Get 'em on, get 'em over, get 'em in

The onset of baseball’s spring training has caused painful memories to emerge that I had managed to repress since October. Memories of a Seattle Mariners team with a dismal .311 on-base percentage that still managed to hit into 123 double plays. Memories of a club that was already six games off the pace and effectively out of the AL West race by May 1. Memories of a disappointing club that got the manager, Mr. Lloyd McClendon, and GM Jack Zduriencik sacked.

Nelson Cruz was more successful in 2015 than most players
the Mariners have brought in to add a little pop to the lineup.
Yet though he hit 44 home runs and batted .302, he drove in
just 93 runs. It turns out that hitting over .300 with at least 40
homers and fewer than 100 RBI is pretty rare, and it happened
twice last year. Photo: Keith Allison/Wikimedia Commons. 

Even the seasonal bright spot had an odd disappointment. Nelson Cruz was the slugger brought in to add some pop to the club’s anemic lineup. Seasoned Mariner watchers, understandably pessimistic about whatever move the club makes, expected the usual flop, ala Kevin Mitchell, Richie Zisk, Gorman Thomas, or Jeff Cirillo, to name just a few of the duds who suddenly lost their mojo upon arrival in Sodo. Boomstick broke the mold, cracking 44 home runs and hitting .302 on the season. Despite this, Cruz drove in only 93 runs, and 44 of them were his own self, so Cruz sent just 49 teammates plate-ward on the season.

Later I noticed that National League Most Valuable Player Bryce Harper hit .322 with 42 home runs and just 99 ribbies. Arbitrary cutoffs are what baseball is all about, so I got to wondering how many other players have hit over .300 with 40 or more home runs and fewer than 100 RBI. Today I did the research. The list is surprisingly short. Though there were two such occurrences in 2015, there have been only five others in the history of the game, and all of them have been by big-name players, including the game's two most prolific sluggers. Which now seems obvious, since inclusion on the list means you hit .300 with 40 taters.

The last time it happened was in 2003, when Barry Bonds smacked 45 homers while batting .341 that year, yet had only 90 RBI. Bonds played in 130 games in '03 and had 550 plate appearances. His chances to drive in runs were reduced somewhat by 148 walks, 61 of which were intentional.

Before that you have to go back to 1994, when Ken Griffey, Jr. hit .323 and clubbed 40 round-trippers but drove in just 90 runs. This particular occurrence deserves a bit of an asterisk, though, as the season was cut short by a strike. Junior played in just 111 games and had 493 plate appearances. Had the season progressed to its typical 162 games he might well have approached 60 dingers and gotten the ten more ribbies he needed to avoid this list.

Baseball’s one-time home run king made the list twice. Henry Aaron batted .300 and hit 44 home runs while driving in just 97 runs in 1969, and he went .301-40-96 in 1973, both with the Atlanta Braves. Aaron played just 120 games in ’73 when he was 39 years of age. In ’69 he played 147 games and led the National League in total bases.

The first player to ever hit over .300 with at least 40 home runs and not drive home 100 or more runs was the Commerce Comet, Mickey Mantle, back in 1958. Mantle hit 42 homers that year and batted .304, but had just 97 RBI.

There was quite a bit of “missed it by that much” as I did the research for this list. For example, there was almost a third member just last season, when near-MVP Mike Trout hit 41 home runs and drove in 90, but hit “only” .299. But a cutoff is a cutoff (something many Mariner outfielders seem to know nothing about, but that’s for another article.) In fact it is fairly unusual for players to hit 40 home runs and not reach 100 RBI, regardless of batting average. Adam Dunn may be the poster child on either side of this; he hit 40 or more dingers six times and drove in at least 100 runs in four of those seasons, never hitting above .266.

There's long been a debate about whether "clutch" hitting exists. I don't believe that it does, and for Cruz, it is easy to find a reason that he logged fewer RBI than most guys with his sort of numbers amass. Austin Jackson and his .302 on-base percentage batted first or second 75 times for the Mariners last season. Logan Morrison (.302) led off 20 times. Even Rickie Weeks batted at the top of the order occasionally against left-handed pitching until his .263 OBP (and numerous other shortcomings) led to his release. Seth Smith, though not a prototype leadoff man, batted first or second 40 times and had a .330 OBP. Smith was actually McClendon’s best choice for the top of the order until Ketel Marte arrived at the end of July and put up a respectable .351 OBP for the rest of the season. In August and September McClendon pretty much settled on Marte in the leadoff spot and Kyle Seager at number two, though Seager's OBP of .328 isn’t all that great, either.

Cruz wasn't denied many RBI chances because of the intentional walk, even though he was the team's most productive hitter. He walked 59 times last season, just nine of them intentional. And he didn't fold under the pressure of batting with runners in scoring position; he hit .291 in that situation, just a tick below his overall season numbers. There just weren't that many guys on base for him, and the team didn't have anyone who was really good at getting to first base. Cruz himself was the club OBP leader at .369; maybe HE should have been leading off.

It seems that the Mariners as an organization have had a “walking is for sissies” philosophy in recent years. Swing the bat, be aggressive, they would preach. There must have been a zillion times last season when an M’s hitter would be battling a 1-2 count with several foul balls, and the pitch tracker (if you believe that's not just an intern in the back room putting a dot on a box) would show the pitcher hadn’t yet thrown a strike. One hopes that the hiring of Edgar Martinez (career OBP: .418) as hitting coach means that this approach has been rightly scrapped, and that Edgar can convince these guys to work the count a little, take an occasional walk, and rip the good pitches.

So let’s get some guys on base, set the table for the boppers, and watch Cruz morph into Ben Broussard.