The seven-out-of-10 thing comes from the archaic belief that a .300 batting average was the threshold of greatness. It totally discounts getting on base by other means. Guys who fail to reach base seven out of 10 times are not much good to their teams unless they have a prodigious amount of extra base hits. Not so surprisingly, most of the guys whose failure rate is over 70 percent don't have a lot of those either.
Here are the players with the lowest OBPs (minimum 300 plate appearances). The two lowest figures are representatives of tonight's opponents:
Player Team OBP
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Angel Berroa KCA .262
Juan Uribe CHA .271
Clint Barmes COL .273
Yadier Molina SLN .277
Ronny Cedeno CHN .279
Jeffrey Francoeur ATL .283
Jeromy Burnitz PIT .293
Adam Everett HOU .293
Brad Ausmus HOU .296
Reggie Sanders KCA .296
Pedro Feliz SFN .296
Bobby Crosby OAK .297
Carl Everett SEA .297
Rod Barajas TEX .297
Ken Griffey Jr. CIN .298
Of these 15 men, only four have positive VORPs: Griffey, 8.8; Uribe, 3; Feliz, 1.4 and Barajas, 0.6. The next dozen, which includes everybody up to .309, add four more positives, the highest of which is
Miguel Olivo of the Marlins at 12.3. In other words, if you're adhering to the cliché and failing seven out of 10 times, you are pretty much failing.