Carlos Pena has the best OPS+ for a sub .205 hitter
Posted by Andy on September 16, 2010
The title says it all. Carlos Pena is having a weird season.
| Rk | Player | Year | Age | Tm | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | Pos | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carlos Pena | 108 | .203 | 2010 | 32 | TBR | 129 | 529 | 439 | 63 | 89 | 16 | 27 | 80 | 79 | 143 | .331 | .424 | .755 | *3/D |
| 2 | Mark McGwire | 103 | .201 | 1991 | 27 | OAK | 154 | 585 | 483 | 62 | 97 | 22 | 22 | 75 | 93 | 116 | .330 | .383 | .714 | *3 |
| 3 | Dave Kingman | 99 | .204 | 1982 | 33 | NYM | 149 | 607 | 535 | 80 | 109 | 9 | 37 | 99 | 59 | 156 | .285 | .432 | .717 | *3 |
| 4 | Rob Deer | 92 | .179 | 1991 | 30 | DET | 134 | 539 | 448 | 64 | 80 | 14 | 25 | 64 | 89 | 175 | .314 | .386 | .700 | *9 |
| 5 | Tom Tresh | 90 | .195 | 1968 | 29 | NYY | 152 | 590 | 507 | 60 | 99 | 18 | 11 | 52 | 76 | 97 | .304 | .308 | .612 | *67 |
| 6 | Curt Blefary | 89 | .200 | 1968 | 24 | BAL | 137 | 535 | 451 | 50 | 90 | 8 | 15 | 39 | 65 | 66 | .301 | .322 | .623 | 7923 |
| 7 | Lou Criger | 88 | .198 | 1905 | 33 | BOS | 109 | 377 | 313 | 33 | 62 | 6 | 1 | 36 | 54 | 0 | .322 | .272 | .593 | *2 |
| 8 | Herbie Moran | 77 | .200 | 1915 | 31 | BSN | 130 | 505 | 419 | 59 | 84 | 13 | 0 | 21 | 66 | 41 | .320 | .255 | .576 | *978 |
| 9 | John Hummel | 77 | .199 | 1906 | 23 | BRO | 97 | 326 | 286 | 20 | 57 | 6 | 1 | 21 | 36 | 0 | .289 | .259 | .548 | *437/98 |
| 10 | Swede Risberg | 76 | .203 | 1917 | 22 | CHW | 149 | 563 | 474 | 59 | 96 | 20 | 1 | 45 | 59 | 65 | .297 | .285 | .582 | *6 |
| 11 | Jimmy Sheckard | 76 | .194 | 1913 | 34 | TOT | 99 | 330 | 252 | 34 | 49 | 3 | 0 | 24 | 68 | 41 | .368 | .238 | .606 | *97/8 |
He's got a terrible batting average but a respectable 108 OPS+ thanks to a good number of walks and homers in a year that is overall down offensively.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Andy -- Hey, I agree with you! 🙂
(I probably shouldn't admit just how much I enjoy this kind of statistical oddity.)
I just want to add that Mark Reynolds has numbers extremely similar to Pena's -- .207 / .326 / .456, 105 OPS+. Pena's .203 BA would be the lowest ever for a hitter with at least 80 RBI; Reynolds's .207 would be the 3rd lowest, with Dave Kingman's .204 in between.
With any luck (for us), Pena and Reynolds will both fall below .200 by year's end.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
schmidt missed the list by .001
September 16th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
For his career Pena has the 4th highest OPS+ among players with a BA less than .250 (min 3000 PA)
Generated 9/16/2010.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Boy, that Lou Criger and that John Hummel. Tough to get no strikeouts!
(Yeah, I know. They weren't recorded, or something something blah blah.)
September 16th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Completely off topic, but I don't know how to contact you guys otherwise.
Can you figure out which individual player had the highest OPS in a single series this year, minimum of 3 games, and like 10 at bats.
Please? Thanks.
