Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 472: The Greatness of Gwynn

Episode Date: June 17, 2014

Ben and Sam talk about the legacy of the late, great, Tony Gwynn.

And the rest of my family, and that's you guys, that's the fans. My adopted family, especially my fans from San Diego. You know, it was 20 years, and we had a blast. I had a blast. I truly enjoyed it. But it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if you hadn't been as supportive as you were. So I say thank you. Good morning and welcome to episode 472 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? All right. All right. I'm always interested in whether other sports broadcasters are better or worse than baseball broadcasters. And I think baseball broadcasters have gotten better. But, you know, we still have in mind, you know, a lot of the ways in which they're quite poor. And not all of them. Of course, some of them are great. Some of them I love. but some of them aren't.

And generally, it seems to me that football broadcasters are worse, with the exception of Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth, and that basketball broadcasters are generally better, in my estimation. They seem to be better. And so soccer today, now I get to hear soccer. And I didn't see the TV broadcast. The TV broadcast that I was watching was in Spanish. I can't speak to them, but I did listen to some of the English on the radio. And there was one point where the guy who was doing the color commentary, who had an accent, which-

Well, that's it, right? Soccer has a reputation, I feel like, for having entertaining broadcasts, but I feel like 70% of it is the accent. Yeah, so I was at first charmed by this man's, I believe, Irish accent, I think. But then I started to notice that the accent, it was basically perfume on an unshowered body. And it really peaked, I would say, when the U.S. was winning 1-0 in minute 81 or so, 80, 81. And the broadcaster said in the most sort of profound, satisfied tone possible. most sort of profound satisfied tone possible like like it was as though he were announcing um you know the victory uh you know the of u.s forces in world war ii or something he says in

this really profound way that the clock is the u.s's best friend right now and it is Ghana's worst enemy. That's true in every single game. There's nothing unique about the situation. One team is trailing as the clock winds down. It was a low point. From that point on, he had completely lost me, and I realized that soccer radio announcers, at least, are quite poor. I don't think I'm qualified to judge at least the level of analysis on a broadcast of any other sport. I guess I could probably detect a cliche or detect filler that isn't actually insightful, but I don't know that I would know what insight sounded like. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I mean, that would be, if you were learning things, that would be the answer to that, right? I mean, it's true. I would have learned that there's a clock in soccer. Oh, come on. I knew that. I know sometimes there isn't a clock at the end right that makes a lot

of people mad uh yeah i um it does seem to me and i don't know maybe they do this maybe i'm i'm wrong about this but uh so they yeah the game ends 90 minutes is up uh but then they they keep going for this unspecified injury time based on the referees uh the referees clock i guess the referees uh timing of it. It does seem interesting to me that they don't, like the broadcast doesn't have a pretty pinpoint estimate of what that time is going to be. It shouldn't be that hard. You can just start a clock and stop a clock every time there's a stoppage for an injury.

Yeah, I guess, I mean, maybe referees have their own, maybe each individual ref has his own sort of internal clock, and it's like an umpire's strike zone, you know, you can't quite pin it down. Right, yeah, that's what it is, I think, or that's what frustrates people. And yet, you'd think that, like, I don't know, maybe they do this, maybe, like, I see one soccer game, you know, I see, like, four soccer games every four years, roughly. But it does seem like football, for instance, they call it football, by the way. I said soccer just now, but I do know enough that they call it football. But it does seem like the broadcast should have their estimated time so that you know

maybe they do i don't know but i haven't seen it yeah me neither uh i did see john carlos stanton hit the the most interesting home run bringing it up before i could i've never seen i don't think i don't think i've ever seen a home run like that such a great home run i think that's the first time i've ever seen that home run when i was talking great home run i think that's the first time i've ever seen that home run when i was talking about why i like stanton home runs yesterday i didn't mean this because this i wasn't even hoping for this i i enjoy his mammoth home runs that go over everything and they keep going and going and you can't believe how far they went this was the opposite of that this barely cleared cleared the 335 sign

