Long-Reads

Longreads

Friday, June 4, 2010

Carlos Lee and .300

It's an interesting question: Will Carlos Lee hit .300 and get 100 RBI this season, and I'd like to thank Citizen Adrienne for bringing it up. Ed Wade said - a while ago - that, despite Lee's slump, he still thinks Lee will hit .300 this season. So let's run the numbers.

Lee has averaged 3.81 ABs per game over the course of his career. With the exception of 2008, when Lee suffered the broken finger in August and missed the rest of the season, he has played in 160+ games since 2005. Since Lee has played in 51 of the 54 games this season, let's just take that nice round division and say that Lee plays in 153 games and see what he'll have to do to hit .300.

153 games would mean 583 plate appearances. He's hitting .208 through 197 plate appearances (41x197). In order for Lee to hit .300 over 583 plate appearances, he would need 175 hits. In order to get 175 hits, Lee would need to go 134x386 from here on out. Oh, and just because the math is always free at Astros County, that turns out to be a .347 average - 139 points higher than what he has posted to this point in the season.

Will it happen? It's possible. Is it likely? Not from what we've seen so far.