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.