Rob Deer: Player of the Future

Growing up during the 1980's, and growing to love baseball, there was always one player that mystified me: Rob Deer. I'll admit that in my youth I loved high batting average hitters, guys like Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, Paul Molitor, Edgar Martinez, etc.  I can still remember John Olerud's flirtation with .400 for a couple months in 1993 like it was yesterday and how exciting it seemed at the time. Only in my later years have I learned the limitations of batting average as a statistic and moved on to better measurements of player performance. However, back to Rob Deer.

Rob Deer owns a career .222 batting average.  Along the way, accumulating that average required him to post 4 seasons with batting averages under .210 and lead the league in whiffs four times as well. His lone upside? He could crush it. During his career, from 1986-1993, only five players hit more HR's than Deer. In order of most to least: Joe Carter, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Fred McGriff, and Barry Bonds. 

So why I am I talking about Rob Deer today? Well I had intended on writing about Aaron Hill's disastrous 2010 season, in which he hit .205 but still managed to post 26 HR's, and project his performance for the upcoming season. However, I got a little sidetracked. A quick look on Baseball-Reference.com's play index reveals that in all of baseball history only six players have hit under .205 and managed 25 HR's in the process. Rob Deer did it once, Mark McGwire did it in his final season*, and the infamous Dave Kingman led the league in HR's in 1982 while batting .204. The other two players on the list are Mark Reynolds and Carlos Pena, both of whom joined Hill in this illustrious club last year. Pena even managed to parlay his .196/.325/.407 line into a $10 million contract. 

I know we still live in the age of the slugger, where now more than ever players are looking to jump all over one pitch they have set aside in their mind, but I never thought players with Rob Deer's skill set would become anything more than an aberration. 

More on Aaron Hill tomorrow...

*McGwire's final season still amazes me. He only played in 97 games, hit .187, and 29 HRs. That's right, Big Mac only had 56 hits in 364 plate appearances, and more than half of them left the yard. Amazing.