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Mike Hargrove… Sigh
Via Geoff Baker’s blog, here’s today’s blatently wrong comment from the team’s manager:
“You don’t see a lot of power hitters have good batting averages,” Hargrove said. “You really don’t. Barry Bonds comes along not very often. Usually, when you see a guy hit for power, something has to be sacrificed. And it’s usually average. It always amazes me watching people get criticized — all the bitching and moaning about a guy who’s hitting 39 home runs and hits .240. Come on!
46 major league batters had a slugging percentage of .500 or higher last year, making them something of a power hitter. As a group, their batting average was… .298. 21 of the 46 hit .300 or better. The only guys who hit lower than .260 were Jason Giambi, Troy Glaus, and Pat Burrell. And, of course, those three all were among the league leaders in walks, making up for their low batting averages and still getting on base at a healthy clip.
So, no, Mike, it’s not rare at all. It’s actually pretty common.
It’s a shame that the man who runs the Mariners lacks basic knowledge about the game.
Comments
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Those were my exact thoughts when I read that quote. 39 HRs - big whoop.
Yes Mike, and Julio Mateo is a great bet to get you that ground ball you need too.
It’s a sign of just how far behind the times Hargrove is that he uses home runs as a proxy for “power hitter” and batting average as a proxy for “everything else”.
Hargrove is due for a meltdown this season. Here’s hoping he channels Hal McRae.
You said it more efficiently, but I’m glad we’re sharing a brain on that one.
Anyone got a spare brain to give Hargrove?
That’s 30-year-old baseball logic right there.
Oh, and the interesting thing, especially in the NL, is that when you look at the batting average leaders (using the stat that Hargrove quoted), a good chunk of them hit 25+ HRs…
Yep. Great hitters are great hitters. Guys like Sexson, who can hit the ball a mile but suck when they’re not rounding the bases at a slow trot, are the outliars.
Too bad most casual M’s fans will read Hargrove’s quote and nod in agreement.
That’s what makes them casual fans.
Hargrove is big fan of Steve Balboni.
Hargrove should be sitting with the casual fans.
Hey Y’all,
First time, long time. I was hoping to make it down to the event next week but I can’t. So I was wondering, is anyone going to pose a qustions such as this to Mr. Bavasi, “assuming that you are indeed on the ‘hot seat’ this year, why are you willing to put your job on the line with Mike Hargrove as your manager?”
It sounds like Hargrove is covering for when Sexson hits 45HRs and has a .290 OBP.
To which Bavasi responds:
“Not my decision.”
#12:
Exactly. The only way Hargrove should be allowed into Safeco is if he’s paid for a ticket.
Hargrove is big fan of Steve Balboni.
Rob Deer!
More like Joe Carter. I’d imagine that, if you asked him, Grover would wax poetically about Carter and support his candidacy for the hall of fame, even though Carter was a pretty mediocre ballplayer who was essentially home runs and nothing else.
Mike Hargrove,
Badge Number 3487 of the “Rob Deer fan club”!
Adam Dunn, the embodiment of the flaw in Hargrove’s power crush:
2006: 40 HR; VORP=23; UZR: -23; salary: $7M….
He was roughly a $7M replacement level player based on those metrics despite his 40 hrs in 2006….
WOW, i say.
More like Joe Carter. I’d imagine that, if you asked him, Grover would wax poetically about Carter and support his candidacy for the hall of fame, even though Carter was a pretty mediocre ballplayer who was essentially home runs and nothing else.
But Carter was so clutch!
Hargrove would actually have a point if he was talking about trading strikeouts for power instead of trading batting average for power. I arbitrarily decided to look at all hitters with 300+ PA last season. There were 256 such players. I took the top 51 players (about the top 20%) by ISO as a measure of the best power hitters in the league. The average player in the top 20% hit 0.287/0.379/0.551 for a .264 ISO. If you look at all 256 players, they hit 0.279/0.349/0.453 for a .174 ISO. So just like Dave said, the power hitters aren’t at a disadvantage when it comes to batting average.
But, if you look at SO/AB, the power hitters were at .213 and the overall sample was at .177. So the power hitters are clearly striking out more often than the rest of the sample–sacrificing some contact in exchange for some power.
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb asserting that Grover’s not really looking at the stats very closely, though. He’s probably noticed that power hitters seem to have trouble making contact. And in his world, there’s little to no difference between making contact and hitting for average.
