The White Sox convinced Adam Dunn to hit against the shift, and it’s brought defenses around to straight away and improved Adam’s productivity. A few years ago I argued in favor of this approach at the MIT-Sloan Analytics conference. I pointed out that it was a bad play to walk a great hitter every time he came up, then it should be a good play for any batter to reach base any time up. Why not take the easy single? Somebody finally tried it, and look, it worked!
Hat tip, Hardball Talk.
this is a guy that when he retires (say 5 years) will likely have 600+ HRs and 1500+ Rbis…..HOF?
dch » Probably not. He has an extremely low dimensional skill set, and HOF voters don’t like that. There are some that argue that Mark McGwire doesn’t belong in the Hall based on his stats, not his steroids.
David- I would tend to agree. The problem with Dunn is that he is a compiler but has not bee able to lead the league in seasonal categories. If Dunn would have, say, four HR titles under his belt, he would have a better argument. As it stands now, I would say he is not a HOFer unless he somehow gets to 700 HR, which is not going to happen. OR, he has to rip off 4 HR titles or lead the league in RBI several times. Barring that, he will be buying a ticket to Cooperstown. I like the guy a lot, but no HOF for him.