Kyle Schwarber‘s mentality at the plate can best be described as “grip it and rip it.” The man does not get cheated, that’s for sure. That has led to prodigious home runs, both in volume and distance, prodigious numbers of strikeouts and one of the wildest seasons in major league history.
Schwarber is hitting .198 for the Philadelphia Phillies, and yet he has already scored 104 runs and driven in 100. On Friday night he became just the fifth player in 2023 to reach the century mark in both categories. With 45 home runs, he’s the first player with consecutive 45-home run seasons since Ryan Howard did it four straight times from 2006 to 2009.
Still, that number pops out on his stat line, too glaring to ignore: .198. With an MLB-leading 207 strikeouts to go with it. You’ve probably seen one of those Internet memes pointing out Tony Gwynn struck out 188 times in the entire decade of the 1990s. For those who love to bemoan the state of the modern game — with its emphasis on the “three true outcomes” of home runs, walks and strikeouts — Schwarber and his .198 average represent everything that has gone wrong, and Gwynn will forever represent what was once right with baseball (as if there were a bunch of other Gwynn clones in his time).
Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Max Muncy is having a similar season to Schwarber’s. He’s hitting .211 with 102 RBIs, making him the player with the third-lowest batting average ever to knock in 100 runs. With 90 runs, he’ll score close to 100 as well, which reminds me of something Jim Thome once told me: “I’m slow, so I know I’ve had a good season if I score 100 runs.” Yet I’ve also seen Dodgers fans incessantly complaining about Muncy — usually after he strikes out with Freddie Freeman on second base after one of Freeman’s many doubles.
These unique seasons lead to this question: How good can you be if you’re hitting .200 — or below?
When Bill James published his first national “Baseball Abstract” in 1982, his first chapter was on how to measure offense. “A hitter should be evaluated by his success at that which he is trying to do, and that which he is trying to do is to create runs,” he wrote. “This is such a simple point, and such an unavoidable one, that it has always seemed to me to be remarkable how few people understood it.”
The basics: Batting average can be overrated and runs can be created just as effectively — or more effectively — with walks and power. Many of you know this by now. Still, it took another two decades, until Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” popularized the importance of on-base percentage, for the concepts to gradually gain a larger footprint within the game itself, the dawning of the modern analytics movement.
Schwarber and Muncy, however, are pushing the boundaries of how low a player’s batting average can go while he still remains valuable. Along with their power (Muncy has 35 home runs), both draw a lot of walks (Schwarber has drawn 122, second in the majors to Juan Soto) so they have above-average on-base percentages despite their low batting averages. The leaguewide OBP is .320, while Schwarber is at .345 and Muncy is at .335. They’re getting on base more often than Bryan Reynolds (hitting .271) or Bryson Stott (.283) or Michael Harris II (.291) or Bobby Witt Jr. (.278).
Here are some fun leaderboards showing the outlier nature of their seasons:
Most runs scored, hitting under .200
1. Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies: 104
2. Joey Gallo, 2021 Rangers/Yankees: 90
3. Frankie Crosetti, 1940 Yankees: 84
Lowest batting average, 100-plus runs scored (since 1900)
1. Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies: .198
2. Kyle Schwarber, 2022 Phillies: .218
3. Donie Bush, 1912 Tigers: .231
Most RBIs, hitting under .200
1. Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies: 100
2. Mark Reynolds, 2010 Diamondbacks: 85
3. Carlos Pena, 2010 Rays: 84
Lowest batting average, 100-plus RBIs
1. Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies: .198
2. Max Muncy, 2023 Dodgers: .211
3. Kyle Seager, 2021 Mariners: .212
Of course, runs and RBIs are team-dependent, but both players rate well in FanGraphs’ park-adjusted weighted runs created (wRC+). Schwarber is at 120, which puts him alongside hitters with much higher batting averages such as Adley Rutschman, Will Smith and Justin Turner. Muncy is a few points higher at 123, alongside Paul Goldschmidt, Jose Ramirez and Bo Bichette.
That leads to this list from Baseball-Reference.com:
Most batting runs above average for players who hit under .215
1. Gene Tenace, 1974 A’s: plus-26
2. Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies: plus-16
3. Harmon Killebrew, 1969 Twins: plus-15
4. Joey Gallo, 2017 Rangers: plus-14
5. Joey Gallo, 2021 Rangers/Yankees: plus-13
6. Max Muncy, 2023 Dodgers: plus-12
Now, don’t confuse this with me saying Schwarber and Muncy are having great seasons. Schwarber is tied for 41st in the majors in batting runs, Muncy tied for 77th. The point is that you can have a good offensive season while hitting around .200. (And all this ignores defense; Schwarber gives away much of his offensive value with his poor defense in left field; his bWAR is just 0.5. Muncy, playing a solid enough third base, is at 2.8 WAR.)
And Dodgers fans do have a point about Muncy with runners on. He’s hitting .211/.333/.491 overall, but with runners in scoring position, that has dropped to .200/.348/.407. Muncy has 102 RBIs in 541 plate appearances compared to an average MLB hitter with 63 over the same number of PAs — but, with Freeman and Mookie Betts in front of him in the lineup, he has often been at the plate runners on base. Adjusting for runners on, he drops to 19 RBIs above average. (Which, I’m guessing, is a little below a typical No. 4 or 5 hitter.)
Schwarber, meanwhile, has hit .212/.366/.533 with runners in scoring position. Since he has missed just one game and has hit leadoff since early June, he has racked up nearly 700 plate appearances. He’s 19 RBIs above an average hitter for that number of plate appearances, although he has hit with slightly fewer runners on base than an average hitter. Adjusting for that, he’s about 25 RBIs above average.
There is one more thing to consider here. The Dodgers are headed to the postseason and the Phillies, barring a last-week collapse, are as well. Does this style of hitting work in October? You will hear arguments that you need to hit for average in the postseason, because it’s more difficult to generate home runs against good pitching. Well … it’s also more difficult to generate hits against good pitching. The collective batting average last postseason was .211. The Astros won the World Series hitting .233 throughout the playoffs. The three teams with the lowest strikeout rates in the postseason were the Blue Jays, Cardinals and Mets — they went a collective 1-6. In 2021, the Braves hit .246 but won the World Series by hitting 23 home runs in 16 postseason games.
Both Schwarber and Muncy have been pretty good postseason hitters in their careers. Schwarber has hit .242/.371/.527 with 15 home runs and 27 RBIs in 202 PAs. He hit .218/.392/.546 with six home runs and 10 RBIs last postseason as the Phillies reached the World Series — and that was after going hitless in his first four games. Muncy has hit .238/.398/.490 with 10 home runs and 29 RBIs in 181 postseason PAs. When the Dodgers won the World Series in 2020, Muncy had a .438 OBP, driving in 14 runs and scoring 12 in 18 games.
It’s a trade-off: The power and walks for the swing and miss and the resulting strikeouts with runners on base. It can be frustrating. Both players can run hot and cold. Schwarber is known for his blazing hot streaks, but Muncy struggled in May (.186) and June (.111) before hitting much better the past three months (.237/.348/.531).
It’s modern baseball. It can work. It’s not always pretty. We can pine all we want for Tony Gwynn — but he was one of a kind.
And he also never had a 100/100 season.
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