Speed, Power, and Absolutely No Patience

As I’ve been following Joe Posnanski’s latest fun baseball event - which in this case is literally fun, as he’s trying to identify the most fun players currently playing - I saw that he mentioned recently opening a pack of baseball cards and stumbling across Shawon Dunston, who was a decidedly fun player to watch when I was a teenager.

Joe notes, correctly, that Dunston seemed almost allergic to drawing walks. In a career that spanned 18 years, over 1,800 games, and over 6,000 plate appearances, Dunston managed to draw just 203 walks. And 44 of those were intentional.

As I was perusing his career stats, I noted that Dunston had fewer walks than steals in his career, which struck me as odd for anyone with a career that long. So I checked, and it is odd; Of the 675 players in big league history who played at least 1,000 games and had at least 100 steals, Dunston is one of just 39 who had more steals than walks. He’s in a group with a lot of pretty similar hitters - fast guys who slapped the ball around quite a bit and ran a lot. Mickey Rivers, Ron LeFlore, Omar Moreno, Rajai Davis, Juan Pierre, Tony Womack, those sorts of guys.

But then I noted that there’s a subcategory within that group, comprised of players who also had some pop. Very, very few players who stole more than they walked also had any real power at the plate. Typically, guys with some pop will be pitched to more carefully, making it even more difficult to slug at a decent rate and still not walk very much.

Of the 39 players on this list, just five of them also hit as many as 100 homers. That list probably won’t surprise you much either, you can probably already envision the type:

None of this is meant to imply that these guys couldn’t play. I mean, Lou Brock is in the Hall of Fame, while Crawford, Dunston and Marte all made multiple All-Star teams. Both Crawford and Marte won Gold Gloves. These were/are good players.

But their odd combination of power, speed, and an absolute lack of anything that resembles patience at the plate is truly unique in the history of the game.