Joe Carter’s big “argument” for the Hall of Fame is that he always had high RBI totals. Those numbers STILL hold an unhealthy fascination over people.
There were other Hargrove contemporaries like that … Don Baylor, Andre Thornton, Cecil Cooper, Jim Rice, Ben Oglivie.
Doubles must be too ‘new age’ for Hargrove.
Of the 34 hitters with 30+ HR, the average BA is ‘only’ .289. But only *1* was under the .240 he quoted. And I’d take Adam Dunn over half the current roster anyway.
I remember Bill James predicting years ago that the next player to hit .400 would also hit 20+ HR. (Or, more accurately, would have 20+ HR power.)
Of course, that prediction was from about 1988, and 20+ HR meant more then than it does now.
Point being, James felt there was a *positive* correlation between batting average and power, at least at the extreme of around a .400 BA.
Dunn’s 50% pecota for 07 is 37. No one on the mariners projects that high.
I remember Bill James predicting years ago that the next player to hit .400 would also hit 20+ HR.
Well, since the dead-ball era the .400 hitters have hit 20 home runs in the same season more often than not. It also stands to reason that as you get more hits, you’re more likely to pick up a few extra home runs among them.
It always amazes me watching people get criticized — all the bitching and moaning about a guy who’s hitting 39 home runs and hits .240.
Yeah! Remember when Pete Incaviglia used to kill the Mariners all the time? Come on!
I think I remember from reading Art Thiel’s “Out of Left Field,” that Maury Wills, the M’s manager in ‘80 and ‘81, had a penchance for making really goofy decisions like trying to pinch hit a player he had already taken out of the game, amongst other things. It was later found out that he had quite a cocaine problem while managing the M’s. I hope we haven’t been watching history repeat itself the past few seasons but with all the amazingly counterproductive decisions Hargrove makes and the things he says, it’s really hard not to beg the question.
My dream situation is we lose the first 20 games. Bavasi and Grover are sacked. The team comes alive and wins 30 of their next 40 and continues to play well into October. We contend for the division or even make the playoffs. Ichiro is inspired to stay, we maybe make a good trade or two during the season and come into next year refreshed, relaxed and rid of some horrible dead weight.
That’s pretty much the only situation I can see where we get rid of the horrible manager and keep Ichiro. It could happen, right?
There’s essentially zero chance the team would fire Bavasi during the season. It’s a lot easier to replace a manager than it is to replace the guy running the baseball ops department in May. Toss in the fact that Fontaine is really close with Bavasi, and there’s no way they want to risk having him leave right before the draft.
Bavasi’s basically a lock to be here for the year.
Exactly one of the guys who hit 39 or more HR last year had a BA below .240: #11, Adam Dunn, 40 HR .234. The next-highest guy on the HR list who hit .240 or below was #64, Morgan Ensberg, 23 HR .235.
The year before, even Dunn was over .240, and we have to go all the way down to #61, Justin Morneau, .239 and 22 HR, though #53, Casey Blake, .241 and 23 HR, was close.
Even .250 hitters with HR power are scarce.
Well, my scenario still gets us rid of Grover while keeping Ichiro.
I hear Spinal Tap has an opening on the drums. Maybe Hargrove should apply?
I guess the argument for Joe Carter is more like, “If Bill Mazeroski could somehow get into the Hall of Fame…”
I dunno, though, when I was a kid, people were always complaining about Mike Schmidt hitting only .250 to go with his bazillion home runs. Maybe that’s more along the lines of what Mr. Hargrove is thinking of.
anybody want to ask Geoff to ask Grover about the many players who belie his theory?
btw, here’s what Dan Rohn is up to….
Well, my scenario still gets us rid of Grover while keeping Ichiro.
I just don’t think that’s remotely possible. I think Ichiro,Grover and Bavasi are all tied together.
That’s just too terrible to contemplate.
Please God, let this team completely tank the first 2.5 weeks of the season so that John McLaren comes walking through that door.
That’s just too terrible to contemplate.
Um, Howard Lincoln is the team CEO, remember…..It IS too terrible to contemplate, but just addleheaded enough to be truth…
I don’t understand the notion of rooting for your team to lose just so they replace the manager.
well, he wouldn’t have to walk too far as he is often in the clubhouse, talking to the guys, He’s a people person, you know.