at Marlins Park. But it's just, I mean, I'll link to it. I'll add a link in the Facebook group and on the blog post, because if you haven't seen this home run, it seems to defy physics. Because once you've watched many thousands of baseball games, you can generally tell where the ball is going after it leaves the bat. You can tell from the trajectory, the angle, if it's going to be a home run. I mean, every now and then you'll get fooled. But this one looked like a double down the line over the first baseman's head and it left the ballpark. It was a home run. And it looks like a standard line drive. And evidently it was just hit so hard that it had no time to come down before it went out. So I've been refreshing HitTracker ever since this home run, waiting for them to add some information about the trajectory of this thing so I could see whether it had one of the

lowest angle of departure or whatever. And still, it has not updated yet, but I will bring you that news tomorrow. But it must, right? It has to. It has to. Certainly going the other way. I just have to imagine that there has never been a home run hit the other way in the home run tracker era in the hit tracker era uh at a lower angle than this it's almost you said it's like an optical illusion when um because when he i see i when he hit it i thought line drive in front of uh in front of the right fielder more than down the line um but there's a there's a there's sort of a second optical illusion when the ball is carrying um where it just it seems to it seems to be going down and then go back up like it almost feels like it has started its decline

and then and then it is once again rising as though it catches, you know, like a flurry of wind or something and just starts going up again. Yeah. I mean, the carry on this thing is incredible. The carry is a beautiful thing. I can't figure out where it hit. I think it hits on the ledge of the sort of cement stairway or railing or whatever. So I don't think it edges over. stairway or railing or whatever so i don't think it edges over like it to me it looks like it's a good three it's a good 10 feet over yeah on the fly and maybe it wouldn't have been a front row

shot it would have been a few rows back i guess it was well and that's over the that's over some sort of seating what is that this yeah there are no no seats there really it's kind of a it's like between the foul pole and the bleachers, sort of. It was a beautiful thing, though. It was. I'm watching it over and over and over. And he was sort of laughing about it as he came down the line. Yeah, this was a special home run.

Great home run. That's why he's a must-watch MLB TV player. And another callback to yesterday. Mike Trout was two for two stolen base-wise today. Yep. Padding that leading stolen base rate. Yep, exactly. Yeah.

Nine for nine this year. Also, Bronson Arroyo's no DL streak ended, which saddens me. no DL streak ended, which saddens me. The Arroyo and Burley longest active streaks without going on the disabled list. In Arroyo's case, it was like without missing a start, I think. Those were two of my favorite streaks in baseball. Not that either of them has been ever really elite, save for Burley right now, which I don't think that's going to last really. But just that they have managed to do this

while all the other pitchers drop like flies around them is one of my favorite baseball feats. So glad it lasted that long. Trout has only attempted nine stolen bases in his last 85 games. That's kind of sad. Do you think that we've lost this forever or do you think this is just about batting in front of well i guess i was gonna say batting in front of pools but he wasn't there last september and trout didn't really attempt any

steals last september either yeah well this is usually the trajectory right i feel like with with i mean i know but he's 22 right yeah but well he's hitting for more power i suppose or at least he he's got 16 homers he finished with or no i'm looking at pooh holes's page um yeah i don't know i guess he's he's hitting for a little more power right is that right and often it seems like guys will start running a little less i don't i don't know whether i mean it often it's because their build changes or they slow down i don't know whether that's happened to trout yet not perceptibly yeah i mean he's still faster than than most he's he might not be the fastest home to first time in the league from the right side anymore, but he's fast enough to be the fastest guy on any team, basically.

Anyway, it's a shame because that's part of what makes him interesting. All right, so sad thing. Let's go to the sad thing. There's no segue to the sad thing. It's just sad. So Tony Gwynn died. Um, Tony Gwynn, of course it's, uh, I mean, you know, it's sad because of how young he was. It's also sort of shocking because of how you kind of realize how old he is. Um, that generation that he played in feels, uh, recent. It's a part of many of our youths. Many of us can remember Tony Gwynn when he was still young Tony Gwynn,

stolen bass Tony Gwynn. And I don't know. There's just something about the fact that players from that generation are dying now and not quite of natural causes, but also not uh not quite i mean these aren't car accident deaths uh he and bob welch uh within you know a week of each other uh two you know fairly iconic players of a fairly recent generation um and uh it's awful it's sad it's uh it's too bad uh and you know it's hard to process it because the relationship we have with these guys is very weird, and you don't want to make it about you, certainly, because it's not about you.

