Posting a 150 OPS+ without walking much

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Since 1901, 318 baseball players have posted a 150 OPS+ or better with at least 500 plate appearances. Just 10 of these players, though, have surpassed a 150 OPS+ while walking 25 times or fewer, including just two players since the Deadball Era.

In order of recency, according to the Play Index, the 10 players to have an OPS+ of at least 150 with 25 or fewer walks are:

Rk	Player	BB	OPS+	PA	Year ▾	Age	Tm	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Kirby Puckett	23	153	691	1988	28	MIN	158	657	109	234	42	5	24	121	83	.356	.375	.545	.920
2	Tony Oliva	25	154	518	1971	32	MIN	126	487	73	164	30	3	22	81	44	.337	.369	.546	.915
3	George Burns	23	158	544	1918	25	PHA	130	505	61	178	22	9	6	70	25	.352	.390	.467	.857
4	Hal Chase	19	155	571	1916	33	CIN	142	542	66	184	29	12	4	82	48	.339	.363	.459	.822
5	Mike Donlin	23	155	654	1908	30	NYG	155	593	71	198	26	13	6	106	39	.334	.364	.452	.816
6	Ty Cobb	24	167	642	1907	20	DET	150	605	97	212	28	14	5	119	55	.350	.380	.468	.848
7	Bill Bradley	25	153	587	1903	25	CLE	136	536	101	168	36	22	6	68	69	.313	.348	.496	.844
8	Sam Crawford	25	159	602	1903	23	DET	137	550	88	184	23	25	4	89	46	.335	.366	.489	.855
9	Nap Lajoie	24	169	525	1903	28	CLE	125	485	90	167	41	11	7	93	26	.344	.379	.518	.896
10	Charlie Hickman	15	158	564	1902	26	TOT	130	534	74	193	36	13	11	110	15	.361	.387	.539	.926
11	Nap Lajoie	24	198	582	1901	26	PHA	131	544	145	232	48	14	14	125	9	.426	.463	.643	1.106

I’m not sure what this signifies, besides perhaps that it’s nearly impossible to have an adjusted offensive production 50 percent better than one’s league without having a very patient eye at the plate. That seems reasonable, though a part of me is surprised that a very free-swinging slugger might not be among these ranks.

Twenty-five walks is admittedly a staggeringly low season total for any everyday position player to achieve, with many an impetuous batter in the 25-50 walk range. If we up the walks requirement for this search to 50 or fewer, we get 71 players, including contemporary sluggers Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Hamilton and Vladimir Guerrero.

One can only wonder what their OPS+ might be if they walked at even an average rate.

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Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Puckett and Hickman had more than 10* hits to walks.

That’s only been done two other times with an ops+ north of 125
(with 500 or more PA).
Both by players I had never heard of.
______________________

Carl Reynolds in 1930

.359 .388 .584 .973 147
(20/202)
______________________

Dave Robertson in 1916

.307 .326 .426 .752 136
(14/180)
______________________

Artie Z.

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Carl Reynolds is most famous as the guy who had his jaw broken by Bill Dickey after a collision at home plate.

To be clear, Reynolds didn’t break his jaw in the collision; Dickey broke it after the play by punching Reynolds.

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

The only player in history to manage an ops+ over 100 with
15 times more hits than walks was

Charlie Carr in 1903

.281 .296 .374 .671 103

(10/154)
_____________________

Lower the PA threshold to 400 and you get a modern player.
That .340 hitting Yankees Second Baseman…
.
.
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.
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.
.
.
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.
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Mariano Duncan

.340 .352 .500 .852 112

(9/136)

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

And an honorable mention to this guy, both for his name and for his 1905 season:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schreos01.shtml

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

@3/Voomo,

‘Schreck’ was Rube Waddell’s personal catcher on the A’s from 1902 to 1907. He also had a clause in his contract that Waddell couldn’t eat animal crackers, when rooming with him.

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Okay, sorry to pepper this thread with errata, but here’s something extreme.

Guys with ZERO walks.
There have been 17 seasons of 120+ PA and 0 BB.

They range in batting average between .117 – .256
Except for one outlier

Erv Brame, 1930
Pitcher and pinch hitter.

