Kim?

[backwardsk]

Needs 502 PA to qualify.

He would need about 4.5 PAs every game for the rest of the season then.

[TradeAngelos]

He would need about 4.5 PAs every game for the rest of the season then.

Yeah that is the thing there is pretty much no way he can "catch up" with only half the season left.

502 PA seems like an awful lot to "qualify".

[DrungoHazewood]

Yeah that is the thing there is pretty much no way he can "catch up" with only half the season left.

502 PA seems like an awful lot to "qualify".

It's been 3.1 PA per team game played for at least 50 years, more probably. In the pre-1950 eras there were reasonably frequent controversies about qualifying for the title, including Ernie Lombardi's where he clearly didn't qualify by the standards of the time but the Commish or League President said "well, he's a catcher so that doesn't really apply to him and we'll just give him the title anyway."

[Can_of_corn]

He would need about 4.5 PAs every game for the rest of the season then.

There is a mechanism where they add hitless plate appearances to the total.

[sportsfan8703]

Yeah that is the thing there is pretty much no way he can "catch up" with only half the season left.

502 PA seems like an awful lot to "qualify".

One of the reasons is to not have a platoon guy like Kim win the batting title without playing against LH's. I'm sure there's a ton of other arguments.

Personally I think Kim should get there because he should be batting 2nd or leadoff the rest of the year.

[backwardsk]

Yeah that is the thing there is pretty much no way he can "catch up" with only half the season left.

502 PA seems like an awful lot to "qualify".

If he gets starts against lefties, I think he has a shot. I looked up the last 15 games and the second spot had 5 PAs 10 times and 4 PAs 5 times.

[OFFNY]

Jones has hit 11 homers since moving to the leadoff spot -- 6 with bases empty, 5 with runners on. That's an absolutely normal ratio. In fact, of the 5 homers he hit previously, all while hitting in the 3-hole, only one came with runners on base.

Absolute genius move by Buck. :thumbsup1:

Part genius, part desperation to get Adam out of his slump.

It was certainly an "out of the box" move by Showalter, to his credit.

I believe that the move was done more to help Adam than to help our lead-off position. When you have a (positive) track record as long as Adam Jones has had, these are the kinds of things that a good manager will do to try to help you.

[Tx Oriole]

One of the reasons is to not have a platoon guy like Kim win the batting title without playing against LH's. I'm sure there's a ton of other arguments.

Personally I think Kim should get there because he should be batting 2nd or leadoff the rest of the year.

Yes but Buck want play him that way. He take him out for Joey,

[DrungoHazewood]

If he gets starts against lefties, I think he has a shot. I looked up the last 15 games and the second spot had 5 PAs 10 times and 4 PAs 5 times.

Kim needs 356 PAs in the next 79 games, unless you're going to add hitless plate appearances to qualify. That's a 162-game pace of 730 PAs, which is a pace only about 130 players have had over a full season in MLB history. It seems unlikely that Kim will maintain a near-record PA pace over the last 79 games after averaging less than 2.0 PA/G so far.

[bpilktree]

One of the reasons is to not have a platoon guy like Kim win the batting title without playing against LH's. I'm sure there's a ton of other arguments.

Personally I think Kim should get there because he should be batting 2nd or leadoff the rest of the year.

It also takes out catchers chances a lot of times unless they play a bunch of games at another position.

[weams]

There is a mechanism where they add hitless plate appearances to the total.

It helped Trey.

[El Gordo]

One of the reasons is to not have a platoon guy like Kim win the batting title without playing against LH's. I'm sure there's a ton of other arguments.

Personally I think Kim should get there because he should be batting 2nd or leadoff the rest of the year.

Manny averaged 4.4 PA per game last year.

[DrungoHazewood]

So the other thing we're missing here is that Kim isn't a .338 hitter, or is quite unlikely to be since he wasn't a .338 hitter over the long term in Korea with its dramatically higher offensive context and lower quality of play.

So if you properly regress his BA with a fairly large number of league-average PAs, say, just for fun the 356 he needs to qualify, you end up with him hitting something like .290 in 502 PAs.

[DrungoHazewood]

Manny averaged 4.4 PA per game last year.

Usually batting leadoff and playing almost every inning of every game. Kim will not get to 502 PAs.

[Can_of_corn]

Usually batting leadoff and playing almost every inning of every game. Kim will not get to 502 PAs.

I see no reason to expect Buck to change his usage.