It's about a man and a father and a person that everybody loved who died, but also you spend decades of your life processing what this guy does and reacting to it and having emotions about it. And so it's weird when all of a sudden it becomes something very real. What do you remember about Tony Gwynn? Well, I was talking to Jonah Carey about him earlier today on his podcast, and I was saying that I was sorry that I hadn't gotten to see prime Gwynn because by the time I started following baseball closely, he was in his mid thirties. But at the same time, he was in a sense, still sort of prime Gwynn at that point. Like he never, he never really had the sad decline phase. He, he stopped running,

he gained weight, he got hurt more often, but batting average wise which was always his calling card uh he was really at you know at age 40 at age 41 when he was in the lineup he was almost exactly as productive as he'd ever been like in his last in his last year 71 games 112 plate appearances he did a lot of pinch hitting appearances he did a lot of pinch hitting he had a 127 OPS that year and his career OPS was 132 he was you know still still a really fun and interesting player to watch and I I got to see him that season in San Diego I just happened to be visiting that September uh just as he was wrapping up his career and he didn't start that day but he made a pinch hit appearance late in the game. He struck out, which was weird because it was Tony Gwynn, but he still got a standing ovation

and everyone was super excited to see him do anything at that point because he was immensely popular, of course, not just in San Diego, but everywhere, but especially in San Diego. And so he's a really interesting player. I like unique players who do things that we don't see often, and he is very much that kind of player. He just didn't strike out.

If you look at his career strikeout rate, it's something like 4.2%, I think I looked it up earlier today and there's really, I mean, it's, it's clearly the best of anyone who debuted after the fifties, even Billy Buckner, Bill Buckner was, was close, but that, and just, and the average and batting average is something that, that the sabermetric community kind of poo-poos. And we point out the shortcomings of the stat and why it doesn't capture everything a player does.

And in his case, he was mostly a batting average driven player. He didn't have incredible patience. He didn't hit for a ton of power most of the time. He was mostly batting average. but his batting average was so fantastic that that didn't matter at all that wasn't really a shortcoming because when you are like a 340 true talent hitter which is insane uh then you can have a 390 on base percentage as he did without walking an extraordinary amount without doing a whole lot of other stuff. And he had, I compared him to Mariano Rivera in his consistency, in a stat, in a category that we tend to think of as something that fluctuates a lot from season to season.

Like with Rivera, it was kind of amazing that he never had just a year when his ERA was just fluky and he had a really crazy bad bet. I mean, there was one year, I guess, when he had an ERA in the threes, but that was as bad as it ever got. And we always say relievers can't depend on them. One year they're great, one year they're not. Small samples and they could get some bad bounces. But Rivera never really had a bad year.

Gwyn never really had a low average year. He hit 300 every single year, except for his partial rookie season when he came close. And it's kind of amazing that he just never had a year, even when just, you know, bounces didn't go his way, and maybe he was banged up and he hit 290 that year. That never happened. So in batting average, which as we always say,

it fluctuates a lot from year to year. The leaders in one year are often not the leaders the next year. He was always, just always up there. Yeah, Jason Starks had a column about Quinn. And the best fact in it, my favorite fact in it, was that he, in a 14-year stretch, he finished in the top five in the batting race 13 times. And for the 14th time, he missed by one hit. And it's true, but I feel like it's not quite as fluky with Gwynn because I guess batting average was never quite so prone to flukes with Gwynn because when we think of guys who are good batting average hitters these days,

they tend to be guys who are good Babbitt guys. And Gwynn was a good Babbitt guy, but he wasn't extremely good. There's a number of modern players who are ahead of him and even comfortably ahead of him and even comfortably ahead of him. And, you know, some guys with, with, uh, you know, like Joey Votto is comfortably ahead of him as a Babbitt guy. And, uh, Matt Kemp is ahead of him. And of course, Trout's well ahead of him and Starling Marte is ahead of him. There's a, there's a number of guys who, and maybe those guys will come down to earth, but it's not like Gwyn was Babbitt-ing

