Batting Average Is for Suckers
I was contemplating Kyle Schwarber recently, as one does, and was amused by the notion that a player could post a batting average in the .170s and still be a valuable hitter overall. We’ve known that batting average isn’t everything since… well, I was going to say the nascent moments of the sabermetric revolution in the late 20th century, but it’s been way longer than that.
There’s a thread in popular history that casts the latter-day Brooklyn Dodgers as a team of romantic literary figures. Between the righteousness of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese, the tragic brevity of the careers of Pete Reiser and later Roy Campanella, and the juxtaposition with the shiny, all-conquering Yankees, there’s a sense that the Dodgers succeeded through some combination of moral rectitude and poetic necessity.
In truth, they won because they drew an absolute crapload of walks. In 1947, Reese and Eddie Stanky both drew over 100 walks, and the Dodgers drew 30% more walks than the NL average. The 2002 A’s beat the AL average by 16%, so the team that made walking cool looks like a bunch of hackers next to the 1947 Dodgers.
If Branch Rickey knew the limitations of batting average, what took the rest of us so long?
Well, knowing and believing are different things. Batting average is so baked into our cultural understanding of the sport, even people who couldn’t tell Elly De La Cruz from Ellie Goulding know what “batting .300” means. If you want to have a good time, start dropping “we’re posting a 140 wRC+” into business meetings and watch how people react.
Now hang on, I can hear you thinking, aren’t you the same guy who’s been all over Luis Arraez this year? There’s no player in baseball who derives a greater percentage of his value from batting average alone; why are so you impressed with his chase for .400 if batting average is meaningless?
The answer is twofold. First: Get off my back, I contain multitudes. Second: One of the beautiful things about baseball, or any sport, is the emergence of varied and seemingly contradictory paths to success. Arraez can slug .500 by batting .400, and Schwarber can slug .500 by batting .200 — isn’t that incredible?
As of this writing, there are eight qualified hitters in baseball with a batting average of .200 or lower. Three of them — Schwarber, Max Muncy, and Patrick Wisdom — have a wRC+ over 100. Now, it’s obviously early in the season still. (And you can tell it’s early because Arraez is still nestled up under the belly of .400 like a remora under a shark.) All of these hitters will probably improve their batting averages as things even out. Schwarber’s BABIP is .167, which is lower than Mark McGwire’s was in 2001. That year, McGwire’s knees were so shot, and he was so unable to run, that somebody wrote to Baseball Weekly asking if the Cardinals should carry Esix Snead down the stretch purely to pinch run for McGwire if he walked or singled.
Schwarber and Muncy in particular are exemplars of an archetype that’s been around for a while: the extreme three-true-outcomes slugger. They can get away with a low batting average because their hits usually go for extra bases, and they walk enough to post a respectable OBP.
At the tail end of the last century, serious people would put on tube socks and polo shirts, sit down in a home office festooned with old Bill James Annuals, and log into the internet on a dial-up modem that screamed like a motorcycle engine being skinned alive, just to type “Rob Deer” or “Steve Balboni” into message boards. No setup necessary, the batting line itself was punchline enough.
But in the past few years, we’ve at least seen proof of concept that a player can post a sub-.200 batting average and still be an above-average hitter overall:
| Year | Name | Team | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Kyle Schwarber | PHI | 17.2% | 28.3% | .259 | .167 | .171 | .323 | .430 | .329 | 105 | -0.1 |
| 2023 | Max Muncy | LAD | 15.5% | 27.9% | .282 | .180 | .191 | .323 | .474 | .340 | 115 | 1.2 |
| 2023 | Patrick Wisdom | CHC | 10.7% | 38.3% | .275 | .247 | .198 | .288 | .473 | .326 | 104 | 0.5 |
| 2022 | Max Muncy | LAD | 15.9% | 25.0% | .188 | .227 | .196 | .329 | .384 | .318 | 106 | 2.4 |
| 2021 | Joey Gallo | TEX/NYY | 18.0% | 34.6% | .259 | .246 | .199 | .351 | .458 | .348 | 122 | 4.2 |
| 2020 | Matt Olson | OAK | 13.9% | 31.4% | .229 | .227 | .195 | .310 | .424 | .316 | 104 | 0.6 |
| 2010 | Carlos Pena | TBR | 14.9% | 27.1% | .211 | .222 | .196 | .325 | .407 | .325 | 105 | 1.0 |
It had never been done until Pena broke the seal in 2010. Since then, the only hitters to do it in a 162-game season have been Joey Gallo in 2021 and Muncy last year. And Gallo wasn’t just average, he was legitimately very good overall.
