In a city where craft beer is everywhere, a golden brew holds a special place in the hearts of San Diegans. Within the name of the beer is a tribute to a beloved local hero.
It’s called .394 Pale Ale.
In 1994, Tony Gwynn batted .394, a career high good for one of his eight National League batting titles. It’s the highest batting average in the NL during the past 95 years. If you know, you know.
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“In San Diego, people know what .394 is,” said Kristen Ballinger, marketing director for AleSmith, the brewer. “If it wasn’t a strike-shortened season, it would have been .400.”
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Three decades later, the magic of a batting title or a .400 season has virtually disappeared from the major leagues.
And a traditional standard of excellence now is an endangered species: the .300 batting average, a popular and easily understood statistic that has been devalued and rendered borderline worthless by baseball’s analytical revolution.
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In a previous generation, this development would be almost scandalous: With one month left in the regular season, the NL has one .300 hitter.
One.
He is the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, who has nine .300 seasons to his credit. He batted .200 in June and .253 in July, and here he is leading the league at .302.
“You hit .330, you hit .325 and you never win,” Freeman said. “To be grinding this year and leading is kind of a weird thing.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman (5) slides safely into first past in front of Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn (28) on July 20 at Dodger Stadium. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“For you to be talking to me about a batting title at the end of August, it means I’ve had a pretty good year. I think I’m OK with that.”
Freeman thought back to Monday night, when the visiting Cincinnati Reds went to the bullpen in the seventh inning of a game they trailed by six runs. The new pitcher: not a mopup man with a mid-80s fastball, but a second-year reliever with a 100 mph fastball.
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“I don’t think you can really talk about the art of hitting .300. The pitching is just too good. It’s hard to combat,” Freeman said.
“My whole goal every year is to hit .300. It’s getting harder and harder. I’m just trying to adjust with the league.”
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Only one player has won a batting championship with a lower average than Freeman’s .302: Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox, who won the American League by hitting .301 in 1968.
That was the Year of the Pitcher. Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals put up a 1.12 earned-run average, one of seven pitchers to finish with an ERA under 2.00. Offense was in such short supply that, after the season, baseball lowered the pitcher’s mound from 15 inches to 10.
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The major league batting average was .237 that season, with teams scoring 3.4 runs per game. This season: .246, with 4.4 runs per game.
But batting average is nonetheless depressed by the emphasis on home runs and on getting on base, and by the deluge of strikeouts triggered by pitchers throwing harder than ever.
“And how many times do you see balls hit up the middle and they’re outs, even [with baseball] regulating the shift?” Reds manager Terry Francona said. “Guys hit a nice one-hopper up the middle, and they’re out.
“Hitters don’t know — a lot of them — how to go the other way to combat that. So that takes away a lot of hits.”
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Dodgers manager Dave Roberts conceded that so many pitchers throwing so hard challenges batters, especially as they hear that on-base percentage is widely considered more important than batting average.
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“I honestly think hitting is as hard as it’s ever been,” Roberts said. “You don’t see the same guys as much.
“But also, yeah, batting average isn’t valued as much — until you get to the postseason. Then you want guys that can get hits and drive in runs, right?”
So much of baseball’s charm is statistics that can be passed down among generations, in the only major sport popular in the United States for more than a century. Babe Ruth, meet Shohei Ohtani.
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No one writes an ode to a high OPS. The .300 hitter is going the way of the complete game. The Dodgers have no complete games this season.
Roberts lives in the San Diego area. He has not tried a .394 Pale Ale.
“I’m more of a lager guy,” he said.
But baseball should listen up to what he says about .394.
“Right now,” he said, “I would say less than 5% of active players know what that means.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.