A comment made during the Survivor reunion made me wonder about this. I was sure there would be some sort of web widget that would make this easy; but the only thing I found on MLB.com went back no further than 2001, and Rocker really only was a consistently active player in the two years previous to that.
2 plate appearances. 1 strikeout, one walk.
Baseball Reference
Thank you! I figured it must be possible; not sure why Google couldn’t find that for me but I really appreciate your doing so.
So it’s obviously a very small sample size, but Rocker had some justification, then, for saying facing Bonds was “easier” than dealing with opponents on Survivor. Though I’m no baseball expert (yet not a complete novice either): would the .000 batting average be mitigated by a .500 on-base average? Bonds was an RBI power hitter type player, though, so he clearly didn’t demonstrate that part of his game.
I wonder too if the walk was intentional, as often happens to power hitters when there are runners on base. And if so, should Rocker even be docked for it at all when it’s the manager’s call? (OTOH if the manager is a wise one, it might indicate a lack of faith in the pitcher’s ability to get him out, though this is Bonds after all so it might be automatic in certain situations regardless of who’s pitching.)
Actually, Bonds excelled in all aspects of hitting – he had entire seasons where his OBP was over .500 (.444 for his career), so Rocker was clearly doing much better than the league against him (the link shows that the walk was not intentional). Bonds “only” led the league in HR and RBI twice each, but led in walks 12 times and OBP ten. In the first half of his career he was also a great base stealer; I can’t tell you how many times I saw him draw a walk, steal second and score on an outfield fly. The end of his career wasn’t exactly glorious, but damn, he was good. In general, I would say that a player who had a .500 OBP would certainly have a long career even if he didn’t do anything else well at all.