three, three 80 every year. year. I mean, as well as he could place the ball as sort of unnaturally as he could place the ball, it seemed, wherever he wanted to, it was much more that he never struck out. And in a sense,

he's that last, he's the last player before baseball went to the strikeout. And there's no hitter really since then whose batting average could be so stable and so high. Yeah, because the more balls you put in play, the less subject you are to those fluctuations and the results of the batted balls. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, he, he just never, so, um, so I have a few, uh, I have a few favorite Quinn facts, but, um, cause there's so many, I feel like he, he might be one of the most fun factible players ever. I heard so many today and I wasn't even really looking for them.

Well, great. Now I'm going to disappoint you probably because you've heard so many. And these are by no means inclusive. I'm sure everybody heard great fun facts about him that you will not hear here. Sorry, there's other ones. You can open almost any page of the internet and see them. But as to the strikeouts, so Tony Gwynn, after Tony Gwynn got to an 0-2 count in his career, he struck out 13.6% of the time. So like, you know, one in seven or one in eight at bats. 82% of active hitters have a higher strikeout rate overall than that so if you put tony guinn in an o2 count he would

still be you know in the 82 82nd percentile for making contact for modern hitters i mean he's just he was outlandish for his era andrew koo um uh basically created like a strikeout rate plus comparing his strikeout rate to the the league average when he was playing and his his basically he struck out 16 as much as the league average i think i think i i think i'm doing the plus math correct uh it doesn't really matter because you know it's fantastic even if i just made up a number you know it was fantastic that's the point it was a number worth quoting uh so yeah so the strikeouts are are a big part of it and uh you know a lot of the stats have to do with strikeouts because

that was incredible that he didn't strike out um another thing that i think is incredible about him is that he has the 12th most intentional walks of all time um he has more than mike schmidt more than todd helton more than willie mays more than chipper jones more than david ortiz more than mike schmidt more than todd helton more than willie mays more than chipper jones more than david ortiz more than almost everybody because only 11 people have more intentional walks than him and and you know he just was not a power guy he was a singles guy for the most part i mean he did hit some home runs he did hit some doubles a lot of doubles but you know he basically you walked him because he was so certain to get a single that you just couldn't risk it when a guy was in scoring position so about half of them came basically in the same class of situation two outs a runner in scoring position nobody on first just

you know forget it we're not going to go after gwen and so 200 and some intentional walks i forget how many exactly um he drew a bit more than one and a half intentional walks per home run hit. And that's a very rare thing. Very, very rare to have more intentional walks than home runs, period, unless you're a number eight hitter and you're getting fake intentional walks, cheap intentional walks. So 1.5 intentional walks per home run. There are 19 guys who have done it. Almost all of them were basically number eight hitters, or they did the bulk of this walking while they were batting eight.

So there's really only four. Gwyn, Carew, Boggs, Ichiro. Those four guys all are – that's the Mount Rushmore of batting average, right? I mean, those four guys are all so special, and they're all special in their own way. I like that they all have different styles and they all had different secondary skills and they all had different things that made them great batting average hitters. But Gwyn's intentional walks was the highest of any of them. So, yeah. So, basically, like an intentional walk freak show. I like that about him.

I love that he hit 462 in AA. And it wasn't a full season or anything like that. It was like 100 played appearances or so. But A, 462 is like such a big number. Like we talk about hitting 400. But 462 is like 400 with like four and a half games to spare um so and that was his first professional season that's what i was gonna say oh okay that's exactly what i was gonna say yes uh you're right you anticipated wonderfully yeah so he was 21 he was young for his level but yeah that was the summer that he was drafted

and i mean it's one thing. Like Howie Kendrick was a late round. I'm probably going to butcher Howie Kendrick's trajectory actually. But Howie Kendrick was like a late round pick and then also did incredible minor league things and sort of became an awesome prospect. But it's not like Howie Kendrick. Tenth round. Are you saying that's not late? No.

