Stat of the Day and Poor Hitters

There are two players currently hitting under .200 who qualify for the batting title: Jason Giambi and Chris Young. They are tied for first on the list of players who qualify for the batting title with the least amount of hits (courtesy of Baseball-Reference). The rest of the top 10 is a surprise group of names: Ken Griffey, Chris Davis, Jason Varitek, Mike Fontenot, Jim Thome, Mike Jacobs, Joe Crede, and Chris Duncan. Only Varitek and Thome are having good seasons out of that group, albeit with low averages (and Griffey and Crede are about at league average for adjusted OPS).

Giambi and Young aren't the worst everyday players, however: Willy Taveras (.585 OPS, 1 HR, 12 RBI, 70 hits, 16 BB, 12 XBH) and Jason Kendall (.597 OPS, O HR, 1 SB, 25 runs, 10 GIDP, 60 hits, 10 XBH) take the cake in my opinion.

Although getting hits isn't the important part of being a good player, at some point, you need to do so. Of the 35 players who have 70 hits or less and qualify for the batting title, only 9 have an OPS greater than .780: Melky Cabrera (.786), Kosuke Fukudome (.788), Nick Swisher (.824), Varitek (.826), Ryan Ludwick (.829), J.D. Drew (.854), Hank Blalock (.854), Hideki Matsui (.884) and Thome (.891). Blalock is an odd member of this list, having walked only 16 times, but when he actually does get it a hit, it's an extra base hit over 50% of the time and a home run over 28% of the time. That's pretty good production.