Baseball Notes

In the spring of 1994, I was a skinny 8th grader living in Brussels where I wrote for the school paper for the first time. Being a school with mostly Americans, the paper had a sports section dedicated mainly to American sports, so when I was asked where I wanted to spend my time learning how to write, of course that is what I picked. More specifically, baseball.

I was asked to write a preview of the upcoming baseball season - and I gladly accepted. I wrote until my fingers hurt, only to have my article cut in half because I had made it “way too long” for the upcoming edition. Not knowing or understanding anything about a pending strike or labor stoppage or salary cap, I wrote about some of my favorite players like Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey, Jr. Little did I know what kind of season those three respective players would have, two of them winning the MVP award before the season ended on August 11. And while Bagwell, Thomas and others were downright god-like that season, it was two other men that had their chance at history ripped out from under them after their evening games ended that Thursday night in August.

Matt Williams and Tony Gwynn were both on pace for phenomenal, record-breaking numbers in 1994, despite the fact that both played for losing teams a mere 500 miles apart.

Through 115 team games, Matt Williams had played in 112 and already had 43 homeruns, leading all of Major League Baseball. At this pace, Williams would have played in 158 games, and with his pace of one homerun every 10.35 at-bats, he was on track for exactly 61 homeruns - which would have tied the current record of 61 homeruns by Roger Maris. Bagwell was the closest to Williams with 39 homeruns. Unfortunately, if Williams had hit 61 or 62 or 63, his record would have only stood for four years before McGwire and Sosa battled in their epic summer.

So we turn our attention to Tony Gwynn. In 117 San Diego games, Gwynn had missed seven and was on pace for 152 for the season. With 165 hits through 419 at-bats, Gwynn ended August 11 with a .394 average, the highest since Ted Williams’ .406 in 1941. With 45 team games left, Gwynn had approximately 180 plate appearances left to raise his average six points. To put his average in perspective, Gwynn could have gone hitless for his next 131 at-bats and his average would still be .300. If Gwynn had played a full season and had reached .400, he would accomplish something no one had done for 53 years, and something no one has come close to since.

Lately, I have been wondering what would have really happened? Just saying Gwynn was on pace for a .394 AVG is too easy and no fun - with no strike he would actually have had to play those games. What if he did? After exhaustive research by my pal Jeremy Gibson (including calling the Padres’ archive departments), we were able to track down a schedule of games that were not played in 1994 - the rest of the canceled season (45 games) for San Diego.

Using Gwynn’s past numbers against the teams and pitchers with whom they had games remaining, I think we can get a better idea of how he might have performed (with a STRONG emphasis on “might”), and if he would have come close to .400. But since this is just for fun, and we’ll never really know, we might as well try.

Here is the portion of the Padres’ schedule that was canceled in 1994:

August-
12-14 vs SF
15-17 vs STL
19-21 @ ATL
23-25 @ FLA
26-28 vs ATL
29-31 vs FLA

September-
2-4 vs PIT
5-7 @ STL
9-11 @ PIT
12-14 @ SF
16-18 vs CHI
19-21 vs HOU
23-25 vs LAD
27-29 @ CIN
30-Oct.2 @ COL

In order to do this, there are a number of factors that have to be considered first. To begin, we will keep Gwynn on the same number of games played schedule. So if he was sitting out once every 20 games, we will do the same thing with the remaining 45 games. Also, Gwynn was averaging 4.32 plate appearances per game, so since every series left is three games, we will assume 13 plate appearances per series, or 195 left before we take away PA for games he sits and walks. We will also keep the same walk rate he accumulated versus these remaining teams for the 1994 season. So if he was averaging a walk per game against the Pirates, we will grant him that to try not to inflate or deflate his number of at-bats too much. We will also have to assume that the teams he is facing keep the same starting pitchers all season, and the batting averages he accumulated through the first 117 games against those pitchers will remain constant when he faces them again.** Gwynn had only two HBP and one sacrifice hit all season to that point, so those are statistically irrelevant to what we are going to do. So let’s get to it.

First, the games he will miss. Gwynn only missed one game all season after April 12, and that was on July 6. The other six games he missed were from April 5-April 11 because of injury. So, only missing one of the team’s final 109 games during the regular season tells us he probably was not going to be sitting at all in those final months. Especially if he is chasing .400.

Walk rate: here is a list of Gwynn’s BB/G rates for the teams on his schedule from Aug. 12 to Oct. 2. Next to that is how many walks we will take away from Gwynn’s plate appearances for three or six games against those teams, and how many plate appearances he has left in a three or six games series after we subtract those walks:

SFG - .286 - 2 walks - 24 at bats left
STL - .50 - 3 walks - 23 at bats left
ATL - .25 - 2 walks - 24 at bats left
FLA - 0 - 0 walks - 26 at bats left
PIT - .50 - 3 walks - 23 at bats left
CHI - .111 - 0 walks - 13 at bats left
HOU - .40 - 1 walk - 12 at bats left
LAD - .70 - 2 walks - 11 at bats left
CIN - .30 - 1 walk - 12 at bats left
COL - 1.20 - 4 walks - 9 at bats left

Now we have our best guess that Gwynn has 177 at bats left to add to his 419 up to this point in the schedule to equal 596 for the season. The next step is to translate the number of at bats Gwynn has left against each team into the number of hits, using his 1994 average against that team, and extrapolate his total average from these numbers.

Below is the average Gwynn totaled against each team remaining on his schedule in 1994 before the strike. Listed after that is the number of at bats and therefore hits he should have accumulated against each team in that series rounded to the nearest hundredth.

SFG - .429 avg - 24 at bats - 10.30 hits
STL - .391 avg - 23 at bats - 8.99 hits
ATL - .273 avg - 24 at bats - 6.55 hits
FLA - .231 avg - 26 at bats - 6.00 hits
PIT - .364 avg - 23 at bats - 8.37
CHI - .324 avg - 13 at bats - 4.21 hits
HOU - .417 avg - 12 at bats - 5.00 hits
LAD - .514 AVG - 11 at bats - 5.65 hits
CIN - .333 avg - 12 at bats - 4.00 hits
COL - .378 avg - 9 at bats - 3.40 hits

The total comes to 62.47 hits over his final 177 at bats or a .353 average. Even if we bump him up to 63, it is only a .356 average.

Therefore, adding 63 hits to his total of 165 and adding 177 at bats to his total of 419, we get 228 hits in 596 at bats, or an average in 1994 of .383. So, while it’s not .400 or even .394, Gwynn would still have had the highest batting average in the National League since Arky Vaughan all the way back with the 1935 Pirates when he hit .385.

A couple of things worked against Gwynn if you are using 1994 performance as a measurement for the rest of the unplayed season. First, he didn’t have any games left against the Phillies, whom Gwynn batted .571 against for the season. Second, he had too many games left against the Marlins, who held Gwynn to his lowest batting average against any team at .231; plus he did not draw a single walk against them all season. Third, Gwynn only hit over .400 in one month the whole 1994 season, and that was August where he only played in 10 games. For six weeks, he would have had to keep up a pace he had only been able to accomplish for 11 days throughout the season.

I, for one, would have loved to see the rest of that season played out so we could definitively know what would have happened. But since those 45 games are lost forever, we are left to hope for what might have been - and the greatness we might have missed.

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** And as a disclaimer, yes, I have read “What Does Mike Redmond Know about Tom Glavine” from Baseball Between the Numbers by the Baseball Prospectus team. So I know that just because Gwynn performs a certain way against pitcher in the past, it has no relevance on how he will perform in the future. But there really is no other way to effectively guess, so we will leave it this way for now.