Will Joe Mauer hit .400?

[RockRaines]

Oh, I totally agree. I just meant that his back will be the deciding factor in whether he can spend a majority of his career behind the plate.

Well, they have 2 spots they can put him other than Catcher and they are both blocked by other players, or he will displace one of them. He can either take Morneau off of 1B (which would be stupid as hell) or Kubel from DH duties. I honestly believe that Mauer may be a good enough athlete to play 3B.

[Balta1701]

Twins still should have taken Prior....

Do you really think their coaches wouldn't have found a way to avoid having him head down the injury bug road?

[Wise Master Buehrle]

Do you really think their coaches wouldn't have found a way to avoid having him head down the injury bug road?

 

Of course. Dusty Baker ruined his career!!!

[Palehosefan]

Mike Piazza is still clearly the best hitting catcher of all-time, but if Mauer can keep this up, he will be close.

 

For 5 seasons from 1993-1997, here is Piazza's average year...

 

.336 AVG, 34 HR, 105 RBI

 

If you expand it to include his next 5 seasons of 1998-2002, the average drops, but nothing else.

.308 AVG, 36 HR, 105 RBI

 

 

Piazza from 1993-2002 of 10 seasons

.322 AVG, 35 HR, 105 RBI

 

Hard to beat that from the catching position.

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Mike Piazza is still clearly the best hitting catcher of all-time, but if Mauer can keep this up, he will be close.

 

For 5 seasons from 1993-1997, here is Piazza's average year...

 

.336 AVG, 34 HR, 105 RBI

 

If you expand it to include his next 5 seasons of 1998-2002, the average drops, but nothing else.

.308 AVG, 36 HR, 105 RBI

 

 

Piazza from 1993-2002 of 10 seasons

.322 AVG, 35 HR, 105 RBI

 

Hard to beat that from the catching position.

 

 

I knew he was a great, HoF player, but I never realized just how great he was.

[maggsmaggs]

I knew he was a great, HoF player, but I never realized just how great he was.

And a 61st round pick. That is what amazes me even more that so many people missed on him.

[qwerty]

And Mauer is a farrrrr better hitter than Berkman.

 

I don't think you realize how good berkman is.

[qwerty]

And a 61st round pick. That is what amazes me even more that so many people missed on him.

 

62nd round.

[Jordan4life_2007]

You do realize that, by definition, a hitter must have a BABIP over .400 in order to average .400 on the season, right? That his BABIP is high goes without saying. It's like saying "No way his batting average will stay that high--because obviously his batting average is too high."

 

Um, yeah, I do realize that. Which is why I said that there's no chance he'll do it. The question posed by HM was will he do it for the rest of the season. Not for the rest of the week. There's no way that holds up. Thus his average will go down considerably. I say he'll end up around .350.

Edited June 17, 2009 by Jordan4life

[Jordan4life_2007]

People keeping justifying their "no" answers due to his BABIP being so high. Well, if you're gonna hit .400 wouldn't you think you're BABIP would be that high?

 

And like I just said to Jorge, my answer is still a resounding no because his BABIP, which is now an unheard of .443 after last night's game, will not remain anywhere near that high for the remainder of the season. Another pretty obvious reason he won't do it is because he doesn't make things happen with his legs. His infield hit % is 3.2 (for his career it's 3.5). The reason a guy like Ichiro would be a better candidate is because he consistently turns outs into hits because of his speed. His IFH% is 14.7 (12.4 for his career).

Edited June 17, 2009 by Jordan4life

[lostfan]

And like I just said to Jorge, my answer is still a resounding no because his BABIP, which is now an unheard of .443 after last night's game, will not remain anywhere near that high for the remainder of the season. Another pretty obvious reason he won't do it is because he doesn't make things happen with his legs. His infield hit % is 3.2 (for his career it's 3.5). The reason a guy like Ichiro would be a better candidate is because he consistently turns outs into hits because of his speed. His IFH% is 14.7 (12.4 for his career).