“30 year old baseball logic”? “Behind the times”?
Not really. I gave Grover the benefit of the doubt–maybe he’s just stuck in the way baseball was when he played.
Actually, his statement would’ve been no more true then than it is now. Looked at the 1980 AL HR leaders (about the middle of Grover’s career). Here are their batting averages, in order of how many HR’s they hit:
.300 (R Jackson)
.301 (Ogilvie)
.238 (G Thomas)
.279 (Armas)
.300 (E Murray)
.248 (Mayberry)
.352 (Cooper)
.275 (T Perez)
.390 (Brett)
.286 (Parrish)
.294 (Rice)
.304 (Singleton)
Earlier I took all hitters from 2000-2006 with 500 or more PA. The average TB/H (total base per hit) was 1.64 for all hitters, and 1.69 for .300+ hitters. The average HR/AB was 0.038 for the whole group and 0.047 for the .300+ hitters. Of course the higher the batting average, the higher the # of HR and 2B per AB. The average HR/H was .135 for the whole group, and .149 for the .300+ hitters, so no, even taking out the component-level relationship between AVG, and SLG (and ISO to a lesser extent) by using HR and TB per hit, it still shows .300+ hitters are better power hitters over all.
There’s only been 3 hitters in history to hit .240 or less and hit 39+ HR and only 13 to hit .250 or less, and only 23 to hit .260 or less.
Regarding trade off for SO. Even if there were a 150 SO difference between 2 players, that’s like 3.3 runs. 100 SO difference 2.2 runs. Hardly worth worrying about the trade off of increased HR and BB.
29 - with all the amazingly counterproductive decisions Hargrove makes and the things he says, it’s really hard not to beg the question.
I must be the only person on here pedantic enough to be annoyed by misuse of the phrase “beg the question”.
I’m just amazed no one has mentioned Dave Kingman: 442 lifetime HR’s, .236 lifetime BA.
My favorite Kingman season: 1982 with the Mets.
37 HR, 99 RBI, 204/285/432. Can you believe a guy would hit 37 HR and slug 432? He only had 9 doubles. Talk about all or nothing.
How do you bat 204 with 9 doubles and come up with 99 RBI? You bat cleanup 140 times.
See? It could all be worse.
Don’t confuse The Hargrove with statistics like slugging percentage or OPS. Hargrove is an old school guy. See the ball. Hit the ball. Hargrove don’t need no steekin’ sabermetrics to understand what a power hitter should or should not be.
These young whippersnappers armed with their EXCEL spreadsheets are stirring up trouble in baseball with their geeky statboy jargon.
#48 — Yeah, Deer was the living embodiment of the Three True Outcomes.
44,
True, though it was clearly a phenomenon of the 80s/70s that you could have .250s and lower hitters who stayed in the line-up because they could hit home runs (and take a walk).
The top ten HR hitters in 1982 featured more guys who hit below .250 than it did guys who hit above .290. None of this has any real bearing on the present; it’s self-evidently untrue that power hitters ‘must’ sacrifice average now. It wasn’t ever true, but it was somewhat common back then.
I also think Mat’s right (in #22) that the proper way to look at this is by looking at ISO instead of just SLG; there are a few more low average guys who pop into the leaderboard this way (Nick Swisher, Craig Monroe, Andruw Jones). Not enough to alter the basic picture, but it’s worth pointing out that guys CAN be valuable to their teams despite a low batting average; I know we all think Hargrove needs to go, but it’s sort of nice to hear the truism that batting average isn’t the be-all, end-all repeated by mainstream baseball figures. This has nothing to do with the applicability of that truism to Richie Sexson, or Nick Swisher or anyone else you want to name. But it IS true, and I’m glad Hargrove acknowleges that fact. If only he could apply the theory properly….
Ralph, I was thinking of Kingman too. He was one of the 3 guys on the 1982 top ten HR list who was below .250 (Gorman Thomas and Ben Oglivie were the others). Thomas and Kingman were two of a kind, though I loved Gorman as a kid, and thought Dave Kingman was the anti-christ. He had a knack for hitting towering home runs against the M’s at every game I went to.
Kingman and Gorman Thomas were similar hitters but I always hated Kingman and liked Thomas. I always thought of Kingman as an a$$hole and Thomas as a hardnosed old-style ballplayer.
