John Gant’s Descent into Despair

You might not know it, but a Cardinal batter tied an all-time major league record last night. It wasn’t Matt Carpenter. It wasn’t Marcell Ozuna either. If you’ll look closely, in fact, you’ll notice that I said ‘batter’ instead of ‘hitter.’ The person I’m talking about can’t properly be called a hitter. John Gant tied a record last night, though you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t paying close attention. With a groundout in the second inning, he joined an incredibly anonymous list of four players who have recorded more at-bats than anyone else in baseball with an on-base percentage of zero. That’s right- John Gant has never gotten on base in his major league career. Honestly, that’s pretty stunning. When I stumbled across it, I thought I was reading things wrong. Here’s the Play Index leaderboard, though, in all its glory (not updated for last night’s one at-bat):

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