- Mendoza Line
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This article is about the baseball term. For the musical group, see The Mendoza Line (band).
The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball in the United States, deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose lifetime batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. Even though Mendoza's career batting average over nine seasons (1974-1982) was .215,[1] most often the cutoff point is said to be .200,[2] and, when a position player's batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be below the Mendoza Line. This is often thought of as the offensive threshold below which a player's presence in Major League Baseball cannot be justified, regardless of his defensive abilities. Pitchers are not held to this standard, since their specialized work and infrequent batting requires less hitting competence. The expression has been also extended to other realms to indicate a low-end cut-off point.
Another expression used in baseball to indicate that a hitter is not being effective is "On the Interstate", which derives from batting averages in the .1xx range looking similar to the route designations of the Interstate Highway System in the United States, in which roads are referred to using "I" to indicate an Interstate Highway, and a number to indicate the specific route. Thus a batting average of .195 looks roughly similar to "I-95", and the batter is said to be "on the Interstate."[3]
Contents
Origin of the term
Mendoza, a flashy defensive player from Chihuahua, Mexico, played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, and Texas Rangers and usually struggled at the plate. Mendoza was known as a sub-.200 hitter whose average frequently fell into the .180 to .190 range during any particular year, even though his career figure reached .215.
The "Mendoza Line" was created as a harmless clubhouse joke among friends. "My teammates 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."[4]
Other uses
The term is also used outside of baseball to describe the line dividing acceptable mediocrity from unacceptable mediocrity:
- "A sub-$2,000 per theater average... is the Mendoza Line of box office numbers..."[5]
- "I don’t think you could find any other figure in politics who has run this far below the Mendoza line and still managed to get taken seriously as a presidential candidate."[6]
- Republican pollster Neil Newhouse... argues that these numbers have crossed below the political 'Mendoza line'..."[7]
- The U.S. 10-year note yield declined below 2%... before moving back above the Mendoza Line (baseball lingo for a batting average of .200), to 2.09% by early afternoon."[8]
References
- Notes
- ^ "Mario Mendoza" on Baseball-reference.com
- ^ "Mendoza line" on Baseball-reference.com
- ^ "Hitting on the Interstate" at Baseball-reference.com
- ^ Dave Seminara (July 6, 2010). "Branded for life with 'The Mendoza Line'". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_cff05af5-032e-5a29-b5a8-ecc9216b0c02.html.
- ^ The Numbers - Even Horror Films Can't Survive the October of Terrors
- ^ Jonathon Last (via Andrew Sullivan)
- ^ Mark Murray. "Republicans abandoning Bush". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19209733/ns/politics/t/republicans-abandoning-bush/. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
- ^ Randall Forsyth (August 18, 2011). "Fear Sends 10-Yr Treasury Under the Mendoza Line". Barron's. http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2011/08/18/fear-sends-10-yr-treasury-under-the-mendoza-line/. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
- Further reading
- Pepper, Al. Mendoza's Heroes: Fifty Batters Below .200 Poco Press, 2002
- Dickson, Paul. The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary Harvest Books, 1999.
External links
- Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)
Categories:- Baseball statistics
- Baseball terminology
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