In 10,292 PA during his career, Tony Gwynn struck out 434 times. The most strikeouts he ever had in a season was 40. 40. He led the league in hits 7 seasons, BA 8 times, and only had 5 seasons with more than 30 strikeouts.
And Uggla. That was a low point. Overpaying for borderline All Stars entering their 30s remains the dumbest strategy in General Managing.
Yep. And we just shipped off the guy that 90% of the fan base was convinced was the next Andruw Jones.
Not online. The Braves thread on Volnation is the only good place there to talk about Vols football. (The basketball forum over there isn't bad these days. I hope Putin cyber attacks the recruiting forum. Honestly, it might be worth getting rid of the whole internet to get rid of it.) VolTwitter and BravesTwitter have totally different vibes. Voltwitter is obnoxious but can also be funny. Braves Twitter is silly and emotional and cringe.
I think I’ve told this story before, but in the midst of his hitting streak I had a Braves fan bet me 100 dollars Uggla would break DiMaggio’s record. I asked him if he wanted odds and he said he didn’t. To be fair I think he was pretty lit when he proposed the bet, and he was also quite well off. But still… easiest bet I’ve ever accepted
If anyone says they will bet you $100 that <insert player here> will beat DiMaggio's record, you take it. No one is ever touching that.
I get what you're saying, that's a sensationalized stat. But let's not delegitimize just how good of a true hitter/batter Gwynn was (just offensive player in general). - He ranks #41 on the all-time strike-out percentage list. Not too impressive until you realize that of those 37 of them played their last game before 1961 - the divisional expansion era. No idea if there is any true correlation there, but for the sake of trying to limit the data set and allow for different era styles, I'm going with that cut off. - The three who played after expansion were Felix Milan (retired 1977), Bobby Richardson (retired 1966), and Red Schoendienst (retired 1963). - It's crazy how his standard/advanced stats compare to theirs. The only negatives for Gwynn are defensive/positional based metrics - There have only been 4 people all-time (not limited to the post-1961 era) to have 5k plate appearances, 2000k hits, and fewer than 500 strikeouts (like @NashVol11 about stats in another thread, I only picked these numbers specifically because they are round and nice. But I picked PA and Hits pretty far away from Gwynn's numbers and kept the K's relatively close to keep the emphasis on strikeouts/plate discipline. Matched with the OBP, it just shows not only how disciplined of a hitter he was, but how good he was at it. He wasn't just not striking out and getting the ball in play, he was getting on base and scoring). - Bill Buckner, Don Mattingly, Juan Pierre, and Tony Gwynn. - He had 200 more walks than the next closest on that list of 4 (790 to Don Mattingly's 588) - His career OBP was 30 points higher than Mattingly at .388 to .358, respectively, too. - Had the most 2B of anyone on the list, and 2nd most 3B's to Juan Pierre (which completely makes sense. Pierre was a burner; he's also the only one on the list who has more steals) - He had the most IBB's of the group (considering he wasn't exactly a typical HR threat, just shows the respect pitchers had for his hitting. I'd imagine more often than not they came with a runner on base, and they'd rather give him a free base without the risk of a well placed hit advancing the other runners further than one base as well. - Bill Buckner is the only one with 10k plate appearances (10,037 to Gwynn's 10232), and he had 426 fewer hits (2,715 to 3,141). - He ranks #132 all-time in OPS+, but #651 in career HRs. That's absolutely nuts. He wasn't only getting contact, and getting on base, he was hustling his ass off to get every bag he could to be in position to score. - And to bring it back to the strikeouts - he had the fewest strikeouts on that list despite having the most plate appearances (and by a quite a hefty margin too for 2 of the 3.) I loved watching him play growing up, because it was the kind of baseball that we were learning as kids. Pure fundamentals paired with situational awareness/intelligence, knowing where to hit the ball and when, and the absurd physical/mental ability to be able to do it. That, to me, is why I loved watching baseball growing up way more than I do now where you have guys striking out at an absurd rate, while HRs are also sky rocketing. I'd much rather have strategic hitting with singles/doubles/triples, and great hustle plays throughout the entire game, than the boom or bust K or HR type of game.
Only ten guys have gone for 3,000 hits and fewer than 800Ks. Some decent names on the list. Went way more in depth than I thought, lol. But I just loved watching Gwynn play and even without sensationalized statistic comparisons, his career was pretty dang impressive.
When I was in Japan back in early 70's, we watched Sumo and Japan Pro baseball on TV, cause you did not have to speak Japanese to know what was going on. Watching one night and lo and behold, they announced Joe Pepitone on 1st. Irrelevant note: We also watched the TV show "Combat". Of course everything was dubbed in Japanese. Watching Vic Morrow and his WWII platoon guys speaking Japanese was a hoot.