I'm confirming that it was late. Later than Gwynn. All right. But, okay, so the point is that Howie Kendrick's first exposure to pro ball, it was like nothing special. It's not like immediately you realized, like, huge mistake had been made. Now, pretty soon after that, like when he went to short season ball the next year, next summer, he was phenomenal and then he was phenomenal. But Tony Gwynn, I mean, like three weeks after he got drafted in the third round,

he was already like just completely you couldn't get him out. And I wonder, I didn't see anybody write about this, but you do wonder, how did he, I guess you wonder how he slipped in the third round. On the other hand, you think about him, you think about what he did. He had a terrible arm. He was, you know, even then, even then, you know, there's a lot of talk about how he got fat. But, I mean, I was reading stories from 1984 when he was talking about, which was I think his like second or third year, when he was talking about how his weight was an issue and he was very self-conscious about his weight

and he was very proud that he had come into camp weighing less than he ever had but it was still pretty fat and so uh so you can imagine you know basically uh you know fattish guy who uh didn't have much of an arm um so i guess that's what that's how that's what you would say but But on the other hand, he was incredibly athletic. He was incredibly fast. He was a multi-sports star. He got drafted into the NBA. He was, or maybe the ABA, I don't know. He got drafted into the NBA even though he was 5'11 and fat. So large, I guess you'd say. So I'm not sure why he got drafted in the third round, but, um, uh, yeah, I mean, you'd have to imagine that if not quite the same level of immediate mistake-ery that like

Mike Trout, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, I don't know. I don't, I don't know how you, I don't know the verb that goes with mistake-ery. Like once you say mistake-ery in the sentence, all bets are off. And so waiting for the adjectival form of parody from the other day. Parody, yeah. Someone suggested on par. Anyway, so instant mistake on that

in 462. Speaking of 400, there's an article I think maybe it was the first big sports illustrated article about him. It might not have been think maybe it was the first Big Sports Illustrated article about him. It might not have been, but it was around 1984. And in it, he talks about how he had a slow start that April. In fact, I can check to see if it was 1984, because I'll see if he had a slow start that April.

But he talked about how he was lunging at pitches, and it took him a while to get his groove. And he said, well, he hit.434 that April. Maybe it was May. He hit.261 in May, so it could have been that. But he talks about how he doesn't get too stressed if he has a bad month early in the year, because he knows he's never going to hit.400. There's no way he could ever hit.400 over a season.

It's impossible. So he might as well just get it out of the way by having a bad month. And so then, of course, 10 years later, he hit 394 when the season ended. And I think it's, I mean, the best bet is that he wouldn't have hit 400, right? I mean, he needed to hit. If you, I guess not, but if you don't go with the arbitrary endpoints of seasons, if you just look for periods of season length from that era, there are periods of longer than 162 games where he did hit over 400.

I read some stat. I think it was like 179 games he hit 407 or something, like right in that 93, 94 timeframe. So, I mean, yeah, looked at that way, I guess it's quite possible that he would have. Well, yeah, well, I don't know that that's logical what you just did but uh i mean no what you're saying is that he answered he he answered the question he was capable of hitting 400 over the season he did it over the course of the season it just probably wouldn't have continued to do it that season but yeah yeah uh he probably wouldn't have continued to do it that season

however i'm not a hundred percent sure that% sure that it's as unlikely as my initial thinking. He was hitting 475 in August of that month when it ended, not quite halfway through August. And we don't know whether that was real hotness or whether that was the illusion of hotness. But I mean, he was hitting 475 in August. so it was going up and uh he had he hit over 400 in 12 months of his career uh so basically about one in like seven or eight months he hit over 400 so if you basically figure he needed to do that for one and a half more months um yeah i don't know one in what do you think one in in 30 fair odds? Better or worse? I would say better.

