J.D. Pruitt, strange outcome player
J.D. Pruitt plays for the Vancouver Canadians, Oakland’s Northwest League affiliate. He came out of the University of Montevallo, he’s listed as a 5’9″ outfielder who weighs 195, born in 1985, so he’s 22 in short-season ball.
He’s hitting .187/.466/.271.
Pruitt, in 36 games and 107 at-bats, has 20 hits, 1 2b, 1 3b, 2 HR, 31 walks, and 43 K.
“But Derek,” you may be thinking, “that’s only a .370 OBP.”
Aha! The problem, and what’s not showing on his stats page, is that Pruitt’s been hit by (if I caught this correctly) 25 pitches so far this season, on his way to destroying the Northwest League record.
He’s been hit by 5 more pitches than he has hits.
Supposedly, and I haven’t seen it, he doesn’t have the Valle lunge or the Biggio armor-and-lean. He doesn’t move, and at that level the pitchers are wild enough that it means you get plunked all the time doing that.
But I want to just ponder this for a second, the weirdest outcome player ever. Each time he comes to the plate, here’s the odds:
10% it’s a single (12% total for any hit)
15% he’s hit by a pitch
20% he walks
26% he strikes out
.187/.466/.271
If you pay attention to the low minors, you see some strange things.
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Wow, well he might suck at hitting but give the guy credit for having the balls (no pun intended) to take any inside pitch without flinching.
Can he play 1st base?
We should send Vidro up to Vancouver to train with the guy?
Okay, last sarcastic remark, promise…
That’s a skill not even Willie Ballgame has.
I might be tempted to call him “the Second Coming of Don Baylor” — if he could hit, that is.
Imagine if he could hit.
so he’s the Canadians’s version of Kendall, then ….
Jeez, his shoulder and back must look like an old eggplant. Yeccch.
Is it any surprise that he’s in the Oakland A’s farm system? He’s let the pitchers put him on base 56 times.
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If you’re the opposing pitcher, you’ve gotta make him fear that ball. You can’t just let him stand in there and do that. Throw up and in and make him get away from it or take one in the head. That’ll put the fear back in him.
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How come I can’t put up a nice tidbit like that without everyone shitting on it? You guys suck.
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DMZ, because everyone here is obsessed with AJ and his playing time — no one cares about anything else 🙂
16, great post.
Which got deleted because it wasn’t a good post. 🙂
Back to topic then, I can’t imagine the guys in short season ball in Canada are throwing that hard. Is there anyways to look up how hard the average guy is throwing? I would bet its mid 80’s.
The Northwest League != all Canadian.
Classification != velocity
The odds he keeps this up are?… If he could hit his OBP would be about 1.400 or so.
Well, then, I’ll have to do better…
Back to the topic, yeah one of the weirdest outcome lines I’ve ever seen.
Not very projectable, I’m afraid…
Billy Beane’s scouts must be creaming their pants over this guy. he is the prototypical A’s player.
So, do you hit this guy leadoff? That seems like the right place for him, but maybe good hitters have even better OBP’s in the NWL?
I would think that for a minor league roster filler, this would be a great guy to have around, as someone quirky that fans could get behind.
In all seriousness – is this tendency the result of something Pruitt does, or simply a statistical aberration? It could always be the latter, I would think; someone has to be the least/most lucky player of the year. If it’s something he does, what the hell is it – besides being pathologically unwilling to get out of the way?
Googled Pruitt and found his 2007 stats at the University of Montevallo. Shockingly he didn’t lead his team in HBP, falling three short of Eric Moore’s team leading 27. Pruitt accomplished his 24 HBP’s in 56 games. He walked 50 times and had a batting line of .365/.535/.557.
So the question is, does this guy have any actual future or is he merely an oddity? (A tall man’s Eddie Gaedel, maybe?)
Interesting point with Gaedel–being extremely short is obviously a repeatable skill. Even in the major leagues, a person his size is going to walk almost all the time, at least at first. I’m surprised Oakland hasn’t signed a Gaedel-sized player and dh’d him until Seligula wrings his hands and bans the guy for making a travesty of the game.
That being said, certain players (e.g. Ron Hunt, Biggio) obviously have made HBP a repeatable skill, and Pruitt has given some indication (i.e, college & his line this year) that he is on the same track.
The problem is that whereas virtually nobody has pitched to a Gaedel sized player in professional baseball, just about every professional pitcher deals with guys who stand too close to the plate.
If Pruitt proves he can’t hit, as he moves up in the minors (if he does), he will be facing pitchers with better control, and they just aren’t going to hit him or walk him enough times to make up for his lack of ability to hit a baseball.
31: I’ll betcha David Eckstein feels like Eddie Gaedel at the plate whenever he has to face The Big Unit. 🙂
This sort of freak performance reminds me of a spongeballer named Tom Drees who played for Triple-A Vancouver in 1989 (I think). He was old and no kind of prospect, plus couldn’t break 88 on the radar, but he threw three no-hitters that year, along with at least one one-hitter, and maybe a two-hitter.
So the big club (White Sox) had to at least give him a September look. He promptly got killed, and that was that.
I remember a set of baseball cards that was sort of in the “Garbage Pail Kids” vein and one of the characters wasa black knight in a full suit of armor.
He led the league in HBP because the opposing pitchers loved to hear the sound it made when a ball glanced off his dome.
On another note, “Vancouver Canadians” is possibly the worst name for a baseball team ever, or any sports team for that matter. All of the Canadian teams are Canadians, don’t you want to at least try to sound unique?
35: Just don’t ever go to Montreal and let Habs fans hear ya say that! 🙂
Speaking of strange outcomes, meet Jason Neighborgall: 5.2 IP, 3 K 30 BB. Not a typo, 30 walks in 5.2 IP.