 | .191 | 199 | SEA | 49 | 213 | 18 | 38 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 13 | 11 | 27 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 5 | .232 | .256 | .489 | *5 |
| 12 | Jorge Cantu | .210 | .195 | 123 | SDP | 49 | 133 | 8 | 24 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 16 | 6 | 23 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | .233 | .293 | .526 | 3/54 |
| 13 | Ryan Raburn | .276 | .197 | 157 | DET | 45 | 170 | 18 | 31 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 15 | 8 | 57 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .238 | .325 | .563 | *7/49D3 |
(All records mentioned below are since 1901, unless stated otherwise.)
- There are currently 5 qualifying batters hitting under .200 (LaRoche, Uggla, Dunn, Reynolds and Figgins). That would equal the season record, last done in 1917. The live-ball record is 2, in 2010 and 1940.
- Mark Reynolds is on track to become the first hitter since 1909 with more than 1 sub-.200 qualifying season.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying 1B is .196 by Carlos Pena in 2010. Adam LaRoche is hitting .172 this year.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying 2B is .179 by Mickey Doolan in 1918. Dan Uggla is hitting .175.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying DH is .205 by Darrell Evans in 1988. Adam Dunn is hitting .180.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying 3B in the live-ball era is .185 by Eddie Joost in 1943. Mark Reynolds is at .190 and Chone Figgins .191, I guess that record is safe unless one of them hits a real skid.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying OF is .179 by Rob Deer in 1991. The current .192 mark of Jonny Gomes (despite a 4-hit game last week) would be the 2nd worst, but he's fallen just off the qualifying pace.
- The lowest BA by a qualifying C is ... oh, never mind; Bill Bergen will never be equaled!
June 3rd, 2011 at 6:23 pm
With Figgins and Saunders (only a few PA short of qualifying level), Seattle's team OPS+ is 85. On the other hand, they have a team 113 ERA+, including a 464 ERA+ (not a typo) by David Pauley in 20 appearances (33.1 innings) with a 0.69 WHIP.
Evidently, great pitching does compensate for feeble hitting, as the Mariners are two games over .500 and only 1.5 games out of first.
For comparison, I checked out some mid-60s Dodger teams - the '65 Dodgers were WS champs with very similar 89 OPS+ and 116 ERA+. Maybe, Seattle does have a chance?
June 3rd, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Don't forget that for non-DH teams, the team OPS+ *includes* pitchers. So the current NL, and both leagues pre-1973, would have a league OPS+ of below 100, even though by definition it is supposed to be 100 on the nose. It's a little confusing but just remember that there are different OPS+ baselines for players and for teams. Anyway, the '65 Dodgers' 89 was just slightly below the NL avg of 92. Not nearly as bad as the Mariners' 85 where the league avg is 100.
June 3rd, 2011 at 7:00 pm
BABIP would be a cool thing to see on that table as well...
June 3rd, 2011 at 7:32 pm
@3, Fredsbank -- Good idea. I've added the BAbip, which suggests that Raburn and Dunn have nothing to blame but themselves.
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:31 pm
A fun fact about Uggla, hear in St.Joe during the summer they have a wood bat college league, really popular. Back in the day it was the Saint Joe Saints and I can't remember a summer where I didn't spend a ton of time watching the Saints play and the other day I found an old Saints program for the summer and on the team was one Daniel Uggla. He was named the previous years player of the year and as a reward they named him David Uggla and then Daniel Uggla. Anyways I figured this was one of the only places that would get a kick out of it.
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Special kudos to Dan Uggla as he is on I-75 which passes right by Turner Field.
Honorable mention to Adam Dunn as I-80 passes thru the south suburbs of Chicago
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:40 pm
@5, Austyn -- Your story prompted me to google "Dan Uggla + St. Joseph Saints," which turned up this little item, published the day he made his MLB debut:
"A former St. Joseph Saints player who left town with a tarnished halo has found his wings in Major League Baseball...."
"After a successful first year with St. Joseph's college summer league team, Uggla was ready for a second season at Phil Welch Stadium. However, Uggla's second summer as a Saint was cut short when, just five games into the 2000 season under manager Tim Doherty, the University of Memphis student was arrested and charged with drunken driving."
But that was a long time ago; I assume his current problems are all on the ballfield.
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:42 pm
I'll bet he wasn't driving on the interstate in St. Joseph.
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:53 pm
@2.
Thanks JT,
Didn't know that about OPS+ and the DH.
That makes more sense - hard to visualize the Mariners as a championship team, even if they could have Koufax and Drysdale starting over half their games.
June 3rd, 2011 at 9:09 pm
@9, Doug -- Don't take this as a comparison, since it's way premature. But just for fun:
In 1965, the 2nd championship year for the Koufax/Drysdale Dodgers, Koufax had a 160 ERA+, Drysdale 118.