But until very recently, the dark side of the Mendoza Line was not a place ballplayers were allowed to go. The batting average leaderboards would get to .200 and then go blank, apart from the admonition: “HERE BE DRAGONS.” Whether because of legitimate concerns about the ability to sustain above-average offensive performance with an extremely low batting average, or a mere cosmetic aversion to a batting average that starts with .1, players didn’t stay in the lineup long enough to see if it’s possible to sustain the kind of season Schwarber and Muncy are having.
In 2005, Nick Swisher posted the lowest average of any qualified hitter regardless of wRC+: .236. In 2022, 24 qualified hitters had a worse batting average. From 1946 to 2009, just five players (yes, including Rob Deer in 1991) qualified for the batting title with an average below .200.
Strikeouts and home runs went up through the 2010s, and the reputation of batting average as a holistic offensive metric went the other way. So players who walked a lot and hit a lot of home runs got the chance to play through a bad season with a pitcher’s batting average: Pena twice, Chris Davis twice, Dan Uggla and Mark Reynolds once each.
Qualifying for the batting title is a high bar to clear, but even limited playing time was a nonstarter for hitters like this until recently. In order to post a batting average of .200 or less with a wRC+ of 100 or more these days, a hitter needs to do two things: Hit for power and get on base through other means. This year, Schwarber, Muncy, and Wisdom all have an OBP at least 40% higher than their average, and an ISO equal to or greater than their average. Here’s how many players fitting those parameters have gotten 150 plate appearances in each season of the AL/NL era:
What we’re seeing now is proof that such a season is possible, though obviously no one goes up to the plate aiming to hit .190 for the year. Still, the reflexive aversion to low batting average is slowly eroding, and Schwarber, Muncy, and their fellow travelers prove the truth that’s been self-evident for generation: Batting average is for suckers.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
“First: Get off my back, I contain multitudes.” Well ok then, let me get right off of that thing!
Batting under .200 while still being an above average hitter is super easy, barely an inconvenience
I love this guy.
Delightful. “At the tail end of the last century, serious people would put on tube socks and polo shirts, sit down in a home office festooned with old Bill James Annuals, and log into the internet on a dial-up modem that screamed like a motorcycle engine being skinned alive…” Absolutely delightful.
Cloud yellers be all “no one cares about batting average anymore” yet BA is counted twice in OPS, while BBs and XBHs are only counted once each.
League average OPS (.728) is currently 67.9% batting average (.247 x 2).
That seems like plenty of representation to me.
XBH are more than double counted – they count for OBP same as any hit, and then are weighted in the SLG, so a double has an OPS of 3.000 compared to a single with an OPS of 2.000
Walks being single counted, true – but walks are slightly less valuable than a single.
(Though BA isn’t actually double counted. If you hit .300 in 600 PA with a 10% walk rate (and no sacrifices), your OBP is 0.370, not .300 + 0.1 as batting average is based on AB not PA)
Yeah which is why OPS can be a bit misleading for certain players with outlier shape of production. wOBA is a better metric in dealing with this.
OPS exists because it is an easy to explain approximation of wOBA. Analysts should use wOBA. TV announcers and Fangraphs readers talking to their friends should use OPS.
You can also look up OPS and OPS+ but not wOBA or wRC+ on Baseball-Reference when you want to check stats quickly instead of dealing with FanGraphs’s much less user-friendly UI.
Although, it would be really appreciated if B-R were to add wOBA and wRC+ to their player stat pages.
Wow, Muncy’s 2022 line was really something: terrible average, seemingly mediocre OBP and power, solidly above average WAR! Was he elite defensively last year, or was the overall hitting environment just that bad?
WAR for an average starter is 2 – so his 2.4fWAR is a bit above average.
His overall wRC+ was 106 – so a bit above average (though a team with an 106wRC+ is one of the top hitting teams!), because he OBP was better than the league average, slugging slightly lower (but OBP is more important than slugging) and then park factors. He was slightly below average defensively, with -2.8 defensive runs – but that was cancelled out by his good baserunning (stole 2 bases, none caught – I’d imagine he was probably good at knowing when to advance, and didn’t run into many outs). So he was a solid, slightly above average player – but got to it in a very funny way!
or maybe he is a bad player and all of those metrics are meaningless.