September 16th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Love stuff like this. Anything that makes me go look up Rob Deer's page on B-R just makes my day.
And I don't think there's anyone from Raphy's list I wouldn't like to have on my team if the price was right.
September 16th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Love this blog post. Brings back memories of Tommy Tresh, Curt Belfry (traded for Sparky Lyle?), King Kong during his second (?) stint with the Mets, and the before mentioned Rob Deer. Just goes to show, that BA isn't the be all end all.
For that matter, I enjoyed Ralphy's list as well. How many of those guys (on Ralph's list) played for pennant winners. There are some productive players on his list.
September 16th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
@6-7 (and everyone else) -- Since his name popped up ... How about a little hoot for Fury Gene Tenace? From 1969 to 1983, the C/1B put up a 136 OPS+ on walks and power, in over 5,000 PAs, as you see on the list above. In the 20 years from 1966-85, that's tied for 17th (with Jack Clark and Al Kaline) out of 331 players with 3,000+ PAs.
He wasn't Kaline, or Clark, because of defense. But he was a terrific offensive player for a long time, and he doesn't seem to be remembered much, except by Strat-O players (like me). Was it just an accident that his team won 5 straight division titles and 3 straight WS between 1971 and '75? His .375 OBP in those years (in over 2,300 PAs) ranks 17th (tied with Bobby Grich, Billy Williams and Richie Zisk), out of 188 hitters with 1,500+ PAs in that span; he raised his OBP after that, finishing with a career mark of .388. And of course there's his '72 WS -- 4 HRs, 9 RBI, and the GWRBI in their 3-2 Game 7 win, a fitting bookend to his having all 3 RBI in the Game 1 win by that same score.
"Gino!"
September 16th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
@7 Danny Cater was traded for Sparky Lyle.
September 17th, 2010 at 12:37 am
The other great thing about Carlos Pena is that he looks like a cartoon version... of himself.
http://patchristin.com/Carlos_Pena_3.jpg
September 17th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Haha I love that Kingman had 37 HR and NINE doubles
September 17th, 2010 at 3:30 am
In McGwire's 2nd to last year, he had 32 home runs with only 8 doubles, but a high average.
Then in his final season, which only misses this list because he didn't play enough games, he batted sub .200, had an OPS+ of 105, and had 29 home runs with only 4 doubles.
September 17th, 2010 at 5:25 am
I failed to mention in my original post that I limited the search to seasons qualified for the batting title.
September 17th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Kong's 37-9 is great, is that the record? He also had a 37-14. Love Deer's '92 season, 32 hrs, 64 ribbies, which means he might have needed 50 for a 100...
September 17th, 2010 at 7:12 am
#8 - You are right, Gino deserves a shout out. I think Bill James, in his Historical Abstract had him highly rated. He pointed out that his walks, plus power was a great combo, despite the low BA. And as you point out, he was part of a lot of winning teams. Tettleton, Ferguson, and Tenace were all rated very close together by James.
September 17th, 2010 at 7:58 am
I am shocked - shocked! - to see Dave Kingman's name on this list.
September 17th, 2010 at 8:36 am
I actually like 1/2 the guys on Raphy's list.
Colbert, Tenace, Tettleton, Evans and Roenicke.
That lineup would have a lot of Walk, Walk, 3-Run HR. Just fill in with Belanger and Paul Blair and Earl Weaver would love it.
I would like Pena too, if he wasn't a PITA against the Yanks. Exemplified again the other night (even with no big hits), when the Yanks wanted to face Dan Johnson (2 HomeRuns) instead of giving up more HR to Pena.
September 17th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Kong's 37-9 is by far the record for most homes with under 10 doubles...
September 17th, 2010 at 10:26 am
While looking at the list, I wondered if anybody had more RUNS than HITS during a season. I though Barry Bonds would be the ideal guy to do it (and he came close).
