re hbp bb big cat woods ncar ucar edu greg woods writes in article blue cis pitt edu dtate pitt edu david m tate writes of course this is not the same as claiming as some do that galarraga s inability to defer gratification isn t hurting his team because he isn t paid to walk or is an rbi guy or whatever alright that s enough i ve suffered with all kinds of insults as typical for the net but give me a break galarraga is currently batting over and you guys are complaining that he isn t drawing enough walks what would he have to do to please you guys bat you can hardly claim that he is hurting his team it would help if his obp were higher than his batting average yes the april usa today lists le grand chapeau as having a batting average and a obp that s on for hitting with zip nil nada walks the reason a lot of us are down on galarraga is that he s has a long history of showing that this is nowhere near his real level of ability except for drawing walks if he hit for say even ab s i d be convinced that there was a real change in his ability if he did it with an obp avg i d not only be amazed but i d make a bet that that would be a unique feat in the history of the game but what do ab s prove look at some of the other fluke players at this point in the season player avg ab blauser grace milligan conine lansing slaught are any of these guys really that good well in a word no how significant is galarraga s average at the ab level a hit is worth about if he d had one of those hits called an error and one taken away by a good defensive play he d be in the range if he goes for in his next game he s all the way down to in one game come back in june let s talk then if it happens that the pitchers start throwing him fewer good pitches and he starts making lots of outs as someone speculated might happen then i would agree with you that he isn t taking enough pitches my comment that he isn t paid to walk doesn t mean that he should have a license to swing at bad pitches and make outs it s more along the lines of he s batting and leading the league in rbi s so what bloody difference does it make if he isn t drawing a lot of walks sheesh it s history greg andres history is that he doesn t walk much because he swings at bad pitches so his average isn t very good ab s doesn t mean an awful lot compared to a history of a couple of thousand especially when there s ample evidence bb in that his basic hitting approach hasn t changed yeah he might suddenly have turned into a hitter who never walks but don t bet the rent money on it mike jones aix high end development mjones donald aix kingston ibm com from an historical basis middle east conflicts do not last a long time vp dan quayle on nightline october