Hi Ronnie!
I know you’re a troll, and I’ve been suckered into replying…
But, I know we can argue about WAR until the cows come home, but how is OBP meaningless?
I think we can all agree, as a hitter making outs is bad, so a hitter who makes fewer outs – and thus has a higher OBP is going to do better. (Fun fact: a team of hitters who strike out 50% of the time but walk the remaining 50% will average about 8.5 runs per 9 innings… better than any team in history.)
Good Muncy has a below average batting average, sure, but has a high OBP with lots of power to make up for it. Bad Muncy has a bad average, but still an average to above average OBP with all the walks, and averagish slugging (because he still runs into dingers, but pulled down due to the bad average).
I don’t think anyone will mistake him for Adrian Beltre in the field – but he doesn’t look out of place playing third.
maybe nothing means anything and we are all alone.
Shoutout to Dave Kingman, who led the NL in home runs in 1982 with 37 while batting .204. He was outhit by NL Cy Young winner Steve Carlton (.218). He didn’t walk that much, so put up a 204/285/432 line with a 97 wRC+ and -0.5 fWAR.
I checked Kingman because my memory was that he’d qualified for the batting title a few times with a BA <.200, but nope. Had multiple qualified seasons scraping by just above .200, and multiple non-qualifying seasons below .200.
Kingman’s often cited by old-timers as a guy that today’s front offices would love, but he had a 97 wRC+ that year with a negative WAR. It’s a bit of a straw man argument to say that modern metrics don’t care about batting average because they love all or nothing hitters
Considering Dave Kingman rang up over 7400 plate appearances despite rarely posting an above-average WAR, I’d say he was in fact a guy that *old-timey* front offices loved. His profile is that of a classic quad-A guy nowadays.
Quad-A hitter is a bit strong as a description of Kingman, I think. He once put up a 288/343/613 line! His wRC+ was >100 every year but one until his age-33 season. Bad defense dragged down his WAR; this wasn’t a guy who could mash in AAA but struggled against MLB pitching. Even with bad defense, he put up 6 seasons of 2 fWAR or above, another of 1.7, and 2-3 partial seasons in which he was on pace for at least 2 fWAR.
His ability to hit homers might have allowed him to hang on to a full time job longer than he would today. If only because teams today mostly like to rotate regulars through the DH position rather than carrying a full time DH. But even at the end, he was a *much* better hitter than, say, late-career Chris Davis. Late-career Kingman’s overall value wasn’t too different from late-career Eric Hosmer. The Astros are still running Jose Abreu out there every day at 1B this year, even though his defense is no great shakes and his wRC+ is 61. So I dunno. If Dave Kingman were around today, and had a big contract, he might still get a lot of playing time.
cristian santana tigers-(.098/.338/.196)
This is just the type of article that defines what baseball is today as against what it was before the TTO influence overwhelmed the game. I enter the debate as a person who has watched baseball evolve from the game of PeeWee, Jackie and Campy to today’s K-fest with more than a few too many hits being HR’s instead of singles. I should hope that when there are a lot fewer hits, the value of a more significant hit would be recognized instantly and without question. Let us return to those days of yesteryear and delve into what the game was like when I went to Ebbets Field. To compare I chose 1954, the return of Willie Mays, and 2019, the year that HR’s reached their zenith.
In 1954 almost exactly (.9998) 1 in every 10 hits went for a HR and there were almost exactly 3 (2.9919) singles for every XBH. In 2019 the HR ratio climbs to 15.7 % of hits being HR’s and the percentage of singles compared to XBH hits drops to 2.62 Batting averages are .265 in 1954, with pitchers coming to the plate and .251 with only half of the pitchers faking it. The next, and possibly most important stat is that in 1954 teams averaged 0.9 HR’s/game and in 2019 that number increased exactly 50% to 1.35 HR’s/ game
What does this tell us? Everything we need to know. What could be clearer that when hits are rare then power dominates everything? When it is much more difficult to simply wait and hope for an occasional dinger then a series of players with higher batting average becomes an equally successful way to develop an offense. This was the great game of the 50’s during which a beautiful balance between batting average, HR’s and K’s was maintained. Do these players, Muncy, Schwarber, Gallo et al. with this type of approach have a place in today’s game? The answer is obviously yes, and it is also obvious that this is not the most aesthetically appealing game baseball has put on the field since 1876.
there’s always the obvious caveat here that more players are trying to hit homers (and doing it at the expense of singles) because pitcher velocity is up, and the by-product of increased velocity is more strikeouts.
