On Shin-Soo Choo and the Charity of a Hit

It’s so funny, the things that stick with us from when we were kids. I don’t remember learning to read, but I do vividly recall the time my father told me I shouldn’t eat raisins because they are actually roly-poly bugs. I’ve since come to learn that Dad was fibbing, but I still don’t care for raisins. I carefully pick them out of trail mix in favor of M&Ms and peanuts. Part of it is the taste and some of it is the little seeds, but at least a bit of it is a concern that one of them will start moving around in my mouth as I chew. I know I’m not appreciating raisins as I should, but I just can’t shake what my dad said. And I think baseball types, so long enamored with batting average, might be similarly stuck when it comes to on-base streaks, even though our tastes have matured past thinking we’re eating bugs.

Shin-Soo Choo has a 51-game on-base streak, and we aren’t really talking about it much. We are talking about it some, of course. Back on July 6, when Choo’s streak was 44 games long, Jay Jaffe checked in on the venerable company Choo could soon be keeping if he kept streaking. The Rangers have mentioned it on their broadcasts. But a search of MLB’s twitter account for “Choo on base” since May 13, when the streak began, doesn’t return any results. I don’t recall any At-Bat notifications about it. It seems to have gone largely unremarked upon, which suggests it isn’t thought to be that remarkable, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.

I should say, hitting streaks have a greater degree of difficulty. After all, there is only one thing you can do to extend a hitting streak — which, most obviously, is to get a hit. No player has really come close to challenging Joe DiMaggio’s famous 1941 56-game hitting streak; the next closest batter, Pete Rose, tapped out at 44 hits during in 1978.

But it’s more than just the degree of difficulty. I think it’s that we see too much charity in the walks and hit by pitches that find their way into on-base streaks. We tend to think of hits in terms of action and, importantly, in terms of having earned something. They’re about the hitter doing. Walks, or a pitch that plunks a guy in the ribs, on the other hand, seem to carry with them the generosity of strangers. Sometimes it’s the pitcher’s, for being unable or unwilling (undoubtedly the worst sort of charity in this calculus is the intentional kind) to locate. Sometimes it’s a fielder, who doesn’t get an error but really ought to have gotten that ball. Or else it’s the umpire’s, for balls that really ought to be strikes. Even though we know that patience is a skill — a skill we prize! — we can’t shake the sense that the batter has been given a little gift. Has done a little less doing. And while that’s partly fair, I would assert that how we seem to think of Choo’s streak suggests that we see too much of the charity in walks and hit by pitches (a rather mean sort of present!) and too little of the charity in hitting.

During Choo’s 51 games, he’s been good for a .337/.469/.596 line. He’s had a 189 wRC+, which is 10 points higher than Mike Trout’s. He’s hit 13 home runs. He’s walked 47 times, sure, but he’s failed to record a hit in only seven of those 51 games. He’s been a man of action! But he’s also gotten some meatballs. Here are all of Choo’s hits during the streak with the velocity of the pitch indicated, courtesy of Baseball Savant.

Some have been heaters and some have been balls he managed to turn on, but some of these have been presents. What is this home run off anEric Skoglund 92 mph fastball down the middle if not a gift?

Baseball is almost impossibly hard. We like to valorize the great hitters, and they are often worthy of our praise, but their accomplishments aren’t just a matter of personal triumph. There are bits of help and generosity mixed in, pitches they never should have seen but did, and once we remember that, I suspect we’d cast a friendlier eye at Shin-Soo Choo’s streak and the charity that went with it. After all, it might not be as good as the M&M’s and peanuts, but it isn’t actually a bug, either.





Meg is the managing editor of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on twitter @megrowler.

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DDD
5 years ago

The Baseball Savant picture seems to show a waste-high, mid-90s pitch and maybe a shoulder-high, high 70s pitch that would have nailed him if he hadn’t hit them. Am I seeing that right? If so, it reminds me of some Kirby Puckett hits back in the days (only from the other side of the plate). I remember seeing Kirby take one over the left field wall that likely would have hit him in the head if he would have missed it.

Jetsy Extrano
5 years ago
Reply to  DDD

And on the other side, is that a hit on an 84 mph slider in the dirt?

Theodore Morgan
5 years ago
Reply to  DDD

I double-checked Choo’s hit data on Baseball Savant, and the pitch chart for his hits shown in this article is inaccurate. The article’s chart includes pitches that resulted in hits as well as those for BB and HBP. The waist-high, mid-90s pitch was a ball from Zach Britton that resulted in a BB, while the shoulder-high, upper-70s pitch was a HBP from Clayton Richard.

During his streak, Choo has actually tallied 63 of his 67 hits on pitches either in or on the edges of the strikezone, which lines up with his selective approach at the plate (17th-lowest chase rate among qualified hitters).

DDD
5 years ago

Thanks!