"During the 1964 season, Tony Oliva of the Minnesota Twins won a batting title making him the first Rookie of the Year with a batting title — a feat not duplicated until 2001 when Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners led the American League with a .350 batting average." http://www.baseball-almanac.com/awards/aw_roy.shtml It would amazing if Hunter could pull that off.
Scott was not inconsistent. He did bad the 1st few weeks of the season and then was sent down. He came back at the halfway point and did really well. .366 AVG .426 OBP 1.047 OPS 10HR all in 220 at bats After a great 1st year, every team now has a scouting report on the guy.
But before he came back up the second half of last season, he was at the major league level before and showed the ability to suck mightily.
Looks like Yahoo just added Pence to the BA leaderboard. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/stats/bycategory?cat=Batting&conference=NL&sort=22
Wrong year - that was Scott's 2nd year. He started the season with the Astros in 2005 and sucked pretty bad. He came back up late in the season and didn't do all that much better, if I remember correctly. He didn't do well until mid-2006 the next season. All that said, Hunter Pence has competition from Ryan Braun this year for ROY - he might be more likely to win the batting title than the ROY. Pence: 249 ABs, 35 R, 10 HR, 39 RBI, 7 STL, 0.345 AVG, 0.963 OPS Braun: 143 ABs, 30 R, 7 HR, 26 RBI, 8 STL, 0.343 AVG, 0.990 OPS Braun came up much later and has 100 less ABs, but he's quickly catching up on all the peripheral stats and has virtually identical base stats. These are going to be two fantastic players for a long time, I think.
I'm not sure if Pence would've been in the majors right now had that trade not happened. Plus, who would be our #2?
Good question, but since we're 2-7 in his 9 starts, I imagine any ol' scrub would have produced similar results. That part, of course, is all hindsight. It's funny, though, that Jennings' one win as an Astro came in the worst of his 9 starts.
But that's not all on him. He's kept them competitive with a 3.67 ERA. Defensively, Willy. Offensively, Hunter. If we don't resign Jennings and let him go for nothing, it's a bad trade. I don't think it's necessarily bad because of the results on the field, however. We may have seen Pence by now had we kept Willy, but not this soon.
Much harder to find a competent CF who is a beast offensively (which hunter is), than it is to find an adequate RFer (which Luke Scott is... with an OPS greater than Willy T). Hunter+Scott/Berkman >>>> Willy T + Hunter/Scott
From what I've seen, I don't think Pence has the arm to play RF either. Unfortunately I we are stuck with the streaky Scott in RF, because we have no other options besides Lane... if you consider that an option.
