What Does Tuffy Rhodes Hit When Not Striking Out

Tuffy Rhodes is off to another great start in 2009. I was looking at Tuffy's numbers on the NPB's new English language website, and I noticed that Tuffy sure strikes out a lot for a guy with a .286 career batting average (in Japan). Naturally, I wondered, "What does Tuffy hit when he puts the ball in play?" This led to to some other questions, including, "What do a few other great players hit when they put the put the ball in play (don't strike out) and "What do they hit when they put the ball in play but the defense has a chance to make a play (no strikeouts or home run). I decided to look at Tuffy, Alex Cabrera, Ichiro, and Hideki Matsui, probably the best four hitters to play in Japan in the last 20 years. Here is what I found (stats are NPB only):

               AB         Hits    HRs    Ks     BA
Ichiro       3,619       1,278    118    359   .353
Alex         3,587       1,098    313    914   .306
Godzilla     4,572       1,390    332    934   .304
Tuffy        6,055       1,733    452   1,598 .286

Batting Average when putting the ball in play (no K's):

Alex      .411 (1,098 for 2,673)
Ichiro    .392 (1,278 for 3,260)
Tuffy     .389 (1,733 for 4,457)
Godzilla  .382 (1,390 for 3,638)

Batting Average when putting ball in play and defense has a chance to make a play (no K's or HR's)

Ichiro    .369 (1,160 for 3,142)
Alex      .333 (  785 for 2,360)
Godzilla  .320 (1,058 for 3,306)
Tuffy     .320 (1,281 for 4,005)

What conclusions, if any, can be drawn from this small sample? For one, it's extremely unlikely that anyone is ever going to hit .400 in a NPB season. Even for great hitters it's extremely difficult to hit .400 even when you take out the strikeouts, and everyone strikes out in the modern game at least once in a while.

Also, Ichiro does appear to be especially good at "hitting 'em where they ain't," to borrow the line of Wee Willie Keeler. Anyone who's seen Ichiro play knows that, like Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and Rod Carew before him, he is exceptionally good at hitting the ball into in the gaps between infield and outfield and between fielders. However, it is also not surprising to see that power hitters have high batting averages when not striking out and not hitting a home run, because they hit a lot of balls hard when they make contact.