Stubbs OPS+s so far: 99 105 86

Matty figures: 119 99 -2 71 59 121 125 130 121 87 114 112 98

Stubbs career: 96 (and still younger than Matty's "prime")
Matty career: 105

I won't even bother with the "hit .300" vs walks description...

Drew Stubbs probably has never heard of Walker or Alou.

Is this true? Stubbs is only a year younger than me and I grew up well aware of the Alou brothers. The only way I think it's possible is if you never talked to your dad about baseball growing up, or he wasn't much of a baseball fan. Or maybe I'm vastly over-playing the generational aspect of being a baseball fan. Walker I could give him, he's more distant in the past I don't think I knew him until my stats/history nerd phase which I understand not all professional players go through.

Yeah, it's hard to believe Stubbs wouldn't at least know about Moises Alou and Felipe's career as a manager, and have heard at some point about Felipe's brothers.

Yeah, it's hard to believe Stubbs wouldn't at least know about Moises Alou and Felipe's career as a manager, and have heard at some point about Felipe's brothers.

Stubbs grew up in the Houston area, and undoubtedly knew about the Astros. Moises Alou was a key player on several good Astros' teams of the late 90's and early 2000's. Jesus Alou was an Astros outfielder in the 1970's too.

He needs to channel Harry The Hat

I'm not sure this is true. When Harry Walker managed the Astros, I vaguely recall that some people felt that his coaching tutelage was not helpful to the development of Joe Morgan and Jimmy Wynn. The view was that his style may have suppressed their HR power.

Stubbs is probably at or near the border where it might be worth it to try to change him. As a hitter, he has one quality talent -- power -- and one massive flaw -- strikeouts (which destroy his BA). There's no question that if you could cut down the Ks while maintaining most of the power that Stubbs would be a substantially better hitter.

Meanwhile he has been excellent defensively and on the basepaths. That makes him Corey Patterson with a few more walks. That total package is above-average and I probably just live with what I've got and, if anything, try to tinker with him to improve the walk rate a bit.

My general philosophy (read "guess") is that, with rare exceptions, you can't cut down a hitter's K-rate substantially without deflating their power. I am not sure where the cutoff would be such that it's worth the risk but my favorite example (that I stumbled on) is Jose Hernandez vs. Miguel Tejada.

JH: 324 BABIP, 165 ISO, 3.3 HR%, 7.6 BB%, 22 LD%, 11.4 HR/FB%, +56 Rfield, -12 other
MT: 294 BABIP, 172 ISO, 3.4 HR%, 6.1 BB%, 19 LD%, 9.5 HR/FB%, -54 Rfield, +5 other

Hernandez probably squeaks out a win on "hitting" talent (the ISO is probably more heavily in Tejada's favor than it appears given park effects) and wipes the floor with Tejada on defense. Yet ...

JH: career 88 OPS+, 13.5 WAR in about 8 seasons of PA, 1 AS game
MT: career 108 OPS+, 42.5 WAR in about 14-15 seasons, 6 AS games, 1 MVP, 8 seasons with MVP votes

All because of ...

JH: 27.3 K/PA%
MT: 11.7 K/PA%

Equalize the playing time and the offensive difference between these two is about 25 WAR.

If the Cubs had tinkered with Hernandez to cut down the Ks, it's not ridiculous to think they could have ended up with a player as valuable as Tejada. It's unlikely -- i.e. they weren't gonna drop his K-rate to 12% -- but Hernandez was an excellent defender and getting him even to a 95-100 OPS+ would have made him one of the top SS in the league.

On the other hand, unless I did the numbers wrong, getting him down to a 20% K-rate isn't going to help much if it drops his BABIP to 300 and possibly not at all if it also drops his ISO (as you'd think it must).

Stubbs is around the same place as Hernandez. If you leave him alone, he might be Cameron or he might be Patterson. If you successfully tinker with him a bit, he might be Torii Hunter (with genuinely good defense); if you unsuccessfully tinker with him, he becomes Corey Patterson's age-28 season.* Leave well enough alone is probably the right call.

*K-rate down 1/3 but a 50 OPS+. However, that was just his age-27 season with a ridiculously low BABIP. At age 27, with a career-low K-rate and a career-average BABIP of 296 and Corey Patterson was ... as productive as average Corey Patterson (higher BA and OBP, lower ISO).

Daughtery: Drew Stubbs could learn a thing or two from Matty and ‘The Hat’

Be the brother of a better major leaguer?

I'm not sure this is true. When Harry Walker managed the Astros, I vaguely recall that some people felt that his coaching tutelage was not helpful to the development of Joe Morgan and Jimmy Wynn. The view was that his style may have suppressed their HR power.

I'm not totally sure either but I thought someone along the way mentioned that Walker was kind of racist. It sticks in my mind because I recall Bill James talking about some convention somewhere and how this old coach got up and said that Joe Morgan was smartest black ball player he had or something akin to that. He didnt mention Harry Walker by name but I got the distinct impression he was a major suspect.

Admittedly, I am sketchy on the details perhaps someone else can fill in the rest?

Morgan has been critical of Walker in this regard. Others have said that Walker's biggest problem was not racism, but the fact that he had a big ego and liked to talk and talk and talk and... Some of his players were turned off by Walker and the non-stop chatter.

Did Alou's strikeouts go down? Yes, they did, but it's not all that dramatic. In the 6 years from 1960 to 1965, Alou struck out 101 times in 1131 PA, which is 8.9% K/PA. In those six years with the Giants, he hit .260/.304/.338 and was never a full regular. For his next 6 years, 1966 to 1971 (mostly with the Pirates), he struck out 192 times in 3884 PA, or 4.9% K/PA. And he hit .325/.359/.401. His walk rate didn't budge. His ISO didn't budge. His strikeouts went down, but they were already fairly low. And his BABIP went up. Usually, BABIP goes up when you hit the ball harder; Alou might be the exception to that rule. Perhaps more of his fly balls fell in, in front of the outfielders, because he wasn't hitting them as hard?

another one that might be brought up is Omar Moreno, who was batting around .220 until Harry apparently started working with him during the Pirates championship 1979 season. I think they said he taught him to chop down on the ball and to use his speed? something like that. Anyhow that year it seemed a lot of their guys had career years: Bill Robinson, I think Tim Foli...

Yeah but the other thing is that Harry's brother was Dixie Walker and I believe Branch Ricky got rid of Dixie and a number of other unfriendly players on the Dodgers after '47 season in order to make Jackie Robinson's place on the team more secure. I dont have any first hand knowledge of the Walker brothers but racism is not out of the question.

But Alou had something Stubbs is seeking. He understood who he was.

Oh, barf.