Baseball Hypothetical: Untrue Outcomes Joe

The Game Room
1

You are the newly appointed general manager and dictator for life of your favorite baseball team. A well known agent, L.B. Applegate, asks for a meeting. He comes in, sits down, and says:

“OK, Jess,” [your name is Jess in this hypothetical]. “I just signed this kid, and I think he might interest you. His name is Joe; he’s 22 years old and straight out of the cornfields of Missouri.” [I assume there are cornfields in Missouri. If not, substitute the type of field that is most accurate].

“Anyway, Jess, this kid can hit. I give you my personal guarantee that he will hit between .330 and .370 every year until he is 35 - never less and never more. He’s a switch hitter with no meaningful platoon split. I also give you my personal guarantee that he will never miss more than 10 games in a single season for any of that time.”

[I should interject that you have worked with Mr. Applegate for some years, and his ‘personal guarantees’ always seem to be 100% accurate. It’s odd, but you’ve learned you can count on it].

"The kid plays second base, and he’s nothing special there; your stats guys will tell you he’s exactly league average. He can run, too; on a typical team he’ll steal maybe 40 bases against 50 attempts on a yearly basis.

Now as you know, I’m always in favor of full disclosure. This kid, Joe, he’s got some… unusual qualities. He will never strike out. Never. He might swing and miss now and then, or let a strike go by, but he’ll never get that K. On the flip side, he will also never draw a single walk, unless he’s intentionally walked by the other team. Don’t ask me how that’s possible, but it is. Also, Joe will never hit a home run. It’s not that he has no pop in his bat - he’ll hit plenty of solid doubles down the line or into the gap, and given his speed some of those will turn into triples. But for some mysterious reason, nothing he hits ever quite gets into the stands.

So, to sum up: the kid is 22 years old, he will hit between .330-.370 while playing league average defense at 2B. He will also never walk, strikeout, or hit a homerun.. What do you want to do, Jess?"

So, here’s the question: what do you do with Joe? Do you sign him? How highly do you value him, relative to other players? How do you deploy him? Where does he hit in your hypothetical lineup? Is he a starter for the next decade? A role player? Something else?

(For the purposes of this hypothetical, assume that Mr. Applegate is both entirely truthful and 100% correct about everything he’s told you)

2

What happens during the roughly two-thirds of at-bats where Joe doesn’t get a hit? Lots of fielders’ choices or errors? If we put Joe at the top of the lineup, are we guaranteeing the catcher throws the ball into the stands? I feel like I’m missing something.

3

Outs, just like any other player. Groundouts, flyballs, pop outs - and of course, sometimes, fielder’s choices and errors, but not at a greater rate than would be expected from any other player. It’s not that he can’t make an out - he’ll make plenty. He just won’t ever strike out, hit a home run, or walk.

4

I’m assuming typical “ball put in play” outs (i.e., groundouts, fly outs).

The lack of walks means that his on-base percentage will be his batting average. A batting average of .330-.370 is outstanding, but assuming that that’ll average out to about a .350 BA and OBP, that’ll put him at about #50 in OBP.

Here’s the stats from 2018, sorted by OBP – it goes down to #40, and the guy at #40 had a OBP of .356. Mike Trout led with a OBP of .460, six players had OBPs of .400 or higher, and nineteen players had OBP higher than this guy’s “ceiling” of .370.

Purely from a hitting standpoint, this guy would be among the league leaders every season. That’s not the entire picture, of course, and from a total getting-on-base perspective, he’s very good, but not outstanding.

5

What if the manager asks him to bunt? Is he able to lay a bunt down every time? I think Joe would be a good everyday player but might lead the league in hitting into double plays by a significant margin no matter where he is slotted in a lineup unless he’s able to do this.

6

Truer words have never been spoken. :smack:

Anyone who hits that well would always have a place on some major league team. Does someone want to look up the stats of all the current second-basemen? Perhaps I’m old-school, but I’d lineup batters in descending order of on-base percentage.

7

I’m going to want some assurances from Mr. Applegate that neither Lola nor Memo is allowed around Joe for his entire career, that Joe has a guaranteed supply of Wonderboy bats, and that Meg or Iris or whatever the hell her name is travels with the team.

As for Joe himself, I put a really fast guy in the leadoff spot, bat Joe second, and hit-and-run my way into 13 straight years of making the playoffs.

