That's fascinating.

Batting .300 probably wouldn't enhance his value in free agency one iota, and the playoffs were coming up, so?

Again: In the last 25 years, no player batting .299 in his final at-bat of the season has ever drawn a walk. He would chase balls in the dirt and swing at pitches thrown furlongs outside the strike zone; anything to avoid those four balls, which, of course, would not move his average. And the strategy worked: those free-swinging .299 hitters batted almost .430 in their final plate appearance.

Moneyball is ruining the game.

Technically, no player has drawn a walk in any at-bat, ever.

Edit: Except for that one season when walks were counted as hits

You guys are being too hard on this. It's not really meaningful in a big way, but it's a fun one-off. You all like baseball, right?

If there's a big meaning here (and I don't really think there is), it's that BA, regarded as a one-stop place for offensive production twenty years ago, has fallen in status to the point that even players are smart enough to realize that the difference between .299 and .300 is not failure/success. And I think that's a good thing.

A pair of economists, Devin Pope at the University of Chicago and Uri Simonsohn at Wharton found that in the last quarter-century, no player batting .299 in his final at-bat of the season has ever drawn a walk. Again: In the last 25 years, no player batting .299 in his final at-bat of the season has ever drawn a walk.

Well great. But this would be a lot more meaningful if you actually told us how many PA this covers. If it's 255, then I'm impressed, if it's 5, then not so much...

In the last 25 years, no player batting .299 in his final at-bat of the season has ever drawn a walk.

I just finished reading Wertheim's book, "Scorecasting", which contains this information. Fascinating.

With the economy in the shitter the way it is, don't you think these guys could find something more useful to do?

As you might know, Prince has batted .299 twice now. Here are the top offensive seasons from 2006-11 among players that didn't hit .300...

With the economy in the shitter the way it is, don't you think these guys could find something more useful to do?

Well, they could be advising the company you work for and telling them, "For the good of the economy, you should liquidate immediately." Of course, that'll put you on the street eating government cheese, but, hey, at least they're "doing something", right?

Technically, no player has drawn a walk in any at-bat, ever.

That's actually a good point. I wonder if the research looked for a player's last AB and thus missed walks drawn in PA.

...BA, regarded as a one-stop place for offensive production twenty years ago...

BA was never a one-stop place for offensive production. Not twenty years ago, or fifty or a hundred. History did not begin with Moneyball.

Now if Prince had taken a walk with a RISP when he was stuck on 99 RBI, then you might have a story...

How many people have come to the plate in their last PA of the year batting .299 in the last 25 years?

With the economy in the shitter the way it is, don't you think these guys could find something more useful to do?

I think your logic is backwards here. Massive unemployment doesn't make someone more likely to find a job.

How many people have come to the plate in their last PA of the year batting .299 in the last 25 years?

Less than 231. Did a PI search for players since 1986 with a BA between .298 and .300, with at least 100 PA. Found .231, some of which may have been batting .297 and got a hit, .301 and made an out, etc...

Thanks. So figure 100 or so.

How often does a .299 hitter go 100 PAs without a walk?

How often does a .299 hitter go 100 PAs without a walk?

Non-Francoeur division?

Here's the paper.

Yes, they used plate appearances, not at-bats. There were 61 players who were at .299 prior to their last scheduled PA.

"For the good of the economy, you should liquidate immediately."

I know this is a joke, but excessive liquidity is precisely the problem with our economy right now. I guess you could call articles like this the equivalent of digging a hole just to fill it back up again. So I salute you, Sports Illustrated.

I do think it's fascinating, though, and I'd love to know what the sample was as well.

Thanks #18. I didn't realize it was a fairly formal academic study; thought that Wertheim might have just been searching on BBref PI and found ABs rather than PAs.

[8] With the economy in the shitter the way it is, don't you think these guys could find something more useful to do?

IIRC, long before the economic downturn began, similar research by others showed that far fewer public companies miss stock analysts' quarterly-earnings-per-share estimates by $0.01 than would be expected statistically. The implications for investors and regulators (eg earnings manipulation) seem significant IMO.

There have been several takedowns of the "last at bat / .300 batting average" stats recently, pointing out the bias that comes from hitters coming out of the game once they get the results they are looking for, e.g Reyes this year. If someone needs a hit and gets a walk, they almost certainly stay in the game for another try at the hit.. if they get the hit, they sit.

