Young: Portrait of a hacker, Miguel Olivo

From SABR member Geoff Young at Baseball Prospectus on September 25, 2012:

Miguel Olivo hooked a two-run homer just inside the Safeco Field left-field foul pole last Friday night against Rangers right-hander Alexi Ogando. The eighth-inning blast extended the Mariners’ lead to 6-3 and helped secure Seattle’s 71st victory of 2012. Beyond contributing to a meaningless win, Olivo’s home run inspired the following table (stats here and throughout the article are through games of Saturday, September 22).

<snip>

This is a list of the lowest career BB/HR ratio among players with at least 100 home runs. Take a moment to savor it. And pity poor Tony Batista, who drew an intentional walk from Billy Wagner in the ninth inning on September 26, 2007, in the third-to-last game of Batista’s career. Batista would finish with a 1.299 BB/HR ratio. He would lose to Shea Hillenbrand.

Before that walk, Batista’s BB/HR stood at 1.294, good enough for eighth place on this contrived and not terribly honorable leaderboard. Damn that Willie Randolph!

Batista was hitting .271/.357/.365 at the time of his walk. You may wonder why Randolph had Wagner put him on in that situation. Well, Batista went 3-for-5 with a double and a homer a night earlier. Also, the man who followed Batista’s walk, Robert Fick, grounded into a 5-4-3 double play to end the frame. The move was successful, ergo it was correct. That’s how it works, right?

Anyway, enough about Batista. We’re here to celebrate the accomplishments of Olivo.

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18432



Originally published: September 26, 2012. Last Updated: September 26, 2012.