8

Here you go – 2018 second basemen, ranked by OBP. If Joe has his best sort of year (.370 BA / OBP), he would have ranked #3 in OBP among second basemen last year, behind Ramirez and Altuve (both of whom are All-Star / MVP-candidate-level players). An average year for Joe (.350) would have placed him at #8, and a poor year for him (.330) would have placed him at #9. Certainly starter-level OBP at the position.

9

Can you give me some hint what “hit plenty of doubles and a few triples” means exactly? What kind of SLG are we talking about here - .400 or .600?

I’d say a guy with an OBP of .350 at 2B, with league-average defense, who never strikes out (so will get at least some “useful” outs, and I’m going to assume his speed will keep the GIDPs down) is anywhere from a rock-solid starter to a a perennial all-star depending on what that SLG looks like.

Whit Merrifield put up 5.5 WAR last year with a .304/.367/.438 line and it sounds like this guy is likely to be at least as good as that. Whit also had 45 steals to 10 CS, so he’s actually not a bad comp for this hypothetical guy.

10

As I read the OP, I was thinking a bit of Ichiro Suzuki, as the guy was a hitting machine, but without much pop (though it’s by no means a perfect comparison – Suzuki regularly won Gold Gloves, added about 40 points to his OBP via walks, and did hit a few home runs).

Baseball Reference shows that, for a typical 162-game season, Suzuki’s stats equated to 189 hits, 22 doubles, 7 home runs, an OBP of .355, and a slugging percentage of .402. In the prime of his career, Suzuki’s slugging percentage was typically a bit higher (around .430 to .450).

11

Same. A guy who never strikes out is perfect for that role. He might not be a star, but he’s definitely a starter.

12

So I get Tony Gwynn as a middle infielder? Um, yes please. Gwynn technically did walk sometimes, but usually less than 50 per season. In 1990 he walked 44 time and 20 of them were intentional. Gwynn also technically hit a few home runs and struck out once in a blue moon. His CAREER avg. strikeouts per 162 games was a whopping 29. Twenty-nine. Chris Davis can do that in 2 weeks.

Joe’s WAR would probably stay within a range between 2 - 5, which I can certainly live with. So yeah, I sign him.

13

Yeah, a 2B with speed who hits .350/.350/.425 (making a guess on the slugging)? That’s a first division starter, but not a star. The dependability would make him even more valuable than that.

So of course you sign him; you get him under team control for the first six years. The real question is what you’d offer to pay him after his arbitration years… or what kind of contract you’d have to offer him up front to lock him up for 13 years.

14

Just for context, I was having a conversation yesterday about “three true outcomes” players - guys who strikeout, walk, and homer with very high frequency and rarely put the ball in play. I started thinking about what the exact opposite of such a player would be, and thought he would be quite useful indeed. I’m interested in the responses so far. So most of you would value this guy (and presumably pay him) as a borderline All-Star, but not much more or less than that?

15

If we had an entire team of Joe clones playing all the positions, and assuming average pitching, how good would the team be?

16

I’m not sure he’d be an All Star in any one year, but that consistency could possibly put him in the HOF. Given the comparison to Whit Merrifield with a 5.5 WAR for similar stats, if you assume a WAR of 5 over 13 years, that would be a lifetime 65 which is pretty close to the average WAR for 2B currently in the Hall. His OBP is also close to the average.

The lack of a breakout season would be a negative. I don’t know what to do with 0 HRs or walks, because that’s just a weird hypothetical that doesn’t lend to any real-world HOF comparison.

17

Wouldn’t they want someone with such an interesting career in the HoF? I know I’d be more interested in reading about him than someone who is like the 5th best HR hitter ever, or whatever.

18

I would take a the player, but I don’t think a team of him would be very good. Not terrible, but probably below 500. The problem is that he is going to be really hard to optimize. You can’t gain any advantage from lineup construction. The lack of a platoon split in particular is a problem as you can never have a particularly tough matchup for a pitcher. Given this, there is no reason that you won’t always face the oppositions best pitchers, and it isn’t like you are going to run up their pitch counts to knock them out of the game.

19

But Joe and his clones don’t care who’s pitching–they have the same on-base percentage regardless. Actually, once other teams catch on to the all-Joe team, they’ll always play their worst pitcher against them and let the best rest. Because the Joes don’t hit any better when facing a lousy pitcher.

Weird hypotheticals create weird results.

20

The mascot for the Joes should be a spherical cow.