By the way, Kingman had one thing in common with Sexson besides strikeouts and a low batting average: he was (is?) 6 foot 6.
I must be the only person on here pedantic enough to be annoyed by misuse of the phrase “beg the question”.
No, just the only to post about it. I’m afraid that this use of the phrase — as a synonym for “raises” or “leads to” — is becoming accepted.
I must be the only person on here pedantic enough to be annoyed by misuse of the phrase “beg the question”.
No, you were just the only one both annoyed enough and pedantic enough to comment on it.
But speaking of which, I really think Derek should put together a “Pet Peeves” post. I know it won’t have the same cache without Piniero to kick around anymore, and I guess the Mariners’ won’t be waiving Rizz in everyone’s face now if he’s just doing radio, and the Pinella rein was a long time ago, but I always appreciate a good effort to improve comment literacy.
And yes, those three are my particular pet peeves, endemic among sportswriters whose spellcheck is bigger than their vocabulary. I hope Derek will forgive my deliberately flouting some of his to illustrate my point.
Of course, Richie didn’t hit .240 last year, either. He hit .264, and actually BEAT his 2005 batting average by a point.
Batting Sexson 4th is actually reasonable under the circumstances. The big problem that I have with the M’s batting order is there is NOBODY in it who takes walks, and that’s pretty much true everywhere in the order. The Mariners had exactly zero players who got more than 60 unintentional walks last year, and their response was to add Jose Guillen as a fulltime player, who has never seen a pitch he doesn’t like (lifetime high in unintentional walks=32, though he DOES take a lot of HBP, gee, wonder why), and Jose Vidro, whose lifetime high in non-intentional BB’s is 62. The M’s will score some runs when the hitters get hot, but are going to be some nights where it’s just fugly out there, because none of these guys is anything resembling a Ted Williams-style patient hitter. Ironic that a franchise that starred Edgar Martinez for so long has nobody who has anything approaching his style at the plate, all of 3 years later huh?
#37 - cool, thanx. I look forward to seeing Rohn back in Tacoma when the Grizzlies come to town April 17. Always liked the little fireball.
Regarding trade off for SO. Even if there were a 150 SO difference between 2 players, that’s like 3.3 runs. 100 SO difference 2.2 runs. Hardly worth worrying about the trade off of increased HR and BB.
I wasn’t saying that the increased strikeout rate was good or bad, just that it was. I agree that some extra strikeouts aren’t really a big deal.
#43: You know what I meant. . .
Yes, and that tells you that the brain trust for the team just doesn’t consider that a problem.
Par for the course….
There was a guy that would produce walks…his name was Chris Snelling, and we know what happened to him!
Thanks for pointing that out. I had a feeling I may have misused that phrase. Yet another day I was probably hungover in logic class in college.
Mike Hargrove was way too big of a stress in my life last year. God I was at that game in Chicago early in the season when we were up and he went to Every Fifth Day Eddie and of course he gave up a HR and we ended up losing. So painful.
#35 .. To correct the record on Mike Schmidt
*If* Schmidt was criticized for hitting .250 it was probably because the critics knew he was capable of much better. In fact, in the 13 seasons Schmidt hit 30+ home runs, he hit in the .250 range just three times. Of course, in each of those season’s he drew 100+ walks, including 120 once and 128 another time. That’s DOUBLE what Sexson drew last year. What’s more, Schmidt led the NL in OBP three times and finished in the top 5 sevent times. Sexson’s OBP last year was .338. The only time Schmidt and Sexson should be in the same sentence is when someone is listing players whose names end in the letter S.
What if we brought Casey Stengel back from the dead to comment on this team?
On the team progress in spring training: The team has come along slow but fast.
On Willie Bloomquist: Son, we’d like to keep you around this season but we’re going to try and win a pennant.
About Rene Rivera: Two hundred million Americans, and there ain’t two good catchers among ‘em.
About the 11 game losing streak: We are in such a slump that even the ones that aren’t drinkin’ aren’t hittin’.
About the prospects for 2007: The Mariners are gonna be amazing.
On Mariner’s management: it’s wonderful to meet so many friends that I didn’t used to like.
On Emiliano Fruto: Mr. that boy couldn’t hit the ground if he fell out of an airplane.