June 29, 2015

Successful Hacker

Nolan Arenado holds an impressive 15-game hit streak. He knocked out 22 hits, 15 of those for extra bases, including nine home runs. His three walks, however, mean that his .410 OBP isn’t far above his .379 BA.

Who cares? The .401 OBP is what matters, not how a batter gets there. For Arenado, however, that small gap is common place. For the season, his slash line stands at .293/.326/.632. A .326 OBP is not bad in the current scoring environment, but doesn’t that line look very odd? There’s a greater than 300 point difference between his OBP and slugging percentage, and that’s unusual:

Largest Difference, Slug – OBP, low mound era (1969 on), 502 PA minimum
Player Season On Base Percentage Slugging Pct Difference
Barry Bonds 2001 0.515 0.863 0.348
Sammy Sosa 2001 0.437 0.737 0.299
Albert Belle 1995 0.401 0.690 0.290
Mark McGwire 1998 0.470 0.752 0.283
Juan Gonzalez 1996 0.368 0.643 0.275
Mark McGwire 1999 0.424 0.697 0.273
Sammy Sosa 1998 0.377 0.647 0.270
Dave Kingman 1979 0.343 0.613 0.270
Sammy Sosa 1999 0.367 0.635 0.269
Larry Walker 1997 0.452 0.720 0.268
Juan Gonzalez 1993 0.368 0.632 0.264
Ken Griffey Jr. 1997 0.382 0.646 0.264
Juan Gonzalez 1998 0.366 0.630 0.264
Chris Davis 2013 0.370 0.634 0.264

Only Barry Bonds topped a 300 point difference in this time, and he posted a .515 OBP that year. Another way of looking at this is the lowest OBP for a .600 slugger is .343 by Dave Kingman in 1979. That’s what bothers me about Arenado. The opposition tends to pitch around extreme sluggers like him. Either he’s not letting them, or they feel there’s a great enough chance of an out that they just go after him. I’m going to be very interested to see how this works out the rest of the season. At some point pitchers are going to start walking him. Otherwise, with his batting average, he might turn out to be a more successful Dave Kingman.

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