I think there's a better chance that Larry Jones names his next kid, "CitiField" since his first one is already named "Shea."
http://sportslocker.blogspot.com/

I don't understand the fascination about Jones' hitting .400 so early in a season--usually that sort of speculation doesn't start until the end of May or early June. Although certainly difficult, it is not uncommon for a player to hit .400 in a single month--sustaining that high level of performance for several consecutive months is what makes the feat so rare.

I think it's that it is a future HOFer and one who, coming into the season, was a contender for a batting title. I guarantee that if Gwynn were hitting .400 at the end of the first month, folks would be all over it. It's different (though not much) than a career .240 hitter having a hot month. Not to say he'll do it, it's just that a known good hitter has a hot month to start the year it gets talked about.

I remember Ralph Garr in 1971 getting a huge amount of press for taking a .400 average ... only into late May, as it turns out from looking at his gamelogs, though from the hype at the time you'd have thought it was late August or something. Maybe it's an Atlanta thing :)

I remember the Carney Lansford hype in 1989. It was fun while it lasted.

edit: It was 1988, actually. He hit .444! in May and then stunk for the rest of the year. Thanks BBREF.

Well contrary to the Atlanta/good hitter idea, I remember when folks (probably not here) were all awash about Clint Barmes, who was surely going to hit .400.

Actually Gwynn hit at or near .400 in March/April several times during his career and the general consensus was that it remained to be seen whether he could sustain it for an entire season:

1984: .434
1994: .395
1996: .403
1999: .412

The only time that there was serious discussion/speculation about him breaking .400 was in 1994, and that only after he sustained a .390+ BA well into June or July.

I remember the Carney Lansford hype in 1989. It was fun while it lasted.

Or Lenny Dykstra in 1990, who was hitting .400 up to June 11th of that year.

John Olerud was hitting .400 on August 2, 1993.

it’ll seem more likely, to the average person, that he’ll hit .400, since he “just” has to keep up his pace

Chipper has hit .400 or better in four calendar months in his career. In two of them, July '06 and June '07, he played in no more than 16 games. His last full-time month at .400 before this year was September '01, when he hit .419.

Set your odds wherever you want, Vegas. I'm taking the under.

I enjoyed this stretch:

Ichiro Suzuki batting from career game #554 (Jul 6, 2004) to game #593 (Aug 21, 2004)
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+
40 189 178 33 85 6 3 3 16 9 3 16 1 1 0 0 9 3 .478 .505 .596 1.101

chipper went 3 for 4 in the first game today, he's back up to .410

Darin Erstad hit .449 in April 2000. He fell under .400 on May 6 but on 7/25 was still over .380. That was cool.

Of course there's Wade Boggs' infamous stretch in 162 team games from June 12, 1985 to June 7, 1986:

G: 160
PA: 745
AB: 633
R: 123
H: 254
2B: 50
3B: 2
HR: 12
RBI: 99
BB: 107
IBB: 3
SO: 53
BA: .401
OBP: .489
SLG: .543
OPS: 1.033 (.48924 + .54344 = 1.03268)

What was his Fenway average during that streak, .460?

From 7/19/98 through 4/3/00, Larry Walker hit .399.

Andres Galarraga was hitting .400 as late as July 5th in 1993.

Rod Carew dropped below .400 for good on July 11th in 1977.

George Brett was at .400 on September 19th, in 1980. He hit .304 the rest of the way to finish at .390.

Terry Forster batted .400 from 4/18/71 to 7/4/85.

Clay Belllinger hit .400 from 7/2/99 to 9/26/99.

Paul O'Neil was still hitting .405 on June 16th, 1994, and his avg was .472 as late as May 25th. That was kind of a hot start.

In re: Boggs. Wow. I knew he'd hit .400 over a year-long stretch, but didn't know he'd had so many hits. Way more PAs (and a few more ABS) than Sisler in 1920, and still didn't quite break the (old) record.

Randy Winn hit .422/.455/.822 in the final 34 games of the 2005 season. Winner!!!

He's only hitting .410? I've paid no attention, since he's not on my fantasy team, but from all the hoopla I was assuming he was hitting like .885. Jesus god, it's only May 12.

edit: It was 1988, actually. He hit .444! in May and then stunk for the rest of the year. Thanks BBREF.

Yes, yes it was. He was on my first fantasy team ever that year. On my bench. We could only make monthly transactions, so he & the (if memory serves) almost similarly hot-hitting Mike LaValliere were doing me no good. At least I had Wade Boggs starting in his place. (Who I had catching instead of Spanky, I don't really recall. Bob Brenley? Bob Melvin? Your mom?) Why, yes, I DID finish last.

