Originally Posted by Brutus
Though I don't see him having a 14% walk rate (as I said yesterday, I would expect around 10%), just because others haven't done it recently in the majors doesn't mean he can't or won't do it. In fact, what you're describing isn't unprecedented if you go back a little longer than 10 years.
If you use a sample going back to 1990, you find that there is a lot more evidence of guys with lower ISOs having at least a walk rate of 14%. Since 1990, the following guys come up:
Rickey Henderson (17.7%, .141)
Randy Milligan (17.2%, .151)
Lance Blankenship (16.7%, .077)
Warren Newson, (16.4%, .151)
Tony Phillips (16.0%, .136)
Dave Magadan (14.9%, .089)
Jeremy Giambi (14.7%, .167)
John Cangelosi (14.2%, .062)
Lenny Dykstra (14.2%, .136)
John Kruk (14.1%, .149)
Now, expanding the criteria a bit to 1980, and 13%, we find...
Randy Milligan (17.2%, .159)
Rickey Henderson (16.7%, .142)
Warren Newson (16.4%, .151)
Joe Morgan (16.4%, .140)
Lance Blankenship (15.5%, .077)
Mark Bailey (14.7%, .117)
Jeremy Giambi (14.7%, .167)
John Cangelosi (14.7%, .069)
Ron Roenicke (14.7%, .100)
Tony Phillips (14.5%, .123)
Dave Magadan (14.5%, .089)
Toby Harrah (14.3%, .124)
Daric Barton (14.2%, .122)
Mike Hargrove (14.1%, .079)
Darrell Porter (14.1%, .160)
John Kruk (14.1%, .145)
Lee Mazzilli (14.0%, .122)
Dwayne Murphy (14.0%, .160)
--
Mark Bellhorn (13.9%, .164)
John Wockenfuss (13.8%, .158)
Jerry Hairston (13.6%, .155)
Kosuke Fukudome (13.6%, .136)
Ken Singleton (13.5%, .145)
Dave Hansen (13.5%, .109)
Willie Randolph (13.4%, .082)
Rich Becker (13.3%, .116)
Bobby Grich (13.3%, .169)
Frank Menechino (13.2%, .143)
Dan Driessen (13.2%, .146)
Butch Wynegar (13.2%, .092)
Sixto Lezcano (13.2%, .162)
Mike Jorgensen (13.2%, .104)
Wade Boggs (13.1%, .115)
Randy Ready (13.1%, .127)
Ryan Langerhans (13.0%, .146)
Greg Gross (13.0%, .052)
Quilvio Veras (13.0%, .092)
As you can hopefully see, it's been done and it's been done by some guys with some very, very low ISOs (Lance Blankenship is the best example). It's really not as unprecedented as you make it sound. I think what you have is a bit of a selection bias in that during the PED era, there were not as many guys in the majors that didn't hit for power, but now that baseball is reverting back to an emphasis on speed defense before homers were dime-a-dozen, you're going to see guys like this list pop back up a bit more. It wasn't that you couldn't have a high walk rate with a low ISO, it's that during the PED-era, few teams carried guys that didn't have much power. Now that power has dwindled in a heightened era of testing, you're going to see more guys with low ISOs in the majors, and you'll still see guys with high walk rates like in the 80s and 90s.
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