Dee Gordon Walking Slowly Towards a Historic Season
When the Seattle Mariners traded for Dee Gordon, they did so mostly because he’s incredibly fast. He’s a talented player who has led the league in steals since his debut in 2011. But steals are just one area where speed shows up in the stat line. Gordon does not hit the ball very hard (his average exit velocity this year is just 80.7 mph, the third worst in baseball), but because he hits it fairly often, and he’s so fast, he’s 4th in the majors this year with 25 infield hits.
Gordon wouldn’t be a very good player without running as fast as he does. He knows this; most of baseball knows this. So apparently, in a brazen act of defiance in favor of running (his best skill) as opposed to walking (something anyone can do), he has decided to disavow the base on balls. Dee Gordon is currently rocking a 1.6% walk rate on the year. He has 9 walks in 580 trips to the plate.
Prior to last night, he had just 8 walks in 577 trips to the plate, a 1.4% walk rate. For a bit of reference, a 1.4% walk rate would have been the lowest since Art Fletcher in 1915. If Gordon gets another 24 plate appearances in the Mariners final 6 games (and he doesn’t walk), he’ll finish with a 1.49% walk rate, which would only be the lowest in a qualifying season since Shano Collins in 1922. You may remember Shano Collins because of this: Of the nine men in the starting lineup for the American League champion Chicago White Sox in Game One of the 1919 World Series, only one did not end up either banished from baseball for life or elected to the Hall of Fame. His name is Shano Collins.
Hopefully, a Black Sox reference helps to put Gordon’s season in perspective, but I have a few more notes for you.
Dan Straily, the Miami Marlins starting pitcher, has 43 plate appearances on the year. He has 8 walks. In four games between April 28 and May 2, Mike Trout had 9 walks in 16 plate appearances. In 5 games between May 20 and May 25, Trout had another 10 walks. In Barry Bonds‘ historic 2004 season, he had 9 walks in three games three separate times.
Dee Gordon has been hit by 9 pitches this year. If you remember, he’s also walked exactly 9 times. When was the last time someone was hit by as many pitches as the number of times he walked? That would be Charlie Hickman in 1900. I feel like we should also tip our caps to Ollie O’Mara‘s 1918 season in which he was hit thrice more than he walked and Art Fletcher’s 1915 season (again), in which he was hit eight times more than he walked. More recently, Starling Marte, ducked out of the way of one too many pitches in 2013 to make history.
I have written Dee Gordon posts before. He gave the Marlins hope in 2015. In 2014, I made up a stat that equated stealing a bag with an extra total base in an attempt to rationalize my affinity for Gordon. In 2012, I wrote about how Dee Gordon was going to steal 100 bases (he fell 68 short of the century mark). And just recently, I have rubbed off on our other bloggers: Isaac wrote in big bold letters last December that “Dee Gordon is worth a lot more than his contract.” All of this is to say that Gordon has long been admired around here. He’s inextricably tied to a certain part of my blogging identity. Most of the time, I write good, optimistic things about Mr. Gordon. This is not one of those times.
Gordon has pretty much always been a below average walker and a really good runner. This year, he’s well below his career averages in terms of walks. Perhaps he’s trying to display his speed whenever possible. Perhaps he doesn’t know the appropriate speed in which to advance to first uncontested and has opted to avoid that scenario out of some combination of respect for the unwritten rules and a need for maintaining societal norms. Whatever the reason, Dee Gordon is on the verge of setting a type of modern-day record that we didn’t really expect. It has to do with his legs, but not in the way that you first think. He’s long been a curious player, this would add to his folklore. I hope he never walks again.
-Sean Morash
