A reasonably athletic man in his 20s or 30s, given a full season’s worth of at bats and making an honest effort, guided by basic coaching, would certainly do a lot better than .010. I’d guess the baseline would be about .100.
Consider that most pitchers with a lot of career at bats usually hit at least .100. Roy Halladay, who is visibly a far less talented hitter than I am, and whose approach as a hitter appears to be “let’s just get this over with,” is a career .117 hitter. His erstwhile teammate Chris Carpenter, who as I recall has a swing like a man trying to swat away a mosquito with a flat screen television, is a career .118 hitter. That’s more or less what a grown man who is not crippled will do. My random search also led me to Miguel Batista, also formerly a teammate of Halladay, who has managed to hit a bit under .100, at .094, but Miguel has a couple of home runs, so he’s beating Halladay there.
.165 would be a stretch but it’s possible. However, if your hero were to push his batting average up to .165, he likely would hit no home runs, or maybe one or two at most, and do little else of value. Dunn is having an incredibly bad year but he’s hit eleven home runs and walked 62 times, which is about eleven home runs and 45 walks more than our nameless hero would get. Dunn is not trying to maximize his batting average; he’s trying to make runs score, which in his case he has always done largely by hitting home runs and drawing walks.
This would be an interesting experiement. If nameless hero never held a bat before in his life, I guarantee he wouldn’t hit .100. If he’s a 25-30 year old guy who was a pretty decent player in high school, I think he’s got a shot.
Also consider, pitchers are seeing a lot of fastballs in the strike zone. If nameless hero were pitched to like he was a legitimate hitter and not a crappy hitting pitcher, his chances are even worse.
Assuming our nameless hero keeps getting at bats, one has to asume he’d be pitched to just like a pitcher. Nobody’s going to spend a lot of time worrying about finesse on the .100 hitter, they’re just going to air it out. I’m assuming, BTW, that our nameless hero does know how to swing a bat and is more than adequately familiar with baseball.
As to Dunn’s decline, it’s very sudden but players like Dunn declinig at age 31 is not at all unusual or surprising.
Contrary to popular belief, 31 is not peak. Baseball players peak around 27, and most players collapse very quickly after age 30; you just notice the ones who don’t. Players with “old player skills” like Dunn are particularly prone to collapse in their early 30s. Remember George Bell? Washed up at 33. Ralph Kiner never played a game in the majors past his 33rd birthday. Rocky Colavito won an RBI title at 31, was a bad player at 32, and scuffled through two more seasons before hanging it up. Alvin Davis was done at 31. Greg Luzinski was done at 33. Kent Hrbek, done at 34.
As much as Dunn is shockingly bad this year, the White Sox were very foolish to engage his services for as much as they did for as long as they did. Players like Dunn have a better than even chance of totally collapsing in their early 30s.
Without having the details right in front of me, I recall seeing a piece in a Bill James book a number of years ago that indicated that statistically, most players have their peak performance between ages 27-32, after which most players have a precipitous drop off. It doesn’t tend to be a slow roll down to a graceful end, but a case where one day the guy has Major League talent and the day after his 32nd birthday he’s suddenly playing like he’s never stepped on a ball diamond before. So certainly this kind of dropoff is not unprecedented, but I’d say Dunn’s a year early for having the typical old age deterioration. Maybe not the best investment of the Sox’ money, but statistically a safe bet for at least this year and maybe a couple more if he stayed healthy.
[QUOTE= RickJay]
Consider that most pitchers with a lot of career at bats usually hit at least .100. Roy Halladay, who is visibly a far less talented hitter than I am, and whose approach as a hitter appears to be “let’s just get this over with,” is a career .117 hitter. His erstwhile teammate Chris Carpenter, who as I recall has a swing like a man trying to swat away a mosquito with a flat screen television, is a career .118 hitter. That’s more or less what a grown man who is not crippled will do. My random search also led me to Miguel Batista, also formerly a teammate of Halladay, who has managed to hit a bit under .100, at .094, but Miguel has a couple of home runs, so he’s beating Halladay there.
[/QUOTE]
You’re forgetting that even the pitchers are freakishly good athletes, who typically crush it in high school and often play another position when not pitching.
Granted, they don’t take BP or get hitting coaching as much as position players do, but your hypothetical MLB pitcher is still likely a damn sight better at hitting than a high-school or college all-star who went undrafted, so much so as to make that “all-star” look foolish.
