In the age of the homerun and the era of big innings and team Earned Run Averages over five, the Dodgers and Tigers may well be two of the worst hitting teams in history. Both teams have a team On Base Percentage (OBP) under .300. How bad is that? It's so bad that the Red Sox team BATTING AVERAGE is ABOVE the Tigers team OBP and just below the Dodgers!

Both teams strike out one out of every five at bats and the glaring stat is that the Dodgers have only 244 walks all season. The Arizona Diamondbacks are not exactly powdering the ball but have a hundred more walks than the Dodgers. And since the Dodgers don't hit many homers, not having many runners on base makes it impossible to manufacture runs. You can't manufacture if you don't have raw material to work with.

The Tigers are fighting the first year Mets team as the worst in history. It took them nearly thirty games to get their team batting average over .200 and at .233, they haven't exactly lit it up since. Looking at their lineup, there doesn't seem to be much going on there at all.

The Dodgers tried to boost their offense. They brought in Rickey Henderson and Jeremy Burnitz. Burnitz has done well with three homers but the Dodgers sat Henderson after just a few games because he was only hitting .188. Geez, he just got there. Let him get his feet wet! Rickey did hit two homers while in there and can still make things happen.

Shawn Green has had a surprisingly poor power season and only has eleven homers. There is some history to this. Shawn isn't a big powerful guy and his homers were the result of a great, sweet swing. But skinny guys like him don't last that long as sluggers. Don Mattingly and Bobby Murcer are two great examples. It doesn't take much for a skinny homerun hitter to go from forty homers to warning track fly balls and "just missed the pitch" popups.

And yes, the Dodgers were shut out tonight and managed only three hits.


Trot Nixon of the Boston Red Sox is finally living up to his number one draft selection ten years ago. After two solid, but unspectacular seasons (except for some clutch hitting against the Yankees), Nixon is batting a hefty .322 with an OBP over .400. He is a good outfielder and a fiery, hard-nosed player, but now he is a force in the lineup. At 29, he could be coming into his own in much the same way that Luis Gonzalez did for the Diamondbacks. It will be interesting to see if this is a career year for Nixon or if this is the start of a great run justifying his first selection so many years ago.