Quote:
Originally Posted by Cozumeleno
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.
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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!