John Olerud was hitting .400 on August 2, 1993.

I remember this because Chad Kreuter (!) was hitting .400 until the middle of May that same year. Since this was the only good thing going on with the Tigers, it got some coverage. I remember wondering how cool it was that two guys were competing to see which could do it. I was 11, so the whole "sample size" thing had not entirely* occurred to me. He ended up hitting .286.

* I say "entirely" because I do recall looking at the back of some scrub's baseball card one day and see a career average of .500 and thinking "Holy crap, this guy is awesome! How come I've never heard of him?" Then I noticed that he'd had only 4 at bats. That's probably when the notion of sample sizes began to dawn on me.

When I think small sample size for a hitter, I think Terry Puhl 1990. I had the 1990 pursue the pennant cards and Puhl was awesome against LHP. This was before the internet, and I didn't have the Elias book for 1990, so I didn't have splits but I had figured out how to get all of the raw stats in the B-Ref line by handedness of pitcher from the frequencies of outcomes on the cards. I figured out Puhl had gone 2 for 3 against lefties that year; you weren't allowed to bring him into the game vs LHP but he was unstoppable if you could. I wondered why the Astros didn't let him face more lefties.

EDIT: PTP had each player's batting average vs LHP and RHP on the cards, nothing else for the splits, but that's what you would use to get # of AB vs each side, or at least a small number of choices that you choose from because if things like 2B, 3B, and GDP didn't add up you could eliminate that split.

Chipper is hitting .418 as of today.

Two weeks later, Chipper is hitting .425. Can we talk about this yet?

Two weeks later, Chipper is hitting .425. Can we talk about this yet?

If he's hitting .400 when he has enough at bats to qualify for the batting title, I'm going to Jeff Gilooly (sp?) him. We need a .400 hitter. America needs a .400 hitter dammit!

Going back to calcs I did a few weeks ago (in another thread, I think):

Currently: 77 for 184, 29 BB in 216 PA with 2 SF and 1HBP. His walk rate is around .13-.14 BB/PA which has been fairly stable over his career. His career rate is .132, his rate this year is .134 and his rate in 2006-07 is .141. I'll round up to account for SF and HBP of which he gets between 5 and 12 per season. So, a walk rate of .14 per PA.

Assuming 502 PA, this gives him 70 walks (rounding down). That leaves him 432 AB and means he needs 173 hits. He currently has 77 hits so he needs 96 more. If he goes 96 for his next 248, he'd be hitting at a .387 clip the rest of the way and end up 173 for 432 for a BA of .40046. If he goes 172/432 his BA would be: .39815, so he wouldn't even "technically" hit 400.

If he matches his career (including 2008) averages the rest of the year he'd get 77 hits in those 248 AB and end up hitting .35648.

If he matches his 2006-07 rate the rest of the way he gets 82 more hits and ends up 159/432 for a .36806 average.

If he matches his 2007-08 rates (he's hitting .35868 over the last season and a quarter) the rest of the way he gets 89 more hits and ends up 166 for 432 and a BA of .38426.

I'd have to think he has a real good shot at hitting .350 for the year at this point.

EDIT: He's on pace for 563 AB and 661 PA at this point. To hit .400 given that he needs to go 149 for his next 379, or a .393 average the rest of the way. Repeating the above with his current AB pace:

career: final BA .345
06-07: final BA .359
07-08: final BA .378

I have to agree about .350 being very realistic, and I like the part where you point to his 2007-2008 rates for .384, because it's quite possible he is showing a true increase in talent level (not likely but possible) Of course .400 is going to be difficult but I don't think it's impossible to consider at this point. He's at .425 during todays game, it doesn't seem like he's likely to stop anytime soon

That reminds me - the numbers above don't include today's game. I forgot they were playing this afternoon.

I do think he's changed hitting styles the last couple of years so I think it's relevant to use recent numbers. Of course, it is, as you say, unlikely he'll hit .400. But he could have a big, big year in him. The Braves announcers last night said he was complaining that the focus on .400 has gotten to him and he feels like he's "trying for singles". Sciambi pointed out that his slugging is higher than it's ever been and is nearly .800 from the left side of the plate. So whatever he feels like, he's not being a singles hitter.

If Chipper doesn't get another extra base hit for the rest of the year, but singles his way to .400, I'd take that in a heartbeat.

He's tenth in the league in home runs anyway. That's pretty good.

2 for 3 today. .422 for the year.

edited to add: I had no idea Russ Branyan was back with the Brewers. Cool.