So far this year, Michael Pineda has a 162 ERA+, Felix Hernandez 123.
Obviously, Koufax & Drysdale pitched more innings (both over 300) than Seattle's big two will. And Pineda is hardly a proven ace after 11 big-league starts. But the potential may be there.
June 3rd, 2011 at 9:55 pm
@7 Yeah I was pretty young back then, and that explains why I don't really remember him much that second year!
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:02 pm
Awesome thread.
I give John McDonald a mulligan on this list because of his excellent glove and the fact that his OPS puts him in the middle of this pack.
Dan Uggla is 10 points above John McDonald in OPS ?!?
I gloat over Vernon Wells' stats, given what his current team paid for him.
June 4th, 2011 at 12:22 am
@JA
I recently asked what the longest (non-pitcher) sub .200 hundred stretch was, and you pointed out that wonderful catcher from the 30's... i forget his name.
But going back to mid August of 2009, Mark Reynolds has now gone way over 1,000 plate appearances while hitting below .200.
His pop seems to have dissipated over the last season and a half, likely due to Baltimore batting him 7th, but I wonder how long he has left in baseball.
But guys like him and Cust, Dunn and Pena - might start a new trend in hitting, at least for the foreseeable future.
June 4th, 2011 at 12:45 am
@13, Duke -- For that catcher's name, check the last bullet point of my post.
As for Mark Reynolds: While there's no denying his struggles, it's debatable whether his pop has dissipated. He hit 32 HRs last year, which was down from 44 the year before, but actually represented a larger percentage of his hits (32% to 29%); this year he has 7 HRs in 24 hits, also 29%.
It's also worth noting that in 2008, batting .239/.320/.458, Reynolds's OPS+ was 95. Last year, batting .198/.320/.433, he had a 97 OPS+. Times have changed a lot; Reynolds may not have changed so much.
One more thing: It may have gone unnoticed since his Ks are still plentiful, but Reynolds has significantly reduced his K rate this year. In his previous 4 seasons, he fanned in 33.6% of his PAs; that rate is down to 26.5% this year. And there have been plenty of terrific seasons by players who fanned in about 1/4 of their PAs, by the likes of Willie Stargell, Jim Thome, Ryan Howard, Reggie Jackson, Frank Howard, Dick Allen, Adam Dunn, etc. So I'm not ready to write off the 27-year-old Reynolds just yet.
June 4th, 2011 at 1:35 am
He may be struggling, but Derek Jeter is nowhere near this list.
June 4th, 2011 at 1:58 am
I'm curious what a list like this might have looked like in past seasons. And the final numbers for some of those guys. Some guys in the slow-starter brigade may be indistinguishable from the rest of the league at the end of the season.
June 4th, 2011 at 5:36 am
No Dodgers? Unbelievable.
Is Reid Brignac close to any sort of record with 1 XBH in 116 PA?
June 4th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Vernon Wells with his worst contract in all of baseball (which the Angels TRADED for lol) is hitting .183, nice
June 4th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
@17, Bip -- Surprisingly, Brignac's 1 XBH is enough to eliminate him from record contention. There have been 21 modern non-pitchers who had at least 100 PAs with zero extra-base hits. The most PAs in a 0-XBH season is 184 by Jack O'Connor in 1906; the live-ball record is 144 by Dwain Anderson in 1973.
The good news is that Brignac still has a shot at the qualifying-season record. The fewest XBH in at least 502 PAs is 5 by Goat Anderson, 1907; the live-ball record is 8 by Sandy Alomar, Sr., 1973. (BTW, I'm aware that there are many officially qualifying seasons with fewer than 502 PAs, but I hate the old-time "100 games" qualifying standard and it's just easier to use one set number of PAs.)
June 4th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
@18, Rich -- So you don't think Wells will exercise his opt-out clause after this season?
June 4th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
That part of the contract is my favorite part.
June 4th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
@21, Rich -- It's funny, though: When A-Rod signed his 10-year deal with Texas, nobody expected him to exercise his opt-out clause after 7 years, but he did -- and got an even higher salary.
'Course, A-Rod won 3 MVPs in those 7 years, including the last one; I don't think Wells has even been the best player on his own team in any season since the deal kicked in.
The other fairly surprising opt-out that I can remember is J.D. Drew voiding the last 3 years (and $30 million) of his 5-year deal with the Dodgers, after playing just 218 games in 2 years. And it worked for him, too: 5 years and $70 million from Boston.
June 5th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Batting under .200 and leading the league in strikeouts. Wow. Could someone make an article about that? PS about the whole Vernon Wells not being worth his money, he's worse for his money than Jason Bay, and that's saying something.