.353 BA

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/brameer01.shtml#batting_standard::none

Editor

Doug

10 years ago

“I’m not sure what this [having 150 OP+ with fewer than 25 walks] signifies” I would say the list indicates it’s really hard to do this. As in hitting .333 and slugging .450 hard. If you take a few walks each week, you only have to do one of those things, not both. These are the only two live-ball seasons where a player did neither of those things and still had a 150 OPS+. Rk Player BB BA OBP SLG OPS+ Year Age Tm G PA R H 2B 3B HR RBI SO Pos 1 Rickey Henderson 64 .319 .408… Read more »

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

For modern guys, the first player I think of for the tandem of “very low walk rate”/”good hitter” is Ivan Rodriguez. Foe most of his career he had less than 40 walks in a full season, with quite a few years (7) in the 20s. In 1999 he won the AL MVP with a .332 BA/35 HR/113 RBI line. But with only 24 walks, his OPS+ was 125, a ways from your 150 baseline – that shows how dramatically league/park affects can inflate a player’s stats. Alfredo Griffin appears to be the modern player with the fewest BB for more… Read more »

Richard Chester

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Here are the guys with the fewest walks with at least 502 PA:
Art Fletcher, 6 BB in 1915
George Stovall,6 BB in 1909
Shano Collins, 7 BB in 1922
Candy La Chance, 7 BB in 1901
Shawon Dunston, 8 BB in1997
Fred Raymer,8 BB in 1905
Ivan Rodriguez, 9 BB in 2007
Tito Fuentes, 9 BB in 1966
Virgil Stallcup, 9 BB in 1949
Art Fletcher, 9 BB in 1919
Buck Weaver, 9 BB in1912

Editor

Doug

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Most PAs for different walk levels:
0 – 156 Ed Walsh 1907, excl. pitchers: 148 Craig Robinson 1973
1 – 228 Andy Kosco 1970
2-5 – 442 Whitey Alperman 1909
6-10 – 599 Art Fletcher 1915
11-12 – 621 Buck Weaver 1919
13-14 – 658 Hi Myers 1922
15 – 662 Tom Jones 1904

Alperman’s 1909 season with 2 walks is the lowest rate for a qualifying season. Fletcher’s 1915 season with 6 walks is the lowest rate for a qualifying season by today’s definition.

Hartvig

10 years ago

Reply to Doug

It might also be worth noting that one of Alperman’s teammates on that 1909 Brooklyn squad was the redoubtable Bill Bergen who, while he did manage to top Alperman’s walk total with 10 free passes in 372 plate appearances, put up a slash line of .139/.163/.156 and an OPS+ of 1 (one).

Still they did somehow manage to avoid the cellar that season and finished 6th in an 8 team league, even if it was 55 & 1/2 games behind the Pirates.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

@9/Richard, @9/Dave;

Thanks much guys, looks like I was right about Stovall. But, I have a technical point; pre-expansion (before 1961), a 154-game season would require only 477 PA. Also, it was a 140-game schedule from 1901-04.

I remembered Dunston after I posted #8; nowhere as good a hitter as Pudge, but he may be the modern player with the lowest walk rate who wasn’t a lousy hitter (if a career 89 OPS+ isn’t ‘lousy’ to you…).

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

11.5 WAR in 18 years is definitely on the lousy spectrum.
His defensive numbers do not look very good in hindsight, either.

Was Dunston’s long career a product of “he was a #1 draft pick, he must be good” mentality?

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Dunston had a _great_ arm, decent power (double-digits in HR 7 times), and good speed (double-digits in steals most full years), so people were probably expecting him to make that progression in power and patience to become an outstanding player. But while he showed flashes, his average and power were never enough to balance his terrible walk rate (except 1995), to make him even an average offensive player over a full year. He did become a versatile utility player over his last five years or so. I didn’t know that he was an overall #1 pick – at least he… Read more »

Artie Z.

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

The Mets took Doc Gooden a few picks later in that draft – I’m not sure when the quip was uttered, but it was probably after Gooden burst onto the scene when someone said the Cubs took Dunston over Gooden because he had a better arm. I’m pretty sure it was Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS (Ventura grand slam single) when an announcer (I think it was McCarver) mentioned that the Mets were bringing in Dunston to pinch hit because he was a veteran with patience (or something along those lines). At the time I thought “Maybe I haven’t… Read more »

Editor

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Ricky Jordan was not an awful hitter (103 career OPS+, first round draft pick, regular first baseman for the Phils between the Von Hayes period and the John Kruk period) and had only a slightly better BB rate than Dunston.

Richard Chester

10 years ago

Graham: I did an analysis to see the effects of BB on OPS+. It may be right and it may not. I placed the stats of the 11 players into an Excel spreadsheet. I re-calculated each player’s OPS+ without park factors. Then I took 50 AB of each player and converted them into BB. Each player’s TOB total increases by 50 minus their seasonal BA*50. I calculated a revised OBP and then I calculated their OPS+ based on the revised OBP. SLG remains the same. I found that the OPS+ with the additional 50 BB increased by from 7 to… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Not a 150 ops+, but mildly relevant to this thread…

Lowest OBP with 80+ Extra Base Hits:

Alfonso Soriano, 2005
.309

And it’s not close.
Next (best) is Robin Yount, with a .321
_______________

But wait!

Lowest OBP with 90+ Extra Base Hits:

Alfonso Soriano, 2002
.332

And that one is even More of an outlier.
Next (best) is Ken Griffey with a .365

Soriano achieved that inconceivably low OBP with 381 Total Bases…
while Leading The League In Hits.