I understand what you're saying here, but it's circular logic. As another poster said, saying a high batting average won't be sustained because he has a high BABIP is like saying he won't sustain his high batting average because he has a high batting average. It's a useful sabermetric tool to see red flags in pitchers, but for hitters, it tells me absolutely nothing useful. A hit that is not a home run is, by definition, a ball in play, so of course a player with a high batting average will also have a high BABIP. If you have a low BABIP it's because the contact you make isn't adequate to get a successful hit, meaning you have a low batting average, meaning you're not that good. I guess I could summarize it by asking this: are the balls that Brian Anderson puts into play comparable to the ones Ichiro puts into play?

 

Lately, Nick Swisher is cited as an example of what BABIP can show you for a hitter (bad luck, abnormally low batting average as a result). I don't need BABIP to tell me that, though. You could tell he had a "down year" just looking at his batting average. His BABIP was lower because... he wasn't doing anything when he made contact. The BABIP and batting average for him pretty much follows the same pattern. Nothing special. Swisher's BABIP is usually ~30 points over his average, Mauer's, around 20 give or take a few points.

Edited June 17, 2009 by lostfan

[bschmaranz]

Do you really think their coaches wouldn't have found a way to avoid having him head down the injury bug road?

 

Certainly not, which is why I still would have liked to see Minnesota waste their #1 selection on him

[RockRaines]

62nd round.

And only as a personal favor to his father.

[knightni]

Ron Schueler drafted his daughter higher than that.

[santo=dorf]

You do realize that, by definition, a hitter must have a BABIP over .400 in order to average .400 on the season, right?

 

Wrong.

 

HR's count towards BA, but not towards BABIP.

 

[GoodAsGould]

Wrong.

 

HR's count towards BA, but not towards BABIP.

 

Right but generally for your batting avg. to be around the .400 mark your BABIP has to be around that too.

[Jordan4life_2007]

I understand what you're saying here, but it's circular logic. As another poster said, saying a high batting average won't be sustained because he has a high BABIP is like saying he won't sustain his high batting average because he has a high batting average. It's a useful sabermetric tool to see red flags in pitchers, but for hitters, it tells me absolutely nothing useful. A hit that is not a home run is, by definition, a ball in play, so of course a player with a high batting average will also have a high BABIP. If you have a low BABIP it's because the contact you make isn't adequate to get a successful hit, meaning you have a low batting average, meaning you're not that good. I guess I could summarize it by asking this: are the balls that Brian Anderson puts into play comparable to the ones Ichiro puts into play?

 

 

Lately, Nick Swisher is cited as an example of what BABIP can show you for a hitter (bad luck, abnormally low batting average as a result). I don't need BABIP to tell me that, though. You could tell he had a "down year" just looking at his batting average. His BABIP was lower because... he wasn't doing anything when he made contact. The BABIP and batting average for him pretty much follows the same pattern. Nothing special. Swisher's BABIP is usually ~30 points over his average, Mauer's, around 20 give or take a few points.

 

Well, of course, the easy/lazy response when saying Mauer won't hit .400 is to simply say that he won't do it because .400 has proven to be pretty much impossible. And end it right there. Just as the easy/lazy response to say he can do it is to simply say "Yeah, I think he's that good." And end it right there. I choose to look a little deeper. Now I agree that BABIP is more useful for pitchers than hitters. But it doesn't take a genius to see that a guy hitting .429 is pretty abnormal. And that he's obviously doing something that's gone above and beyond what he's normally done in his career. Now I don't care who you are. When over 4 of very 10 balls you put into play are falling in for hits, that's not all skill. There's a certain amount of fluke/luck that comes into play (bloop hits, defensive positioning, ect). Even Jim Thome has a few hits this year that came simply because of the shift that just about every team uses with him. If you look at Joe's BB%, K%, GB/FB ratios and LD% for this year, they all fall in line with what he's done for his career. Outside of his HR rates, which are wayyyy above and beyond his career rates, all his numbers are similar to his career numbers. So how does one explain the .429 BA? Other than BABIP, you really can't. It's almost 100 points higher than his career total. That's just abnormal. No way around it. Even in 2006, when his BABIP was .370, he topped out BA wise at I believe .350. History says the chances of sustaining that number over the course of a season are astronomical. But the bottomline is that Joe has played in only 42 games this season. That's just not enough of a sample size to determine if he really has a legitimate chance at .400. If he's anywhere near .400 on August 1st, this topic will get A LOT more interesting.

Edited June 18, 2009 by Jordan4life

[lostfan]

Well, of course, the easy/lazy response when saying Mauer won't hit .400 is to simply say that he won't do it because .400 has proven to be pretty much impossible. And end it right there. Just as the easy/lazy response to say he can do it is to simply say "Yeah, I think he's that good." And end it right there. I choose to look a little deeper. Now I agree that BABIP is more useful for pitchers than hitters. But it doesn't take a genius to see that a guy hitting .429 is pretty abnormal. And that he's obviously doing something that's gone above and beyond what he's normally done in his career. Now I don't care who you are. When over 4 of very 10 balls you put into play are falling in for hits, that's not all skill. There's a certain amount of fluke/luck that comes into play (bloop hits, defensive positioning, ect). Even Jim Thome has a few hits this year that came simply because of the shift that just about every team uses with him. If you look at Joe's BB%, K%, GB/FB ratios and LD% for this year, they all fall in line with what he's done for his career. Outside of his HR rates, which are wayyyy above and beyond his career rates, all his numbers are similar to his career numbers. So how does one explain the .429 BA? Other than BABIP, you really can't. It's almost 100 points higher than his career total. That's just abnormal. No way around it. Even in 2006, when his BABIP was .370, he topped out BA wise at I believe .350. History says the chances of sustaining that number over the course of a season are astronomical. But the bottomline is that Joe has played in only 42 games this season. That's just not enough of a sample size to determine if he really has a legitimate chance at .400. If he's anywhere near .400 on August 1st, this topic will get A LOT more interesting.

I don't disagree with anything you've said here. Basically, your argument is that a .400 batting average is fluky high, it takes a combination of skill and luck to have an average that high, and it is so far above his career norms that it's a near certainty that he'll eventually regress to it. My argument is that I don't need to see BABIP to tell me that. When you see someone hitting 70, 80 points higher than they ever have before, you just kind of know all those factors come into play intuitively. BABIP is a really unnecessarily fancy way of telling me something I already know.

[WilliamTell]

Joe Mauer is hitting .520 on turf and "only" .346 on grass. I'm one of the people who believes the Metrodome enhances batting averages for the Twins. While I think Mauer is one of, if not the best hitter in the league. I also think this might be his best shot at .400 because this is the last year of the Metrodome.

[JorgeFabregas]

Again, Ted Williams' BABIP was .429 the year he hit .400 and (of course) this was abnormally high for him. In the unlikely event that someone does hit .400 again, it is possible that thier BABIP will be over .400. Yes, there will be a lot of luck involved.

[Jordan4life_2007]

I don't disagree with anything you've said here. Basically, your argument is that a .400 batting average is fluky high, it takes a combination of skill and luck to have an average that high, and it is so far above his career norms that it's a near certainty that he'll eventually regress to it. My argument is that I don't need to see BABIP to tell me that. When you see someone hitting 70, 80 points higher than they ever have before, you just kind of know all those factors come into play intuitively. BABIP is a really unnecessarily fancy way of telling me something I already know.

 

I guess you're right. I just thought it was too easy to simply say "no, he's been getting lucky" or "no, .400 is next to impossible."

[High Mileage]

1 for 4 yesterday, now batting .425

[JPN366]

1 for 4 yesterday, now batting .425

 

No. When teams realize that they should pitch around him and take their chance with the rest of the lineup, his numbers will drop. Bonus tidbit...a girl who was a waitress out at Regions Park back in 2006 was originally from Minnesota. Her sister had dated Mauer, and she said that he was a complete jerk.

[SoxFanForever]

Again, Ted Williams' BABIP was .429 the year he hit .400 and (of course) this was abnormally high for him. In the unlikely event that someone does hit .400 again, it is possible that thier BABIP will be over .400. Yes, there will be a lot of luck involved.

But he wasn't a speed burner like Ichiro! How could he hit .400??

[NorthSideSox72]

No. When teams realize that they should pitch around him and take their chance with the rest of the lineup, his numbers will drop. Bonus tidbit...a girl who was a waitress out at Regions Park back in 2006 was originally from Minnesota. Her sister had dated Mauer, and she said that he was a complete jerk.

Ex-girlfriends tend to think that of their ex's.