Yes. On the other hand Dunn created tens of millions of excess value for his teams before hitting free agency, and he didn’t receive any extra compensation for that.
Not surprisingly, this is absolute nonsense. Most pitchers are very good athletes who often were the best hitters on their college and/or high school teams. They became pitchers because they projected as better prospects as pitchers than hitters. Since hitting major league pitching is really really hard, and pitching prospects don’t have time to practice hitting all that much, most pitchers will struggle against major league pitching. They still would do way better than random athletic guy off the street. Hell I don’t think the athletic guy would do better than Dunn against lefties whom is now 3/81 against them this season.
With Dunn I think Dhing is clearly affecting his performance. There is evidence to suggest hitters do worse when not playing the field (either dhing or pinch hitting) and is possible that Dunn is an extreme example of that like Pat Burrell before him. There isn’t really a good solution for that though as Dunn is an awful fielder and there is no place to play him anyway.
While gonzomax’s claim that major league pitchers are BAD ATHLETES is pretty silly, it’s certainly not true that most MLB pitchers are the hitting equivalents of a high school or college star.
Rick Ankiel aside - Ankiel was unusual and noteworthy for being an unusually talented hitter for a pitcher - I think you will find, if you look at the history of most major league pitchers, that they stopped being elite hitters long before college.
It’s not just that they don’t do BP a lot; pitchers are bad hitters because there’s no reason they should be good hitters, the same way outfielders are bad pitchers because there’s no reason for them to be good at it. Pitchers aren’t selected for their hitting. They are generally identified as being pitching prospects quite early on, and once slotted in as a pitcher, whether or not they can hit isn’t particularly important. It’s evolution in action. A lack of pitching skills means you never make it; a lack of hitting skills has nothing to do with your success. Nobody ever cared if Halladay could hit.
For every Ankiel or Lemon, I can give you a player like Hank Aguirre of the Tigers. LIfetime BA of .085. batted 388 times as a pro, struck out 236. Not very silly at all. Jerry Crasnick: Starting 9 -- Worst hitting pitchers - ESPN Some modern pitchers who are just fine hitters.
You could shoot him. (Actually, I’m not sure about that one.) Absent suspension, baseball players get their cash whether they play well, poorly, or not at all. As noted, before free agency, most players get paid much, much less than their skills would attract if they were allowed to bargain with them freely.
I’d certainly assume so – in prior years he was very vocal about wanting to stay in the NL and being allowed to perform on the field. But this off-season he finally ran out of offers – I believe the Nats were willing to give him a one-year contract but not more – so he went over to the Junior Circuit.
Here in Natstown there are plenty of us ticked off about how GM Mike Rizzo muffed the Riggleman situation. But then we look at Budd, who Rizzo refused to keep on long term over the vociferous objection of many, including his star third baseman, and we figure we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Seriously, gonzo, your statements are ridiculous. As I have shown , Roy Halladay is a terrible hitter. That doesn’t make him a bad ATHLETE. Halladay is an amazing athlete, known for his remarkable conditioning. Tom Glavine was a career .186 hitter with a grand total of one home run, but he was a phenomenal athlete, drafted in two professional sports. Nolan Ryan was a career .110 hitter but he was a tremendous athlete.
If you don’t know the difference between a bad hitter and a bad ATHLETE, buy a dictionary.
Seriously, if you equate throwing a ball with being a good athlete in the other baseball skills ,you should buy one. They are not t5he same skill set. That is why they stink in the other aspects of the game. Seriously.
No, they are not the same skill set. But, apparently, by your standards nobody who can’t hit, hit for power, field, run, and pitch is a good athlete. That pretty much cuts the list down to Babe Ruth.
Is Brandon Inge, who can’t pitch, not a good athlete? How about Matthew Stafford, who can’t hit or pitch? Dennis Rodman? Gordie Howe?
For Christ’s sake. Carl Lewis, multi-gold-medal Olympian, couldn’t hit in the major leagues. Was he a bad athlete? Was Jesse Owens a bad athlete? I doubt Bobby Orr was a major league calibre hitter - was HE a bad athlete? Is Tom Brady a bad athlete? Because I bet Tom Brady can’t hit MLB pitching. How about Michael Jordan? Quite a failure as a hitter, so was he a bad athlete?
Since when was being a good major league HITTER the only requirement for being a good athlete? Major league pitchers, with very few exceptions, are excellent athletes. Do you even know what the word “Athlete” means?