If strikeouts are up, it’s harder to get hits, and harder to cluster hits to create runs.
The pitch clock does not seem to have affected strikeout rates to this point, and that has to be the next item MLB addresses.
Your comment is the next one that baseball has to try to answer. I will beat the rented mule again and say that the home run has become the primary way of scoring in today’s game but there is really no other alternative. Breaking the 130 year stranglehold that the mythical 60’6″ distance from the mound to the plate is the only answer. Those words fall on deaf ears, however, as more and pitches top 100 mph. Maybe the pitches are even too fast for the doddering old men propped up behind the catcher to see but, whatever the reason, batters need help to know what might be a strike. At this time I have to say that it is past time for the pitchers to suck it up and be ready to make the necessary adjustments to throw from a longer distance. More time to react intuitively seems like it gives the hitter a much much better opportunity to respond. With the assumption that something is done to lessen the excessive impact that velocity has had on the game, there becomes the danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the direction of offense but this can be more easily handled. Still difficult, for sure, but easier than trying to hit 100+ fastballs. I am personally a fan of a universal 20 foot clear screen around all outfield fences that don’t exceed that already
I really think a rule which manages to incentivise pitchers not having to pitch at max effort every single pitch will help – saving their 100mph fastball for an important spot, and “just” sitting 95. Again, what this rule would look like – and without any unforeseen consequences which completely change the sport, who knows!
The problem is much more than just velo though. Fastballs, even 100mph+ ones are hittable. We see it all the time. The problem is that every single guy these days posseses a vicious slider/cutter/change/insert pitch name here and they throw everything from the same arm slot with the same release so it all looks the same until halfway to the plate. Or to put it more succinctly, pitchers are just really, really really good now. I dont know how you change the rules to make guys less talented.
Its also why I’m surprised how often people throw out “just move the mound back” as if its some perfect solution. Sure, it will knock down velo a bit but guess what else it will do. If you had a 8″ break on your slider before, well, its not going to move less with a couple extra feet of travel time.
Players can still hit 100 mph heat but not with the consistency needed to return a reasonable balance to the heart of the game which, it goes without saying, is the classic confrontation between the pitcher and the hitter. Today’s hitter has no choice to gear up for the inevitable high cheese and is almost helpless against the repertoire of today’s much bigger and vastly more skilled pitchers. Nobody is saying that increasing the distance is “some perfect solution” but it deserves a look and, in reference to the breaking ball moving more, the hitter will still have more time to adjust and react. Velocity is only part of the equation but it is largest part..
Its literally not though. This year 4 seam fastballs account for only 32% of pitches thrown. Sliders, just sliders, are at 22%. Fastballs are also the least valuable pitch at -0.12 runs per 100. and yes I know its not that simple as every pitch plays off each other but the point is that high velo fastballs are far from the bane of hitters existence you seem to think.
Furthermore, some of the best fastballs are not that fast. Nestor Cortes has one of the best fastball in MLB and he tops out at like 93mph. Greinke’s 89 mph fastball is better than Gerrit Cole’s this year.
I would like to debate your comment because that is the part of the discussion that your side misinterprets. It is the very fact that you admit, that every pitch plays off each other, that sets the stage for each and every AB. It has been said since long before Walter Johnson’s day that the It was accepted hitting theory that a batter would prepare for the fastball and adjust for the other stuff. In today’s game the percentage of hitters who cannot react quickly enough to hit 95 mph is increasing exponentially and they are sitting ducks for anything else the modern pitchers has up his sleeve, or on his hand (LOL), All pitches are more difficult to hit and, until I see proof otherwise, I find it difficult to believe that most of it stems from the one variable that has changed dramatically over the past 15 years. As recently as 2008 the overall batting average was .264 and since then it is velocity that has changed the most.
Pitch mix has swung pretty violently away from fastball-dominant to “throw whatever your best pitch is the most”. Velocity on the fastball is certainly a factor, but most guys who make it to the majors can catch up with a 95+ heater.
Also, regarding more HRs, what happens when a pitcher who throws 40% sliders that hitters can barely touch hangs one? Pretty frequently, that’s a dinger.
