Baseball’s Mr. Average is future first ballot Hall of Famer

Website design By BotEap.comThere is no official award in the sport of baseball, but if there is, the plaque should be presented in honor of Pat Meares. He spent his nine-year career as a regular shortstop for the Minnesota Twins and later the Pittsburgh Pirates, an unremarkable but fairly adequate infielder who was exactly average.

Website design By BotEap.comAt no point was this more true than in 1997, when Meares’ top offensive stats exactly matched the stats of the average player in baseball. He hit .276, which was the exact overall batting average in both leagues combined, as well as the ten home runs Meares amassed that season.

Website design By BotEap.comThose numbers would be far from average for the player who would win the Pat Meares award at this point in the season, as his .276 mark is more than twenty points higher than the current overall batting average. On the other hand, his ten home runs would be significantly less than the league average, which is on track to hit nearly twenty.

Website design By BotEap.comIn 2018 so far, players have a team batting average of .247 in the American League and just .244 on the Senior Circuit, alarmingly low numbers compared to the decade in which Meares played. In fact, no team has a batting average as high as Meares in 1997, and the league-leading Boston Red Sox (.265) surpass it by more than ten points. Surprisingly, four clubs have team averages below .230, touched by the .220 overall average of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Website design By BotEap.comAlthough no one is exactly like the Average Mr. Meares three decades ago, one guy in the American League comes very close. Oh, and it turns out he’s not only a perennial All-Star, but also a future Hall of Famer in Cooperstown.

Website design By BotEap.comWith a .247 batting average, Albert Pujols is hitting at the precise percentage of the typical player. The eight explosions Pujols has made this year are just half a percentage point more than the average American League player.

Website design By BotEap.comSeveral guys in the National League are hitting .244, the exact overall average so far in 2018. Third baseman Evan Longoria of the San Francisco Giants is one of them, but his ten home runs have put him three above average. The other .244 hitter is Atlanta Braves outfielder Ender Inciarte, who nevertheless is three home runs below the NL average.

Website design By BotEap.comTrey Mancini, an outfielder for the Orioles, is hitting at the exact average, not the league he plays in, but the team he belongs to. His .228 batting average is the same mark Baltimore is hitting overall, tied with the Texas Rangers for the lowest spot in the American League.

Website design By BotEap.comThere is an equivalent to Mancini in the other league, a player whose batting average is exactly the same as his team’s overall record. Pittsburgh shortstop Jordy Mercer started the day at .255, which is also the Pirates’ collective average as a club.

Website design By BotEap.comMeares patrolled the Pittsburgh midfield 15 years before Mercer, but the game they are a part of has changed dramatically. A guy who scored twenty points above the league average today never made an All Star team or made the playoffs, and that season Meares earned $ 225.00 for being “Mr. Average.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *