Powerless Hitters

Last week we looked at pitchers that hit with the most power, which made us curious who the least powerful hitters are.  Fangraphs has a great statistic called Isolated Power, or ISO, that is a measure of a hitter’s raw power. Basically, it measures how good a player is at hitting for extra bases by subtracting a player’s Batting Average from their Slugging Percentage, leaving a ratio of the player’s extra base hits per at bat. Each base gained on a hit past first base goes in the numerator which is divided by at bats. ISO can be thought of as a measure of how well a player collects extra bases given that the batted ball is put in play.

The league leaders for ISO this season are predictable by the definition of the statistic. Adam Dunn, Josh Hamilton, Carlos Beltran, Joey Votto, and Mark Trumbo have the top 5 ISO. Dunn, Hamilton, and Beltran have the most home runs in the majors and Votto is a great doubles hitter. Its clear why these guys have the ISO numbers they do.

To qualify for the least powerful, the players have to have the minimum amount of plate appearances to qualify for a batting title, which is 3.1 plate appearances per team game scheduled. Most teams have plated about 62 games so far, so players need to have batted about 192 times.

Without further ado, meet the least powerful hitter in baseball, Juan Pierre. In 203 plate appearances, Pierre has exactly 7 extra base hits. 5 doubles and 2 triples. To calculate his dreadful ISO of .048 we can subtract his .326 Batting Average from his .374 Slugging Percentage. Or we can sum the number of total bases past first base, which is 9, and divide it by his number of at bats, 187*. Just for reference, Dunn and Hamilton have an ISO near .345.

*Remember that an at bat is generally known as plate appearances minus walks and sacrifices.

Weak.

Jamey Carroll, Dee Gordon, Alexei Ramierz, and Kurt Suzuki round out the top 5. Between the 4 of these guys, they have 40 extra base hits this season. Alone, Joey Votto has 39 extra base hits so far this season. It’s not to say these weak hitters are poor baseball players, it’s just a fact that there will always have to be a “weakest” hitter in baseball. Unfortunately, this season Juan Pierre holds that distinction.