“Most guys who make it to the majors can catch up with a 95+ heater.” Can they? I think that such a bold statement needs a lot more support than your comment. Exactly what percentage are you defending? On a site that demands complete subservience to the belief that numbers are the only truth then I need an exact number. The direction that number is heading is what counts and I think it is quite small and shrinking. It is logical and intuitive to deduce that it is still undeniably more difficult to react to 95+ than 90. As the major league pinnacle of the game is reached the number of hitters, even as good as this small group is, shrinks even more so we are left with a smaller group of potential players who can actually hit 95+ heat enough to carry a sustainable major league WRC+ in excess of a bare 100 average. With this huge, and rapidly increasing, advantage that high heat gives the pitcher of today the hitter is helplessly susceptible to anything else that comes up there. The percentage of high fastballs is of secondary importance to the fact that IT IS THERE anytime the pitcher wants it, and the hitter KNOWS that.
Pitches play off each other but that doesnt negate the fact that pitchers area not throwing fastballs as much anymore and when they do they are less valuable than every other pitch. Your claim that more and more guys cant catch up to 95+ is just entirely untrue. Guys are better at hitting velocity than ever before because they have been seeing it since high school and this is born out by the numbers.
You also completely ignored the fact that guys without elite velo fastballs regularly have more effective fastballs than guys throwing upper 90’s due to what we now know about fastball shape, spin rate, tunneling etc.
In order to believe that velocity is the main issue you have to ignore pretty much everything that is pitching these days.
Indeed, players are better at hitting 95+ than ever before, for the reason you gave. Very gradually, as hitters see more heat, they are going to make some small incremental gains, but that doesn’t change the fact that 95 is still harder to react to than 90 and that the percentage of potential major league hitters who can catch up to 95 is, by simple definition, going to be less than those who can catch up to 90..I am watching Cole face Baty as I write this and he didn’t fool around with anything less than 97.2 as he blew him away in 3 pitches. It is, and will be, the high heat that controls the offense, augmented, obviously, by the other stuff.
You mean like instituting a pitch clock to wear down their endurance over the course of the season?
It remains to be seen if enough pitchers will actually stop throwing max effort a significant amount of time to help save their stamina under the pitch clock, but I hope it does indeed have this kind of seconday effect on at least several of the starting pitchers.
I agree, I think moving the mound back and lowering the maximum number of pitchers you can carry on the roster at any given time are the two changes that seem like they would impact the strikeout rate.
Keep the mound where it is but definitely reduce the number of pitchers on the roster.
They fall on deaf ears, because doing so would also increase overall scoring by a ridiculous amount, and no, that can’t be handled at all, let alone easily!
You’d have to move the runbber back AND raise the mound simultaneously, and even doing that would take a lot of testing to get the balance of those two changes right. Ultimately, it’s just not worth attempting.
I do think there is a chicken and the egg scenario here.
Hitters try to hit more home runs – so to compensate, pitchers throw harder. Thus hitting is harder, and so home runs become more valuable. Which means hitters try to hit more home runs, so pitchers compensate…
I don’t know what the solution is – without a massive rule change, a home run is the most effective way of scoring runs, and so that is going to what hitters are incentivised to hit.
Lower the mound, deaden the ball! (carefully, with lots of testing).
I think lowering mound/moving it can be explored. I don’t think deadening the ball would change much. Instead of groundballs getting through the infield they will become outs, and instead of home runs they will be warning track fly balls. Ultimately there would be a couple more doubles or triples here and there, but my guess is it would be negligible.
Besides, as the mlb was caught doing last year, they already experiment with balls. I’m certain that the game was more enjoyable w X ball, it would be the standard already.
“there’s always the obvious caveat here that more players are trying to hit homers (and doing it at the expense of singles) because pitcher velocity is up”
Isn’t a piece of that just simple “conservation of momentum”? When the pitcher throws the ball faster and the batter makes contact it will leave the bat quicker too.
That 90 MPH that was converted to a deep fly might be a HR when thrown at 95-100 MPH. So then HRs just naturally go up (taking away some flyball outs and some doubles/triples).
Schwarber is not a good hitter. If he spent his career toiling in AAA the game would be better off. He has value to fantasy baseball players but not an MLB team. He is a case study in the failure of modern metrics.
What now
A guy with a career .338 OBP and .490 SLG is not a good hitter, eh. Considering those are both well above the league avg there sure must be ALOT of downright terrible hitters in MLB then.
