Readings: Reggie Jackson, Part II

Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October by Dayn Perry

A Note on the Notes
Today’s edition of Readings is both bullet- and trivia-heavy.

Notes
• As Perry notes, just before the start of the 1976 season, Oakland owner Charlie Finley traded Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman to Baltimore for Don Baylor and Mike Torrez.

• That, in itself, isn’t particularly notable. The thing that’s sort of nuts is this: for his career (i.e. 9401 plate appearances), Baylor sported a .260 BABIP.

• What is “a weirdly low BABIP,” Alex?

• Among players with more than 5000 career PAs, the lowest recorded BABIP — at least among semi-modern players — is Graig Nettles‘ .245 mark. In 10226 PAs!

• What is “OMGZ to the max” Alex?

• Some other players on the quite-low end: Darrell Evans (.250), Gorman Thomas (.251), Dave Kingman (.252), Roger Maris (.254), Harmon Killebrew (.254), Mark McGwire (.255.).

• What is “a list of people who’re bigger than Carson Cistulli,” Alex?

• Another thing that’s surprising — in particular, for anyone who, like myself, remembers Don Baylor as a human giant who recorded 35 HBPs for Boston in 1986 — is that Baylor stole hella bases as a younger player (285 for his career) and finished, for example, with one of the highest Speed Scores (7.1) in 1973.

• Curiously, Graig Nettles had the second-to-worst Speed Score (1.0) in that same season.

• Coincidence?!? Almost definitely, yes.

Image stolen shamelessly from Bees Wax.