You think better? You think it's better than 1 in 30 that he would have hit basically 415 over the final month and a half of a season? The thing is that I don't know if this is true for all Septembers, but his worst month for hitting 400 was September. He only did it once. He hit 400 in at least two of every other month, but only one in September, and it was like 401 or something like that. And Gwyn, I remember Gwyn always being, when I think of Gwyn's injury problems,

it seems like it was always that he was missing in September. Maybe that's not true. But you could imagine a narrative where he was he wore down in september's lifetime 333 hitter in september which was his tied with may ahead of july behind the other months uh grant brisby wrote about how clutch he was um and i i don't know yeah Yeah, he was. He hit super, super well with runners on base. But the 444 with the bases loaded was pretty spectacular, and yet I want to make more of that than just saying it, but then I looked at the best batting averages ever with the bases loaded

and all-time, and this is the top 10 number one so to gucci and i mean this is a pretty high value i filtered like 60 or something plate appearances and quinn had like 140 so it's not like 158 so yeah yeah number one so to gucci number two pat tabler yes right number three russ snyder number four felix jose number five jeff keppinger number six jim holt number seven gwen eight rich rollins nine biff poca roba and 10 ian desmond so while it is distinguished well it is fun that he at 444 with the bases loaded i'm going to just move on from there and then the last thing i think the one that everybody saw most cited was some variation on his success against Greg Maddux, as well as other great pitchers, but especially Greg Maddux.

And I was going to ask you, Ben, would Gwynn, if Gwynn were playing right now, would he be one of your three MLB TV guys? Uh, hmm. Prime Gwynn right now? Uh, probably not. I don't know. He'd be up there. But I don't know. I mean, it was, how exciting is it to see single after single after single? If he's not chasing 400 or if it was like with each row and he was chasing, you know, George Sissler's hits record or something, then yeah, it's not all that exciting. And I don't know. I don't – I probably wouldn't have him as one of my top MLB TV guys either.

But looking at the career in retrospect, I think that there are – I feel like of that generation, there's nobody that I want to go back and watch more, and particularly him against Maddox. But him in all sorts of situations. But the thing is, when you're watching it, it's hard to distinguish between fluke, statistical fluke, and something worth studying. And now that it's over, now that his career is over, now that that era is over, it would be fun to go back and try to figure out whether he was clutch with runners on base, what he did differently, why he was so tough, what it was like to try to get him out with runners on base, what he became as a hitter. Some pitcher had an interesting matchup line against each other right now.

We would brush it off. We'd go, whatever, man, matchup lines don't mean anything. But after a career is over and it's all just sort of permanent and it's not going to be undone by the next 10 plate appearances regressing to the mean or whatever, you do kind of want to study it. And Maddox is – we knew Maddox was something special when we were watching him, and I think that we've only come to appreciate it more. We knew Gwyn was something special when we were watching him, and we've only come to appreciate it more. And I think that to watch

those 106 plate appearances would be just about the best use of two days of my life that I could imagine. I want nothing more than those 106 plate appearances every single pitch. Now, I will note this, though. One small thing about this. Gwynn against Maddox through 1991, 41 plate appearances. Gwynn hit. 615, 647 Maddox was those played appearances include years where Maddox was not very good

and they include years where he was extremely good 91 was his first Cy Young if I'm not mistaken but not quite he didn't really become Maddox until, in my opinion until he went to Atlanta in and in particular, like, the 94-95 seasons

and, you know, the years around it. So he did do a lot of his damage when he was probably smarter and better and able to execute his art and science better than Maddox was able to execute his. From 92 on, after Maddox got peak, Gwyn still hit.333, and he still had a.394 on base percentage, and he still never struck out. So it's not as though...

And the average hitter against Maddox in those years... Dropped to nothing. Yeah. So he still was decisive in those plate appearances. I mean, he basically kept his career line against Greg Maddux, even in the half that I'm arbitrarily cutting off to make look worse. So I don't even know what my point is. Was this supposed to be something against Tony Gwynn?