It's sort of like how you always find something you've lost in the last place you look for it...

One variable that would impact outcomes is the quality of the pitchers during those 61 PAs. One would presume that most of these PAs are occuring in games 160 through 162 of a season, and many of these PAs are occuring late in those games. How many of those 61 PAs happened in games with postseason implications?

2011 was unusual in that there were at least six games that had playoff impact (Boston, Tampa, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Detroit and LAA were playing for seeding). In most seasons, there are - at most - a couple of games with playoff impact.

Even within those "impact" games, one of the two teams is often playing with less intensity than the other team (Wade, rather than Rivera, for the Yankess, for example).

I guess what I'm saying is that the quality of the pitchers in this 61 PA sample is probably pretty weak. We know that the average BA of the 61 hitters was exactly .299, which means it's a pretty good group of hitters, on balance. So to find out their BA in those 61 PA is north of .400 probably isn't that crazy.

I find this to be utterly astonishing. Two reasons.

1. The less astonishing reason is that I wouldn't have thought every batter would know they were hitting .299. People always say "Pete Rose knew his batting average at all times", as if that's unusual. But apparently every player is like that... or, at the very least, is like that when it comes to their final AB of the season.

2. The more astonishing reason is that I am flabbergasted that a .299 hitter can make himself a .430 hitter, despite the huge self-inflicted disadvantage of going up to the plate determined to swing at absolutely anything, simply by wanting it enough. Admittedly, the pitcher on the mound probably usually doesn't realize that the guy is hitting .299 and he's going to swing even if the pitcher throws the ball to Schenectady. So he may not always pitch him the way he should. Still. Damn.

I wouldn't have thought every batter would know they were hitting .299

Well, it's right up there on the jumbotron, in 50 foot high numbers.

DA, on your point 24.2 - see #22.

There have been several takedowns of the "last at bat / .300 batting average" stats recently, pointing out the bias that comes from hitters coming out of the game once they get the results they are looking for

that may explain the fact that, since 1986, there have been 75 players who ended up exactly at .300, but only 19 who ended up at .299. ARod ended up at .300 twice (97 and 02), and in each of those years, he needed at hit in his last AB to get there.

pointing out the bias that comes from hitters coming out of the game once they get the results they are looking for

That's the point, the study was collecting evidence to prove that that bias exists. It's not that hitting .300 is some magical motivator that makes all .299 hitters wildly better. It's that they stop once they do have .300.

Admittedly, the pitcher on the mound probably usually doesn't realize that the guy is hitting .299 and he's going to swing even if the pitcher throws the ball to Schenectady. So he may not always pitch him the way he should. Still. Damn.

Actually, I'd expect that in the last game of the season, which is usually meaningless, seeing the ".299" up on the stadium scoreboard would result in a number of pitchers simply grooving the ball in there, especially with the bases empty, two out, late in the game, etc.

Is there an inverse? That is, pitchers with 194 strikeouts for the season entering their final start, or with an ERA of 4.02 or something?

there have been 75 players who ended up exactly at .300, but only 19 who ended up at .299. ARod ended up at .300 twice (97 and 02), and in each of those years, he needed at hit in his last AB to get there.

I'm also betting that plenty of guys go into the final game at .302 and leave after an 0-2.

Is there an inverse? That is, pitchers with 194 strikeouts for the season entering their final start, or with an ERA of 4.02 or something?

I think pitchers with 19 wins do better than expected in their next start. I'll Google around and see if I can find the study (I don't recall how rigorous the study I read on the subject was).

EDIT: Found what I was looking for. It's a Phil Birnbaum presentation of SABR in 2009 (Powerpoint slideshow): philbirnbaum.com/sabr2009.ppt

pointing out the bias that comes from hitters coming out of the game once they get the results they are looking for

What a minute, you mean Jose Reyes is not the first player ever to do this? I'm shocked!

I wonder if the same is true for .200

Darryl Strawberry once had a double, a triple and a home run, then ran through the first base coach's "stop" sign in his last at-bat to collect his second double. Which was better than hitting for the cycle. I'm not sure how to turn that into a thesis, though.

Even though milestone numbers don't really matter as far as actual production goes, you gotta admit that Pujols hitting .299 with 99 rbi's just doesn't quite feel the same as if he had hit .300 with 100 rbi's to go with his 30+ homers for the 11th straight year.