All-Time Leaderboarding: The J.P. Arencibia All-Stars
Only eight men have ever hit at least 20 homers in a season in which their batting average was .200 or worse. It's the J.P. Arencibia All-Stars!
Previously in Leaderboarding: 100-mph pitches | Relievers stranding runners | Quality starts | Hitters in 0-2 counts | RBI percentages | Taking the extra base | Looking strikeouts | Pitch-framers | Best hitting pitchers
Monday morning, the Blue Jays and free agent catcher Dioner Navarro agreed to terms on a two-year deal worth $8 million. While we can't be 100 percent sure of anything just yet, it seems rather obvious that J.P. Arencibia's days of being the No. 1 catcher in Toronto are now a thing of the past.
Arencibia is coming off one of the most odd offensive stat lines in baseball history, too. Just to see who his peers are in terms of having a batting average under .200 with more than 20 home runs in a single season, we're going to do some all-time leaderboarding.
So now, without further ado, I present to you the J.P. Arencibia All-Stars (via baseball-reference.com play index):
|
Player, team
|
Year
|
Home runs
|
AVG/OBP/SLG
|
Strikeouts
|
Walks
|
|
Willie Kirkland, Indians
|
1962
|
21
|
.200/.272/.377
|
62
|
43
|
|
Rob Deer, Tigers
|
1991
|
25
|
.179/.314/.386
|
175
|
89
|
|
Ruben Rivera, Padres
|
1999
|
23
|
.195/.295/.406
|
143
|
55
|
|
Mark McGwire, Cardinals
|
2001
|
29
|
.187/.316/.492
|
118
|
56
|
|
2010
|
28
|
.196/.325/.407
|
158
|
87
|
|
|
2010
|
32
|
.198/.320/.433
|
211
|
83
|
|
|
J.P. Arencibia
|
2013
|
21
|
.194/.227/.365
|
148
|
18
|
|
2013
|
22
|
.179/.309/.362
|
171
|
77
|
To reiterate, the list includes every player in Major League Baseball history to hit at least 20 home runs while recording a batting average of .200 or worse in a single season. I included the triple slash line along with the walks and strikeouts, however, to note that Arencibia's season was actually unique.
Unique is a word that is overused in today's society. Something can't be "kind of," "pretty" or "relatively" unique. Unique literally means one of a kind. And Arencibia's 2013 season was unique when looking at the above chart.
For example, if I added walks into the equation and included only players who walked fewer than 40 times, Arencibia would have been alone. I could have done so with on-base percentage, too, because including only players with at least 20 homers in a season who had an average of .200 or lower with an OBP of .270 or lower again would yield only Arencibia.
There would be several other ways to pare down the list to just Arencibia, too,
So here's to Arencibia's actual uniqueness.
