A Pair Using Whiffle Bats

Question: What does Chris Coghlan have in common with Juan Pierre?

Answer: Those are the only two qualified batters with a .000 ISO.

Seeing Pierre’s name associated with no extra base hits is probably not too surprising. Through 80 plate appearances, Pierre’s line is .222/.282/.222. His career ISO is .071 and his projected ISO is .063 (rest of the season version). Last night, he went 0-4 which lowers those totals. Coghlan is unexpected though. Thanks to continuing the power outage through last night, he set a new career high for consecutive games with at least one plate appearance and zero extra base hits (his previous high was 17).

Coghlan’s really been all kinds of awful to date. His wOBA was .182, with a .203 OBP and (obviously) no home runs. He’s not exactly a big bopper, but he did slam nine homers and 37 doubles/triples in his rookie season. Coghlan’s batting average on balls in play is pretty miserable too, but he’s hitting more than half of his batted balls on the ground which doesn’t translate to extra bases often.

Everyone is dying to know just how this streak of power ineptitude matches up with the rest of Pierre’s career. As it turns out, his career high is 46 games, which took place in 2000 as a member of the Colorado Rockies. He also abstained for 30 games in 2002 (again, Rockies) and more than 20 games four other times with three of those coming as a Dodger.

Without a doubt, the most amazing Pierre streak stretched from September of 2008 almost into May of 2009. He went 12 games without an extra base hit and still managed a line of .350/.381/.350. That’s the definition of being a slash and dash hitter.