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:
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.