At least put some effort into your trolling, dude.
Modern metrics think he is an average at best player, so I’m not sure you know what modern metrics are.
He has a career 119wRC+. Thus he is 19% better than “average” at the plate. His glove is bad enough that it makes him an average player.
He has a reputation as a streaky hitter, and I think it’s earned. He gets locked in sometimes in a way very few people do. If you can recall that at bat vs Darvish in the WBC, I cannot ever recall (maybe pujols lidge) an at bat in my life where I was more certain a guy would hit a home run. There is value in guys who get incredibly hot that isn’t measured in war. He is one of a handful of guys who could hit 20 hrs in a month in the entire mlb.
tdouglas said “average at best player“. Check out Schwarber’s career defense ratings.
Did Schwarber shtuck your wife?
Schwarber is replacement level this year so he’s probably not a good example of a low average guy being good. Matt Olson is hitting .232 with 1.2 WAR so he might prove your point better. Willy Adames is a positive but mostly due to defense
I wrote something like this but it got tied up in moderation because I edited it after seeing a typo and it thought it was spam. Schwarber in 2023 is a terrible example of this; Gallo is pretty much always the standard bearer for this, and Schwarber in 2022 would have been much better.
Gallo 2021 had a 4 fWAR year with a .199 AVG. He was a decent defender that year. 2023 Gallo is a similar hitter but with terrible FG defense and isn’t a good player
but still an above average wRC+. the other parts of his game, especially defense, bring him down.
I’m having trouble finding a sub .200 hitter be a good player without good defense. A 105 wRC+ isn’t high enough unless one can defend. Even to get 2 WAR a player would have to be an average CF or something like that. Average RF doesn’t cut it. Gallo is 121 wRC+ and an average player overall
This type of player can be average (+ or -) if he brings a lot of additional OBP and defense to the game. One of my problems is that I simply dislike TTO style baseball when it is being showed off to the extreme.
Feels like a reading comprehension fail. Right from the top of the article:
“… was amused by the notion that a player could post a batting average in the .170s and still be a valuable hitter overall.”
WAR isn’t measuring the quality of the hitter, but the quality of the player.
Now if you want to argue that the 100 wRC+ bar is too low (that merely average isn’t enough to be a “valuable hitter”), that is fine, it just requires using different words than you did.
I’m saying being an “average hitter” isn’t particularly meaningful, any more than being an “average fielder” is meaningful. It’s not a weakness but it’s not a strength either.
Saying BA isn’t the be all and end all of offense is like saying arm strength and foot speed aren’t the be all and end all of defense. One can be an average defender, say at 2B without those things but it’s pretty hard to be a good player unless the guy can really hit.
Hitting .170 pretty much limits a hitter’s upside to 5%-10% above average at the very most. Therefore even in those extreme cases the player is still going not valuable unless he can defend.
Schwarber’s a fun player because his skillset is so extreme that he tends to only be put in the “he hits .200 he sucks” category by one group and the “he’s awesome, he hits 40 HRs” category by the other half. The reality is that he’s neither and is almost the epitome of a league average player on aggregate
I only play in OBP fantasy leagues (or points) for the simple reason that I don’t want the values to be wildly disconnected from real baseball. I have Muncy on almost every team, too. Rob Deer’s Revenge!
I would argue that if there is room in baseball for guys who are statues and hit absolute bombs or strike out when they don’t walk, there is room for guys who are really hard to get a ball by without it either being put in play or fouled off. An entire team of either would probably suck.
But if you are going to be a unicorn you better be a terrific unicorn.
And maybe you are better off being the best you you can be than trying to remake yourself into a generic ideal.
There must be a trade off where declining either power or BB’s or both makes a low BA player unplayable. But a guy who hits over .300 even just singles will probably always find a job. That is as hard as hitting 30+ HR’s/. Last year about twice as many players hit 30 bombs as .300.
But in the end if you can’t get hits your career will be short.
And I guess the managers job is to maximize the return on whatever each of your players contributes.
Adam Dunn came so close. Hit .204 with a 115 wRC+ (and 2.1 WAR!) in 2012
Likewise, Mark McGwire hit .201 with a 105 wRC+ in 1991.
(He also hit .187 with a 104 wRC+ while on his last legs in 2001, but he didn’t qualify for the batting title that year.)
I asked this on another thread: If Schwarber hits .180 with 72 HR, does he win NL MVP?
