Over the course of a season the difference between a 300 hitter and a 250 hitter is:

WinPitcher

About 30 hits.

If you use 575 at bats for a season a player needs 173 hits to bat 300

That same player bats 250 with 144 hits.


30 hits over 6 months time. (actually 29)

A little more then 1 hit per week.

We make a lot of fuss over 29 hits.


can anyone explain this?

Steve

TheVon

Watch Bull Durham again. There's a scene about this very question.

dallasactuary

What you've found mostly is a good example of why you shouldn't put too much stock in batting average. The examples are legion of .250 hitters who are better than .300 hitters, even on the same team in the same year.

What if all 29 hits of those hits are home runs? Then the .300 hitter is tremendously better than the .250 hitter.

What if the .250 hitter has 29 more home runs? All else being equal, the .250 hitter is probably better than the .300 hitter.

What if the .250 hitter walked 75 more times than the .300 hitter? What if the .300 hitter plays in Colorado, and the .250 hitter in San Diego? What if the .250 hitter has 50 more walks but 10 fewer HR?

There are unlimited possibilities, and ultimately the answer to which player had the more valuble season will only depend on who had the better batting average to a fairly small degree. No question, BA is a better indicator of value than RBI, but you've seen much less than half a player's value when all you've seen is his batting average.

TheVon

Well, Annie Savoy wouldn't sleep with a .250 hitter unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. So there's that to consider too.

nam812

<< <i>.......and ultimately the answer to which player had the more valuble season........ >>



Did you even ask that question Steve?

WinPitcher

Dallas you mean like Ken Oberkfell and Ryan Howard?

Steve

onebamafan

Still...................give me the .300 hitter. ")

jaxxr

Roll Tide !!!

bdunndchi

<< <i>Still...................give me the .300 hitter. ") >>

TomGshotput

<< <i>We make a lot of fuss over 29 hits.


can anyone explain this? >>



people are very fussy. Often about things that don't matter much at all

bigfische

because 29 hits could easily be 1/5th of your normal production

WinPitcher

So who was the weakest 300 hitter ever?

Ken Oberkfell?


Can anyone name someone like that?

I remember opposing players would call hin 3 0 1 0


Steve

dallasactuary

Oberkfell only hit .300 a couple of times at the beginning of his career and never did again. For his career, he was about an average hitter, but he was good enough in the years he hit .300. As good as Ichiro the last few years, anyway.

Dave Cash on the Phillies in the 70's was a weaker .300 hitter, although since he got to leadoff he had tons more ABs than Oberkfell and scored 111 runs one of those years. Dr' J will no doubt expound on those 111 "real" runs, so maybe a better example is needed.

If you go back to the early days, George Sisler hit .305 in 1924 and he was bad that year. He was positively awful in 1926, but he only hit .290 so that won't work.

If you go back to the really early days, Bill Hallman hit .309 in 1894 and he was terrible. For context, his team (the Phillies) hit .349 that year, four of them over .400, and they finished fourth. But nobody's ever heard of him, so maybe that doesn't count either.

Probably the best example - recent, bad player, and everybody's heard of him - is Juan Pierre. You do have to be able to ignore that he gets 200 hits almost every year in nearly 700 ABs, but if you can get past that, he's really a quite a bad baseball player.