Walking Men

[Frayed Knot]

Six active ML'ers have 1,000+ walks: 1) Carlos Santana (1,332); 2) Bryce Harper; 3) Andrew McCutcheon (only sort of active ... hasn't played since May); 4) Mike Trout; 5) Freddie Freeman; 6) Paul Goldschmidt

#7 is Juan Soto with 967. But of the top 20, Soto by far leads that group in walk rate. He's at 18.46% which is right about double league avg (8.9%). He's also more than 2% ahead of 2nd place Aaron Judge (16.27%) with no one else as high as 15%. And at age 27 (28 in October) he's not surprisingly the youngest on the list. Only Alex Bregman and Matt Olson (both 33 in March) are within a half decade of Soto's age.

[seawolf17]

It's one of my favorite things about him. You *have* to throw him strikes, but he's also likely to hit those strikes to the moon.

[Frayed Knot]

And just for kicks I looked up the top 24 leaders in All-Time Walks to see how Soto might compare to them. The only players with a higher BB-rate than Soto are Ted Williams [4th overall but tops in pct at 20.64% !!!] and Barry Bonds [20.29%]

The remainder of the top ten in Rate are: Babe Ruth, Eddie Yost!!! (the original 'Walking Man'), Mantle, Thome, Frank Thomas (Big Hurt), Joe Morgan, Rickey Henderson, and Harmon Killebrew.  23 of the 24 have walk rates above 10% with only Pete Rose (9.86%) dipping below 1-in-10 but making up for it in volume.

No one on the active list is all that close to cracking the top 24 in walk totals: Carlos Santana, Bryce Harper, and Andrew McCutcheon (top three active players) are currently in 40th, 61st, and 69th place on the all time list.

[MFS62]

Williams was famous for his ability to see if a ball was the proverbial inch off the plate (and he wouldn't swing at it).

And one of the reported benefits of the BALCO cream Bonds used was an improvement in eyesight. I don't know if his walk rate improved after he started using the stuff.

Soto third is an (no pun intended) eye opener. Thanks

Later