Man, I love Tony Gwynn. I've never been a Padres fan but have always been a devoted Gwynn fan. With him entering the Hall of Fame in a little over a week, I thought I'd point out some of his accomplishments.

Although he could be criticized as a fairly one-dimensional player later in his career, it's tough to argue against 4 straight seasons above .400 OBP from age 34 through age 37.

But what's amazing to me about Gwynn is...

...his consistency.

Take a look at his PI splits page, and you'll see what I mean:

He batted .338 for his career: .345 against RHP and .325 against LHP. That's pretty much the biggest variation you see in all major categories.

Home: .343
Road: .334

First half: .342
Second half: .334

How about this one:

Mar/April: .346
May: .333
June: .344
July: .325
August: .348
Sept/Oct: .333

So his biggest variation was 23 points (between July and August).  He had about 1700 career ABs each of those months, so that represents a difference of just 39 hits, spread over 20 years. That means that Tony Gwynn was basically good for the same exact number of hits, +/- just 2, every month over his whole career. Geez!

I won't bore you with all the individual numbers, but if you look at his splits between Day, Night, Open, Dome, Grass, and Turf, they all range from .334 to .344...!!!

Anyway, take a gander at his splits page. The man was amazing.

Just compare him to Wade Boggs, an almost exact contemporary. Boggs hit .341 against RHP but "only" .297 against LHP, a much bigger spread than Gwynn. Boggs hit much better at home than on the road. (In fairness to Boggs, he's just as consistent as Gwynn in the other areas I mentioned.)

So far, Tony's son looks like a pretty good player. I hope he is as much fun to watch as his dad was.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.