It sounded like it was going to be at the beginning. He was still really awesome. I guess that's the point. Even the even the second stage when okay here it is even the second stage when Maddox uh adjusted and was at the peak of his game and arguably nobody's ever been better and smarter even then Gwynn was still putting up numbers so um one last thing um about this I was talking to uh to a to a trainer, uh, uh, major league baseball team, team trainer today and, uh, chewing tobacco came up and, um, uh, he mentioned that, that chewing tobacco use is actually, as far as he can tell us going up, uh, has gone up a lot in the last couple of years. And we don't see it as much because major league baseball has,

uh, discouraged the display of it and made it harder for players to show that they're chewing tobacco. So it almost feels like it's not really that much of a part of the game anymore. But it is, and this trainer estimated that half of players are chewing tobacco regularly. And I don't know what it is about baseball that makes us want to be sort of paternalistic and tell guys, hey, stop doing that and create rules to take care of them. They're grownups and they can do what they want.

But it does feel weird that we have a sport where half of grownups are doing something that almost nobody else does in public. doing something that almost nobody else does in public. And the trainer's hypothesis was that now that players don't have access to various pills and amphetamines and things to give them energy, that a lot of them have turned to nicotine for that reason. Yeah, you could imagine a point of view that says that nicotine is worse than whatever it was they were consuming before. I don't know if I know enough to argue one way or the other, but it's interesting nonetheless. I wonder, because you'd think now that it's been banned in the NCAA and in the minors, you'd think that guys wouldn't get in the habit of doing it. And by the time they got to the majors, they wouldn't do it.

They'd be conditioned not to i wonder whether now chewing has like a a big league aura to it where now i'm a big leaguer i can do this and this is how i'm gonna prove that i belong in the big leagues is now i'm gonna start chewing which i hadn't before. I don't know. Maybe it's more the physiological than the psychological, but I don't know. Maybe this will dissuade some people from doing it. But I looked up one thing while you were talking. You're wondering why he was not drafted earlier than the third round. So I looked in the Diamond Mines scouting database, and there are several reports on Gwyn, but most of them from after the draft. There's one report

from immediately before the draft, like the beginning of June 1981, the year he was drafted, which was filed by Gordon Lakey, who was an Astros scout at the time. I'm going to send this to you in case that there are parts that I can't read because it's a little blurry. But there's some interesting stuff on here. So the ultimate conclusion, well, I won't start there. I'll start with his present hit tool was a four, and his future hit tool was a five. And this was, as you said, the guy who was hitting 462 in AA a few months later. His ability is very good fastball hitter with excellent bat speed, slight uppercut swing with good extension,

will have average power when he learns to pull the ball more. Gets good jump in outfield and has improved there as the season progressed. The weaknesses, doesn't throw well, as you said. Gets no leverage and doesn't have good mechanics. Opens too soon and is stiff. Labors to run and wobbles some. That is a great verb for a scouting report. Has slight timing hitch that causes him to inside out a lot of pitches

and has some problems adjusting to off-speed and breaking pitches, extremely aggressive at the plate. And then the summation is aggressive free swinger with good bat speed and power potential restricted to infield uh could be could be left field maybe maybe it does look like it looks like infield but i don't know if that makes sense and must hit to play but is desirable could be a good hitter someday which is a good way to end that scouting report um but yeah the overall future potential 53.5 which would which would you'd think make him higher than a third round pick i don't know if they thought that he had a good chance of reaching that potential.

That's like a starter on a decent team. But yeah, not one of those scouting reports that will live in the pantheon of great scouting jobs with the future five-hit tool on Tony Gwynn. Same zip code as me. I wonder. Interesting. They've locked out the address. I wonder if I can find Tony Gwynn's childhood home. 5'11", 180.

Did you say that? I didn't say that, no. Strong, compact, well-proportioned frame, very mature physical features, finished scholastic eligibility, but has one more year of baseball left, was guard on basketball team, and got a late start this spring. Cool.

What do you think this is? On the one-word descriptions on the right-hand side about middle way down, it says somewhere he's written the word excellent after. It looks like physical. What do you think that is? i think it's i think it's is it physical maturity oh could be physical oh because emotional maturity is right below yeah right yeah yeah definitely all right cool good stuff all right uh so that is it for today uh please support our sponsor baseball reference go toreference.com Subscribe to the Play Index

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