Where have all the .300 hitters gone?

At the end of the day there was no final fan ballot spot for Albert Almora Jr. despite the best efforts of members of this site (and others) to launch a successful write-in campaign. I was prepared for this possibility, just like I was prepared for the write-in campaign to be unsuccessful. But I wasn’t prepared for it to not even register to most of the baseball powers that be that it is, in fact, a snub to not even discuss the fact that the guy with the highest batting average in the National League won’t be playing in Washington D.C. this summer. Beyond that, I was floored last week to see Fangraphs dedicate a column writing off a .323 batting average as having “less value” than it once did. So with all due respect to Blake Snell being the biggest All-Star snub (there are some structural reasons for that you can read about here) this piece will look at the increasing rarity of the .300 hitter and how scarcity can determine value.

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