The Mendoza Line is baseball jargon for a .200 batting average, the supposed threshold for offensive futility at the Major League level. [1] It derives from light-hitting shortstop Mario Mendoza, who failed to reach .200 five times in his nine big league seasons. [2] When a position player's batting average falls below .200, the player is said to be "below the Mendoza Line".
Mendoza was a lightly used shortstop from Chihuahua, Mexico, who played for three franchises during a nine-season Major League career. While his fielding was highly regarded, his hitting was not. His batting average was between .180 and .199 in five seasons out of nine.
When he had trouble staying above .200 in 1979, teammates began to chide him. "...Tom Paciorek and Bruce Bochte used it to make fun of me," Mendoza said in 2010. "Then they were giving George Brett a hard time because he had a slow start that year, so they told him, 'Hey, man, you're going to sink down below the Mendoza Line if you're not careful.' And then Brett mentioned it to Chris Berman from ESPN, and eventually it spread and became a part of the game."
Berman deflects credit back to Brett in popularizing the term. "Mario Mendoza? It’s all George Brett," Berman said. "We used it all the time in those 1980s SportsCenters . It was just a humorous way to describe how someone was hitting." [3]
Mendoza ended up finishing 1979 below his own "line", at .198. His hitting improved modestly in 1980 and 1981, enough that even with another sub-.200 in his final season of 1982 he raised his career batting average to .215. [4]
Another term used in baseball to indicate that a hitter is hitting below the Mendoza Line is that he is "on the interstate". It derives from the syntax of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, which begins with the abbreviation "I" for "Interstate", followed by two numerals for major routes - such as "I-95" and "I-80", expressions which superficially resemble sub-.200 batting averages.[ citation needed ]
The term is also used outside of baseball to convey a similar connotation of unacceptably subpar performance:
George Howard Brett is an American former professional baseball third baseman who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Kansas City Royals.
Shortstop, abbreviated SS, is the baseball or softball fielding position between second and third base, which is considered to be among the most demanding defensive positions. Historically, the position was assigned to defensive specialists who were typically poor at batting and were often placed at the bottom of the batting order. Today, shortstops are often able to hit well and many are placed at the top of the lineup. In the numbering system used by scorers to record defensive plays, the shortstop is assigned the number 6.
Harold Peter Henry "Pee Wee" Reese was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers from 1940 to 1958. A ten-time All-Star, Reese contributed to seven National League championships for the Dodgers and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984. Reese is also famous for his support of his teammate Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the major leagues' modern era, especially in Robinson's difficult first years, most notably when he put his arm around Robinson during a pre-game warmup in front of a heckling crowd.
Mario Mendoza Aizpuru is a Mexican former professional baseball infielder who is currently the manager of Saraperos de Saltillo of the Mexican League. Mendoza, a lifetime .215 hitter, is best known for being the source of the name for the threshold for batting ineptitude, the "Mendoza Line", meaning a batting average of .200. Mendoza managed in the minor leagues and in Mexico after his nine-year Major League Baseball (MLB) playing career. He is a member of the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame.
Harold Joseph "Pie" Traynor was an American third baseman, manager, scout and radio broadcaster in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played his entire career between 1920 and 1937 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Traynor batted over .300 ten times, posting a career average of .320, and had seven seasons with over 100 runs batted in (RBI). With home runs limited by playing in Forbes Field, the most difficult park for power hitting in the National League (NL), he compensated by reaching double digits in triples eleven times, leading the league in 1923. He batted .346 in the 1925 World Series to help the Pirates take their first championship in 16 years.
Luis Ernesto Aparicio Montiel, nicknamed "Little Louie", is a Venezuelan former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a shortstop from 1956 to 1973 for three American League (AL) teams, most prominently the Chicago White Sox. During his ten seasons with the team, he became known for his exceptional defensive and base stealing skills. A 13-time All-Star,, he made an immediate impact with the team, winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1956 after leading the league in stolen bases and leading AL shortstops in putouts and assists; he was the first Latin American player to win the award.
Jack Eugene Wilson is an American baseball coach and former professional shortstop in Major League Baseball. He last served as an assistant coach at Grand Canyon University.
Neifi Neftali Pérez is a Dominican former Major League baseball player. He was a switch hitter who threw right-handed. During his career, he played with the Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, and Detroit Tigers.
Edwin David Joost was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played as a shortstop in Major League Baseball for all or portions of 17 seasons between 1936 and 1955. In 1954, Joost became the third and last manager in the 54-year history of the Philadelphia Athletics. Under Joost, the A's finished last in the American League and lost over 100 games. After that season, they relocated to Kansas City.
Robert Paul Wine Sr. is an American former shortstop, coach and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). An excellent fielder who struggled as a hitter, Wine spent 12 seasons in the National League with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Montreal Expos (1969–72). He won the NL Gold Glove Award in 1963.
William Aloysius Bergen was an American professional baseball catcher. He played eleven seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1901 to 1911 for the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Superbas/Dodgers. He was one of the worst-hitting position players in the history of the Major Leagues, but was also one of the best defensive catchers of all time. His -6.9 career WAR is the second worst among every MLB position player in history.
Thomas Joseph Thevenow was an American professional baseball shortstop. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1924 to 1938 for the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, and Boston Bees. Thevenow epitomized the good-fielding / weak-hitting shortstops that prevailed in the era, ending his career with a fielding percentage of .947, but a batting average of .247 while hitting only two home runs in his 15-year career. He hit two home runs in 1926, both inside-the-park home runs, and then never hit another home run in his next 12 seasons, setting a major league record of 3,347 consecutive at bats without a home run.
Cristobal Rigoberto Mendoza Carreras, better known as Minnie Mendoza, is a former Major League Baseball infielder and coach who played for the Minnesota Twins during the 1970 MLB season.
This is an alphabetical list of selected unofficial and specialized terms, phrases, and other jargon used in baseball, along with their definitions, including illustrative examples for many entries.
The Texas Rangers2001 season involved the Rangers finishing fourth in the American League West with a record of 73 wins and 89 losses. Despite the team's batting leading the league in home runs and finishing second in on-base percentage and OPS, the team's pitching was historically poor; the team combined for an ERA of 5.71, and led the league in hits allowed, earned runs surrendered, and total runs surrendered. Their 913 earned runs allowed would also be a franchise-worst, and out of all pitchers that recorded at least 75 innings, none had an ERA below 4.45.
James Percy Mason, is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop from 1971 to 1979 for the Washington Senators / Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, and Montreal Expos. Mason was a member of the 1976 American League pennant-winning New York Yankees team.
Frederick Steven Auerbach is an American former Major League Baseball shortstop.
Mark Duane Wagner is a former Major League Baseball infielder. He played nine years in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers (1976–1980), Texas Rangers (1981–1983), and Oakland Athletics (1984).
In baseball, batting average (BA) is determined by dividing a player's hits by their total at-bats. It is usually rounded to three decimal places and read without the decimal: A player with a batting average of .300 is "batting three-hundred". If necessary to break ties, batting averages could be taken beyond the .001 measurement. In this context, .001 is considered a "point", such that a .235 batter is 5 points higher than a .230 batter.
Wins Above Replacement or Wins Above Replacement Player, commonly abbreviated to WAR or WARP, is a non-standardized sabermetric baseball statistic developed to sum up "a player's total contributions to his team". A player's WAR value is claimed to be the number of additional wins his team has achieved above the number of expected team wins if that player were substituted with a replacement-level player: a player who may be added to the team for minimal cost and effort.
