After going 0-4 on Monday night, Paulo Orlando’s batting average dropped to .330. Raise your hand if you had Orlando pegged to be hitting that average after 300+ plate appearances this year. Heck, raise your hand if you had the 30 year old outfielder getting 300+ plate appearances this year. Now, put your hand down and apologize for lying.
One can point to a lot of reasons why Orlando is having the year he is. Smarter guys on this site have already taken a look at those reasons. Guys, by the way, who are not too lazy to look back in the archives and link to past articles. Pure luck might top the list, as Paulo has a BABIP of .406, which is 115 points higher than last season despite a line drive rate that is lower. On the other hand, we could point to Orlando’s dramatic increase in ground ball rate as a driver to increased success. We could even, and you may want to sit down for this one, just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Today, however, is not about analyzing why Orlando is having success or why it won’t last. It is about a rather remarkable, if obscure, place that Orlando is close to occupying baseball history. How obscure? Well, the current place holder is a player named Socks Sevbold. Obscure enough?
Since 1901, only 77 players aged 29 years or older have garnered 502 or more plate appearances in a season that was either their first or second season in the majors. I worked hard (and poorly) at crafting that sentence, but the search was basically for players who were at least 29 years old during their rookie or second year seasons.
Socks Sevbold hit .334 in 1901 at age 30 after getting 92 plate appearances two seasons prior. In case you are interested, Socks also slugged .503, hit 14 triples and stole 15 bases for the Philadelphia A’s. Len Koenecke hit .320/.411/.509 as a 30-year old second year player for Brooklyn in 1934 to post the second highest average of this group of old newcomers.
Let’s digress for a moment. After Koenecke’s outstanding 1934 season, he proceeded to hit .283 in 1935 before being cut by the Dodgers in the midst of a road trip in mid-September due to excessive drinking. Len became disruptive on not one, but two flights back to New York. On the second, Koenecke attempted to take control of the aircraft and was struck by both the pilot and a passenger (with a fire extinguisher, which I cannot imagine was a particularly light in 1935). He died of a cerebral hemorrhage while still in the air.
The majority of this list of 77 is comprised of pre-1950 players. After Koenecke, we find Moose Solters, Earl Sheely, Irv Waldron and Kiddo Davis, who played in one game (no at-bats) in 1926 and returned in 1932 at age 30 to hit .309 for the Phillies. The oldest player on the list was 35 year old Roy Schalk, who hit just .220 in 146 games for the White Sox in 1944. Schalk was one of eight players who fit our criteria and did so during World War II (I thought there would be more). Charlie O’Leary, who played shortstop for Detroit in 1905 owns the distinction of having the worst average of the 77, hitting just .213/.259/.242 in 148 games.
The most recent player on the list is old friend Nori Aoki, and he made it twice. As a 30-year old rookie, Aoki hit .288 for the Brewers in 2012 and then hit .286 in his second season at age 31. It should be of no surprise that a number of Japanese players are on the list, headed by Hideki Matsui who hit .298 in 2004 at age 30 (good for 8th on the list) and .287 as a ‘rookie’ the year before. Kenji Johjima is on the list twice as is Tadahito Iguchi and Kosuke Fukudome. Akinori Iwamura makes it on as well. In case you are wondering and/or forgot, Ichiro played his first two major league seasons at ages 27 and 28.
In fact, if you are looking for a recent player who did not come from the Japanese major leagues, you will not find one. You have to go back to 1963 where we have Felix Torres of the Angels and Ed Charles of the Kansas City A’s. Torres hit .261 playing corner infield for the Angels in his second year at age 31. He missed being the 78th season on our list when he fell 12 plate appearances short of qualifying for the batting title as a 30 year old rookie in 1962. Ed Charles hit .288/.356/.454 as a 29 year old rookie third basemen for the A’s in 1962, smacking 17 home runs and stealing 20 bases. He followed by hitting .267 with 15 homers and 15 steals in 1963 at age 30.
The most home runs on the list? Thirty-one by Matsui, followed by 28 from Luke Easter in 1950 at age thirty-four. The Cleveland first baseman would hit 27 dingers in 1951 and 31 the year after that. Easter, who stood 6’4″ and weighed 240 pounds was deemed too big by the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945, but eventually caught on with the Homestead Grays and led the Negro League in home runs. As you might expect, our list of 77 has its share of Negro League players who finally got their shot in the majors thanks to Jackie Robinson, who is tenth on our list by hitting .298 as a 29 year old in his second season (1948). Sam Jethroe is there, twice, and tops the list in steals with 35 in both his first two seasons despite not debuting until his 33 years old.
So, back to Paulo Orlando. Should he qualify for the batting title, it will be just the 78th time in baseball history that a player has done so while playing one of his first two seasons after the age of twenty-nine. That, in itself, is unique, but Orlando has a chance to post the single best batting average of anyone in this unique and obscure subset of baseball players. In a season that has thus far fallen short of expectations (don’t be the guy that says ‘oh, I totally expected this’, you know what I mean), this is a fun little story to follow.
I am fully aware, by the way, that this discussion was focused almost solely on batting average. Yes, I know that, taken alone, batting average is a poor indicator of a player’s overall talent level. In no way am I trying to prove that Paulo Orlando is the best 30-year old second year player in the history of the game. What he is, however, is a player with a chance to find a niche in the history of the game. That is kind of cool.
Now, if he could do that as part of some miracle run….