OT: Tony Gwynn
 

Remembered he was good, but just looked at his career numbers and almost fell off my seat. Damm. 20 seasons and never hit below .309. Wowza. There was a guy who could rake. For two decades. Pretty amazing consistency.

Yep, he was the best contact hitter I've seen in my lifetime (41 years). He has so many mind-boggling stats. For example....in his career, he had 45 games where he registered 4 hits and only 34 games where he struck out more than once. And of those 34 games, only once did he strike out 3 times. He had one season where he stuck out only 15 times. Guys today do that in a week or two. Neither Pedro Martinez nor Greg Maddux ever struck him out. Maddux faced Gwynn 107 times and Gwynn hit .415 off Maddux. It goes on and on like that.....just crazy: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-bi...182243389.html.

great player who might have been better served sacrificing some contact for more power. But I loved him growing up as he was considered the best hitter in the game back when we thought batting avg was THE word in hitting. Now that we know better his stats pale a bit, but for his era he was the best.


One of the saddest stories losing him so young too. :-(

Four straight batting titles at the height of the steroid era. Guy was an absolute beast.

I can see that side of it but personally, I'd much rather have him as the dominant contact hitter. He's a career .338 hitter with 135 home runs. To me, that's more impressive than if he hit like .315 with like 200 home runs. He was never going to be a home run hitter and 200 home runs these days is relatively marginal when looking at elite players.

I love that he led the league ten times in most at bats in between strikeouts - sometimes by staggering numbers. That is also one of the most impressive things about him and by trying to hit for more power, he would have sacrificed some of that.

His power numbers were very low, so no argument from me there. I just think that I'd prefer the elite contact hitter over the very good/excellent contact hitter with a little more power.

I get into this argument a lot.

Gwynn was far from an empty .300 hitter. He hit a very good amount of doubles and could take a walk. For a guy without HR's his OPS is very respectable.

Unlike Ichiro who hits about the emptiest .300 ever. I get that he lost several prime years before making it to America, but dude hits almost entirely singles and can't take a walk, which with his speed is a crime. Couple that with the fact that he drove in almost no runs with all those hits because the vast majortiy of his hits land in front of the outfielders precluding baserunners from taking any extra bases. Nobody was scoring from first and few were scoring from second on Ichiro's little slap singles.

Of course if you like Tony's numbers then how do you feel about Wade Boggs' numbers? He never got the love that Gwynn got, maybe because he didn't play his whole career with one team, but offensively he is by FAR the best of the three mentioned players.

good point on Boggs, he doesn't get nearly the love he should. I think maybe it's because of his moving around... But it could be that Gwynn was the more press friendly of the two as well. IDK

I prefer the better overall hitter myself. Power is always better. But Gwynn was not an "empty .300 hitter" for sure, he did have extra base hits and was a tough out. Though, I still contend that had he been willing to K a bit more and sacrifice a little contact he might have hit another 150 homers. It might have meant an extra .050 points of OPS for his career, and that's significant. But, it was a different era and teams/players weren't considering things like isolated power, OPS and OBP nearly the way they do now.


Please don't think I'm ragging on Gwynn,btw, he was one of my favorite non-braves back in the 80's and 90's!

For me Wade Boggs was the best player of his generation. I am very biased though because he my all-time favorite player.:)

Ichiro would be a very far third when comparing him to Wade or Tony.

ha! Yeah, I feel that way about Dale Murphy even tho I know it isn't true. But dammit, he was!!!


btw, I think Gwynn's rookie card is an underpriced gem right now as there are tons of high quality raw cards floating out there for a few bucks.

People forget Gwynn was a speedster too since he got, well, rotund later in life. Guy stole 56 bases in in 1987 while hitting 370.

+1000 for use of "rotund" :-)

Was an even better basketball player at SDSU than he was as a ballplayer there. Pretty sure he was drafted by an NBA team around '80 out of State, but chose baseball instead.

10th round pick of the Clippers in '81.

Boggs did have 24 homers or so in 87 i think.... there is a baseball card of boggs which showing him popping up to the infield...its in like 1988, i remember reading in Beckett back than because it rarely occurred.

As to Gwynn people also forget he is also a record holder at san diego state in many major basketball categories.. such as scoring and assists (but not sure if its those exact ones)

If you ever seen Boggs take batting practice you would wonder why 24 homers was not his lowest season total.

Couldn't/shouldn't this have been started in the sports talk forum?

An amazing hitter...announced before tonight's ASG, going forward, the NL batting title award will be named in his honor (Rod Carew for AL).

Oh? Do Cobb and Hornsby have bad reputations or something?

it would of been interesting if it was a Houston Astro player they named the award after....how would they pick whether it would be an AL or NL award

Are you implying that he used them during that stretch?

Reminds of the story about Rod Carew...

Carew went to Twins management to ask for a raise in the winter of 1974. They told him no because he doesn't hit enough home runs (he had 3 HRs in 1974). Carew tells them that he will hit more HRs but he won't win the batting title with a .364 average again....

1975 season... he hits 14 HRs and still wins the batting title @ .359
I believe he got his raise.

I think he's saying Gwynn killed it while being clean, when others were juicing, i.e. not a level playing field. That's how good he was.

He was so methodical in his approach at the plate. I saw him hit numerous times when he came to Wrigley. I loved watching him bat. He'd take the first pitch, foul off what he didn't like and then double up the middle. Or, he'd take a walk if it was given. I'd like to see what his BA was in the first seven innings before fresher arms from the bullpen came in and compare his stats to Ted Williams BA in the first seven innings, considering starters went longer back in Ted's day and may have lost something and allowing Williams the benefit of more "look's" at a particular pitcher.

Even in his final season he still hit 324 in a part-time role. Just an incredible player and very sad that we lost him so early.

Yeah because they sure botched it last year when they didn't even mention him or his passing.

Always one of my favorite players growing up. The Big Hurt, Big Mac, and Tony.

.394
 

Tony felt that he really had a legitimate shot at .400 during the 1994 season. He said he was in such a groove even he was amazed. He was piling up hits....just raking the ball. The strike-shorten 1994 season denied him the chance for a .400 season, and was something he lamented in later life. .394 was terrific, but we'll never know what could have been..........