SIX MLB players who could hit .400 in 2020
By Bill Felber
SIX MLB players who could hit .400 in 2020
Ketel Marte
Ketel Marte last season blossomed into a star in the Arizona infield or outfield…really wherever manager Torey Lovullo needed him. As a 25-year-old, he batted .329, adding 69 points to his 2018 batting average.
Were Marte to make that kind of leap again in what’s left of 2020, he’d be at .398, a tantalizing number.
The evidence for Marte’s potential is abundant. He’ll be 26 this year, right in a batter’s typical prime. As noted above, his career is on an uptick, a wonderful characteristic.
He also finished 2019 on a high note, suggesting that his learning curve is ascendant. Marte batted .356 after June 30, .369 after July 31 and .390 after Aug. 31.
He also does well with the computers that ponder such questions. In Call to the Pen’s most recent update of its 2020 regular season simulation, Marte’s batting average is .412 through his team’s first 57 games. That average has been above .400 throughout the entire simulated season.
Related Story. FIVE legendary MLB players in unfamiliar uniforms. light
In a division-biased half-season such as being contemplated, the schedule would contain both good and bad news for Marte. He would play a larger number of games in West Coast ballparks – Los Angeles-Anaheim, San Diego, Oakland-San Francisco – that historically tend to depress offense. But he would also benefit disproportionately by playing in hitter-friendly parks at high altitude and in Texas.
During the 2019 season, the park factors in the 10 locations designated as composing the West region averaged an almost perfectly neutral 99.9, but that average is of course misleading. Those park factors ranged from a low of 88 in San Francisco all the way to a high of 118 up in you-know-where. Chase Field, Marte’s home park in Phoenix, registered an almost perfectly neutral 99, promising little in the way of boost to his quest.