He might need to get to 73 HRs and at least tie the record to have a chance.
No, but I think that may be as much because he’s toiling for an 80-win Phillie team that finishes 15+ behind Atlanta as it does his batting average. I think very few if any voters will opt for that over Acuna if he continues toward a 140 run, 70 SB, 30 HR season
BA is valuable in the sense that, sometimes, you need a hit. A walk won’t suffice. In the bottom of the ninth tie game, man on second, 2 outs, I want Arraez 10/10 times vs Schwarber.
Every stat in baseball has value. It just depends on the context.
As of today, there are 162 qualified position players. By WRC+, your “exceptional” sub-.200 hitters are ranked as follows:
Muncy – 67th
Schwarber – 89th
Wisdom – 100th
Not a great argument for making a living by selling out for HR.
And how do these results point to batting average being “trash”? I’ll give you four hitters with “unsustainable” BABIPs that have produced far more than your examples: Goldy, Bichette, Arraez and Freeman. All have career BABIPs in the .340s and all have far outproduced your players. Since I have one more example than you, does that mean that BABIP is really a key stat?
Of course, batting average is an empty stat if a player doesn’t hit for some power and have a decent K/BB rate. And a high BABIP is unsustainable for the average player, just as TTO with a very low BA won’t keep most players in MLB for very long.
Exceptions are not a good basis for declaring general rules. But hey, your argument has snob appeal.
Arraez isn’t the best example; in the last two (mostly full seasons) he ran a .323 and a .331; his career is that high due to about a season’s worth of a .350 (between 19-20) and the .400 BABIP he’s running right now (in 1/3 of a season). I think he’s comfortably above average, but I think it’s tough to tell whether that’s a .330 guy with spikes or a .350 guy with a couple of drops.
The whole point of the freakin’ article is that players with very different batting profiles can accumulate value and isn’t that cool and interesting? I mean, the headline’s over the top, but the actual content lays out the facts pretty well.
“batting average is for suckers” based on a few players reaching 100 WRC+ is not a gentle view of different batting profiles.
You put “trash” in quotes. Did you read that in the article somewhere? Ctrl+F doesn’t show me any results.
I agree with another poster that responded to you and said the article headline is over the top, but the meat of the article is broadly correct. Modern metrics show us that players with low batting averages can still be above average in value.
What I think is a more interesting question is whether or not players like this are good for the game. I’m a big believer in metrics but Muncy, Schwarber, and Wisdom don’t do much for me and I certainty don’t go to the ballpark to watch a guy spin the wheel on the three true outcomes. I would argue that watching hitters walk or strikeout 75% of the time and hit a HR 5% of the is boring and arguably bad for the game.
Further, since it seems that power is an easier skill to learn than contact, I believe this shift toward players with Schwarber-like skill sets may preclude some contact hitters that may develop power later in their careers from playing time at the MLB level. Just like the trend (prior to this year) away from the running game, I understand why individual teams do it, but in the aggregate, I’m not sure it’s good for the game long-term.
My baseball people were all saying “Ken Phelps! Ken Phelps! Ken Phelps!”
He has a 107 wRC+ and a 0.0 WAR. He can’t be that valuable.
I suppose we really have seen the last of the high power superstars who also hit over .300 almost every year during their primes like Pujols, Cabrera, and Votto did. Even Goldschmidt and Trout only manage it in about half their seasons, and even consistent .300 hitters without much power like Ichiro are becoming rare.
While wOBA, OPS, and even ISO and OBP have been shown to be more valuable hitting rate stats in most situations, Batting Average does still have some value of its own (walks don’t directly cause many runs to score), and it’s a shame we no longer see such bat wizardry on a regular basis.
At this moment in the season, The AL has one player hitting above .303. I don’t care if a player can hit .171/.323/.430 , still have a WRC+ of 105, and be seen as an above average hitter This may be above average but it really says is that such average hitters are actually awful, When so many of the so-called average hitters are actually awful it screams that the game is skewed in a horrible direction and heading in the wrong direction at breakneck speed. Can The Lords of Baseball accept a season in which the batting average of the league leader in the AL doesn’t reach the minimal mark of .300. It would be a terrible look for the game and no amount of spin could claim that a good balance is in place I hope that might be enough to move the mound.
I see five AL players above .300 and a sixth (Harold Ramirez) that is hitting .314 but just missed the cutoff for qualifying at-bats.