September 17th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Babe Ruth comes close in 1928, as a 33 year old, he had 163 runs and 173 hits. His last season in Boston, he had 13 hits and 13 runs scored.
September 17th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
#19/ FALCOR Says: "While looking at the list, I wondered if anybody had more RUNS than HITS during a season."
WEll, Tom Brown came close in 1889, with 177 runs(!) and 189 hits. Of course in the 19th century, there were far far more baserunners reaching by errors. In the 20th century, Rickey Henderson had quite a few years in the 80s coming close, but still 25/30 more hits than runs. For their career, Brown was 138/177 and Henderson 121/161 for ratio of runs/hits over a full year (162 games).
In theory, you'd need a good-but-not-great hitter who walked a lot, and batted leadoff for a great-hitting team. Even under ideal conditions I don't think anyone would do it over a full season.
September 17th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Bonds 1999: 91 runs - 93 hits in 102 games
Bonds 2004: 129 runs - 135 hits in his crazy .362 AVG + 232 BB (120 IBB) season...
Just crazy stats...
September 17th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
@19-20 -- Max "Camera-Eye" Bishop is the only player ever to score more than 50 Runs while having more Runs than Hits. In 1930, Bishop scored 117 Runs with 111 Hits and (for the 2nd straight year) 128 Walks. Rickey Henderson scored 110 Runs with 112 Hits and 125 Walks in 1996 (Runs = 98.2% of Hits), and Donie Bush had 126 Runs with 130 Hits in 1911 (96.9%). (Bush led the AL in walks 5 times in 6 years from 1909-14, while averaging a .250 BA and 1 HR per year. He was listed at 5'6"....)
Bishop also has the highest career ratio of Runs to Hits (min. 500 Runs) at 79.4% -- 966 Runs, 1,216 Hits. (Followed by Barry Bonds (75.9%), Babe Ruth (75.7%) and Rickey Henderson (75.1%).)
And Bishop has the highest career ratio of Walks to Hits (min. 500 Walks) at 95.0% -- 1,156 Walks and 1,216 Hits. He had a .271 BA, but a .423 OBP. Second in this department is (of course!) Gene Tenace, 92.8% (984 Walks, 1,060 Hits).
September 17th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
@19-22 -- The relational field in the Play Index lets us answer these questions directly -- just specify "R > 1 * H" at the bottom of the criteria. It's my favorite addition to the P-I in the last year or so. To get the highest career ratio of Runs to Hits, I started with "0.9" as the multiplier, then gradually lowered it until I got some results.
September 17th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
John #24, thanks for posting the instructions. I haven't gotten around to using the P-I yet. I just went to the highest individual season walk totals and then looked over the individual players. Except for Ruth, I just guessed on him and went directly to his BR page. I was thinking the best way to get more runs than hits was to be a big homer hitter with a lot of walks.
September 17th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
No list of low-average, high-OPS hitters is complete without Frank Fernandez.
September 17th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
#23/ I should've thought of old "Camera Eye", thanks; he posted some extreme "freak-show" stats; I noticed that his OBA was over 50 points higher than his SLG% - other players with this imbalance are Roy Thomas (80 points), Donnie Bush, and Miller Huggins, diminutive lead-off hitters who walked a lot but had no power. The closest player to that nowadays is probably Luis Castillo of the Mets, with a .368/.351 ratio.
I imagine a player like that would be far more common in the deadball era, when the lack of power isn't such a negative.
September 17th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Andy, you have a unerring radar for good discussion starters. {sucks up to moderator}
@7
Yeah, StephenH, Tom Tresh had fallen into my baseball subconscious as well as yours.
The study shows the powerful (distorting) effect of home runs on OPS. If you can reach the fences, it will cover a multitude of other offensive sins like strikeouts, GIDP, and low average.
One season is represented twice on the list... 1968, when the pitchers ruled. Tresh's and Blefary's OPS+ got a huge shot in the arm from this. Otherwise their HR totals were rather meagre compared to other modern players on the list.
