Junior

The question was asked by Steve Salerno over at ShamBlog, exactly how much has Ken Griffey, Jr. hurt his lifetime batting average by hanging on over the last 10 years. Steve guessed it was about 10 points. Thanks to the greatest website in the history of the entire world, Baseball-Reference.com, any guy like me can find the answer with Excel and about 10 minutes.

Here is what I found. I plotted Junior's year-by-year BA, the lifetime cumulative BA, and then for fun I plotted that against the MLB average over the same period to see how he compared against his contemporaries.




As you can see, Junior the league average was a distant thing for the first 11 years of his career, but for his year-by-year and his lifetime average. These last 10 years he's flirted with, and failed to meet, mediocrity most years.

The specific answer to Steve's question is, Griffey, Jr. was a lifetime .299 hitter after the 1998, his first ten seasons. He is now sitting at .285. He's taken a 14-point hit, so the damage is worse than Steve thought.

As is my wont, I have shown the dividing line between the modern and steroid eras of baseball, the start of which, and I propose a universal adoption of this standard, is the season Brady Anderson first hit 50 home runs. I don't think Anderson ever tested positive for steroids, but look at his lifetime power numbers and I think you'll agree that this is the demarcation point.

perspectives

Today I clicked on a CNNMoney article with the headline "Mac share grew after Windows 7 debut".  Okay, I'm thinking that's an interesting topic.  So I clicked. 

Turns out it's a regular column titled "Mac news from outside the reality distortion field."  So now I'm thinking that this is very interesting because I have Mac friends.  You know who you are.  I know who you are.  You and I both know that you are not rational.  So I figure I'll get the alternative viewpoint.  You know, the one that's an alternative to "Steve Jobs is like God, only perfecter."

Before I being reading, I see the headshot of the column's author, Philip Elmer-DeWitt. In the blurb about Mr. Elmer-DeWitt it says:

Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple – and watching Steve Jobs operate — since 1982.

And now I'm thinking, "Whoa!  We're finally going to see rational news about Apple, how fun!"

The article begins:

If Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping that the launch of Windows 7 would halt the erosion of its operating system market share — and curb further inroads by Apple (AAPL)  — there is no evidence that it's working yet.

I don't follow the OS wars very closely, so I'm thinking that this sounds reasonable.  I know MSFT has had as high as 90% of the OS market, but I figure that this mus be slipping.  I wait for the next paragraph.  I see:

...preliminary data released overnight Sunday by Net Applications show Mac OS X's Internet share growing by 2.73% in October, from 5.12% to 5.26%.

And then:

Windows' Internet presence, meanwhile, fell from 92.77% to 92.54%

Seriously?  This is from "outside the reality distortion field"?  And he's written an article about "eroding market share" and "curb[ing] further inroads". 

For reference, Dell is the #1 seller of PC's with a 13.9% market share.

Nokia is the #1 cell phone company with about 38% market share.

Coke, the #1 beverage company in the world, has about 43% maket share.

MSFT?  92.54%

Mr. Elmer-DeWitt, you are firmly within the distortion field.