Twins Swept

After being swept by the Tigers for the second straight time, the Twins have fallen to 72-77, 5 games below .500, the farthest they've been from .500 this season, and the farthest since June 11th of last season. Scott Baker provided a pretty good start, but began roughly as Johan Santana did yesterday, giving up four runs in the first three innings. The offense was again lackluster, batting 7-34 (.206), but pushed across 4 runs and had a chance late when Joe Mauer, pinch-hitting for Chris Heintz, struck out looking with the bases loaded. It was an especially rough night for Jason Kubel, who went 0-5 with three strikeouts, while Nick Punto went 2-4 with a double.


Speaking of Punto, he had two hits in each of his last two games, which is the first time in his last 81 games (72 with a plate appearance) that he has had consecutive multi-hit games, dating back to July 10th and 12th. That sort of futility meant research had to be done. After looking at some of the other worst hitters in the league (in terms of batting average), there wasn't much conclusive data, but I decided to put it up anyways because this relatively small amount of data took a while to collect. I've listed games since consecutive multi-hit games, times with consecutive games with extra base hits, number of games with multiple extra base hits, and regular old slugging percentage for the players with the lowest batting averages in the American League, and a few of the worst in the National League too. The numbers in parentheses indicate games with a plate appearance.


Nick Punto................81 (72)........3.........1......... .262
Richie Sexson...........17................10........3......... .399
Ray Durham.............67.................5.........2........ .346
Andruw Jones..........14................11........1......... .411
Juan Uribe................3...................6.........4........ .393
Julio Lugo.................10.................8.........6......... .348
Lyle Overbay...........56 (55)........9.........7.......... .394
Brandon Inge...........82 (80)........5.........2.......... .389
Vernon Wells............35 (34)........9.........7.......... .408
Jermaine Dye...........14................11.......10........ .484
Jason Varitek...........37................5..........2.......... .394
Travis Hafner...........9..................9.........7.......... .437


So as it turns out, that streak is not the longest, even among the small sample size (although presumably the longest streaks would be among the guys with the lowest batting averages). But what is apparent is his utter lack of extra base hits. His three times of having consecutive games with an extra base hit is behind everyone's. This is even though all of his streaks are two games, and everyone else has at least one of three or more games, excluding Inge (any streak would be counted as 1; for instance, 5 consecutive games would be counted as just 1 streak). And most appalling of all, even though Andruw Jones equals him in this category, is his ONE game with multiple extra base hits this year. You ask when that game was? Opening day.


Of course, these statistics, albeit interesting to look at, really don't show us any more than this one:

Bizarro World MLB Leaders:

Slugging %
Punto....................... .262
Omar Vizquel......... .295
Jason Kendall......... .315
Marcus Giles.......... .319
Tony Pena Jr......... .337

OPS
Punto...................... .552
Vizquel................... .595
Pena Jr................... .615
Kendall................... .617
Giles....................... .620

Make sure to notice how far "ahead" he is of the next "best" in each category in the American League (in case you need help, it's Tony Pena Jr.). Nick Punto, congratulations; you've raised your average to .205, your slugging percentage to .262, and your OPS to .552 by going 4-7 over the last two games. But I'll give him some credit for hitting .273 with a .636 OPS in September, because if he'd kept that up the whole year, he'd only have the 2nd worst OPS in the American League.