The Rays signed Pat Burrell for his hot-streaks, and we're experiencing the first of his Rays career. The ‘heat wave' isn't going exactly as planned. Sure, over the last 43 plate appearances Burrell is hitting .324/.465/.353, but uh, when did Pat Burrell turn into a contact hitter making his living off singles and walks? This got me to wondering, how many other players throughout history have maintained an OBP over .380 with a slugging under .400?
In the Retrosheet era, a .380+ OBP and sub-.400 SLG has occurred 147 times. Call it, "Pulling a Rickey Henderson", because Henderson accomplished the feat so many times. Here's a few others:
Luis Castillo
Joe Morgan
F.P. Santangelo
Mickey Mantle
Greg Gross
Dwight Evens
Wade Boggs
Mark McLemore
Pete Rose
Todd Helton (last year)
Bill Mueller
Walt Weiss
Mike Hargrove
Carl Yastrzemski
Jose Vidro
That's a pretty wide spectrum of talent, and we're basing this on a small sample size anyways. You can view the rest of the list here. We know Burrell's power skills haven't decayed, but for whatever reason his contact skills have been improved. Odd.