September 17th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Kingman's 1982 is worthy of note for another reason: he led the National League in home runs but finished the season below replacement value.
September 17th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
The top three in Raphy's list in #3 all appeared at 1B for the 1972 World Series-winning Oakland A's. I wonder if there's something to that.
Curt Blefary, whose 1968 season gets him into the original list at the top, also played one game at 1B for the A's in 1972.
September 17th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I'm just honestly surprised to see that a sub-.800 OPS is above average. I guess offense is down, and has been trending down, more than I realized. I always considered an OPS of .800 to be the cutoff between "good" and "bad", to be completely unnuanced about the whole thing. Interesting stuff.
While we're talking about players with absurd ratios, I'm pretty sure McGwire had more HRs than non-HR hits during his 70-HR year, or came damn near close. Has that ever happened? I can't imagine it, out side of Bonds (moreso because of walks), McGwire, or Sosa.
September 17th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Good Point Jahiegal, I was thinking how odd Kingman's '82 season was in general. That has to be the worst season ever by a player who led the league in Home Runs. I remember that season pretty well and I kind of remember that Kingman was close to the lead in RBI's during the summer of '82 as well.
September 18th, 2010 at 12:17 am
McGwire had 70 HRs and 152 total hits. Can anyone with PI figure out if anyone's HRs >= .5Hs?
September 18th, 2010 at 4:34 am
BSK@33, McGwire in 2001 (his final year, a partial season), had 29 HR and 56 H. The next closest was Frank Thomas in 2005 with 12 HR and and 23 H.
I also happened to notice while looking at McGwire's page that in 1997 he had 24 HR with 40 H after being traded from Oakland to St. Louis.
September 18th, 2010 at 8:02 am
Whiz-
Thanks. It makes sense that, if it happened, it happened for guys with shorter seasons.
September 18th, 2010 at 10:34 am
I am just amazed at all of the statistics and trivia you guys have.
September 18th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Expanding some of the search limitations, you get some interesting results. It's so rare for a player to continue to get playing time if his BA is down around .200. It's clearly become more common in the last few decades as a) more hitters have adopted the three-true-outcomes approach while b) more managers have become open to the idea that a guy can still be a productive hitter without a "respectable" batting average.
Including seasons under .210 rather than .205, Pena falls into second place behind Rob Deer's 1990 season in which he posted a 108 OPS+ in 511 PAs. If the limitation is set at 100 games rather "Qualified for Batting Title" (still using .210 as the BA cutoff), Harmon Killebrew jumps way out in front with a 130 OPS+ during the 1968 season, in which he hit only .210 but of course had lots of HRs and BBs.
Honestly, I was trying to finagle this so Gorman Thomas would come out top but he never quite met all the conditions. The one fascinating result, which came up when I increased the BA cutoff to .220, was Wes Westrum's 1951 season. With 104 walks but only 79 hits, he managed to post a .400 OBP despite a .219 BA. Westrum was a catcher hitting down in the order so he didn't make the (very short) list of guys that had more runs than hits. I'd never really paid any attention to Westrum but that kind of production surely helped his team (the '51 Giants) pull off a miracle pennant. The guy was incredibly similar to Gene Tenace but I've never heard him mentioned in discussions of such players. I guess we just focus on the more recent models of that type, like Tenace and Tettleton.
September 18th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I think you should run this search with something like "minimum 250 pa's" just to see what interesting results you get. As you said, players with averages this low don't often get full playing time. The results would have far more outliers with weird stats I would think.
September 18th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
@33 @36
BSK and Scitea. I have no financial stake in this site, but I recently ponyed up my money to have the PI. It will take me a while to learn how to use it, but the power of the statistical database seems amazing.
@29 @32
Jahiegal, I don't believe there will ever be another Dave Kingman or Rob Deer in the major leagues, even the AL. The optics, for fans and media, of their plate appearances would be too bad. Local press still seizes on BA as the primary measure of offensive value.