Miguel Olivo’s Hat Trick

by
September 4, 2009

There’s an old saying about patience being a virtue. Over the years we’ve established that possessing plate patience is a virtue too, one that some players, like Miguel Olivo undoubtedly lacks. In 345 plate appearances Miguel Olivo has walked ten times. Four pitches have made contact with his wide body and he successfully bunted once. Those 15 occurrences account for the difference between Olivo’s plate appearance and at-bats figures. Olivo has struck out 110 times.

That’s 10 walks, 110 strikeouts. Ouch.

Since 1901, there have been 10 seasons where a batter struck out more than 100 times and walked less than 15 in at least 300 plate appearances. Olivo lays claim to three of those seasons. That’s right, it’s happened ten times, and he’s responsible for three of those. His first time was in 2006 as a Florida Marlin when he walked nine times with 103 strike outs in 452 plate appearances. He followed that up with 123 strikeouts and 14 walks in 469 plate appearances the very next year.

His strikeout rate of 33.3% is a career high, despite that his BB/K ratio is equal to his 2006 ratio and his 2008 ratio. You would expect his plate discipline and patience to improve over the years, right? Yeah, right:

olivo1

Amusingly the emotion this invokes in most Royals fans is held within the graph, see:

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olivo2

Reports have the Royals pondering a separation from Olivo. That would be smart. With that, I fully expect a four-year extension to be announced any day now.

Other players to pull an Olivo include Orlando Miller in 1996; Juan Encarnacion in 1999; Alex Gonzalez in 1999; Craig Paquette in 1993; Tommie Agee in 168; John Bateman in 1963; and Rolando Roomes in 1989.





 

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Bill
16 years ago

In Tommy Agee’s defense, in 168 AD lions were often put on the field to add excitement (not to give GMDM any ideas). Sorry. Probably the typo will be fixed after I post this and the above statement will no longer make any sense.

I’m guessing that the rarity of this feat has more to do with the fact that nobody in their right mind would play some one with this particular skill than it has to do with the rarity of the skill.

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Shaun
16 years ago
Reply to  Bill

I see the typo too, and I am glad someone made a joke about it. But I thought lions were too expensive, I was under the impression that it was whatever they could find in the nearby wild.

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