He is on the all chess team:
Peter Gammons once told me that in their younger days Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez would play chess against each other.
Jose Siri of the Rays homered and walked in a 3-1 win over the Royals. The homer brought Siri’s total to 14 on the season. He now owns a great .550 slugging percentage, but with a poor .295 OBP. Siri doesn’t get on base well, with a .282 career mark, but career slugging percentage is just .424 coming into the day. He found power this season.
It’s also very unusual to show that kind of power while being an out machine. The first person I thought of was Dave Kingman. Kingman, however, had only one season where he posted a sub .300 OBP and a .500+ slugging percentage. It was in 1976 at .286/.506.
Among players who were regulars, it’s only been done six times. In addition to Kingman, Jesse Barfield hit .296/.510 in 1983, Tony Armas hit .298/.514 in 1985, Tony Clark hit .299/.503 in 1996, Mike Jacobs hit .299/.514 in 2008, and Rougned Odor hit .296/.502 in 2016. If Siri keeps this up, he might post the highest slugging percentage for a player with an OBP under .300.
Tom Tango demonstrates how a player can be both very good and very bad in the same game. That player, of course, is Dave Kingman, whose whole career was one of extremes.
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.