Photo courtesy Milwaukee Brewers
Sometimes my timing is the worst.
You see, about a week ago I had an idea. Ryan Braun was closing in on the 1500th hit of his MLB career. It’s a relatively minor milestone (he was the 547th MLB player to do it and probably won’t even be the only one to do it this month), but a rare small piece of positive historical significance in the middle of a Milwaukee Brewers season that will likely go down, on the field at least, as little more than a footnote in the annals of the franchise.
I commemorated the occasion by creating a new Twitter feed, @BraunHitList, to track Braun’s progress up MLB’s all-time list. Braun logged his 1500th hit, an infield single, on Tuesday. I created the account on Wednesday, followed a few folks, seeded the field with a few opening tweets, and waited.
As, as it turned out, I’d be waiting for a while. Braun went 0-for-4 on Wednesday. Then he went 0-for-4 again on Thursday, and 0-for-5 in an extra inning loss on Friday. All told, counting his strikeouts in his final at-bat on Tuesday and his first at-bat on Saturday, Braun went 15 consecutive trips to the plate without a hit. He finally broke out of that skid with a pair of home runs.
Historically, the cold streak wasn’t that significant. Chris Carter, Keon Broxton and Scooter Gennett have all had longer hitless stretches for the Brewers this season. For Braun, however, this was one of the longer cold snaps in his career, and that says something pretty significant about his consistency.
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Over 9+ MLB seasons, Braun has never had a hitless streak longer than 0-for-19. He did that twice, in July of 2010 and 2014. The 2010 streak was the only one to span five full games. For comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at some of the longest cold streaks of some other all-time great Brewers hitters:
Robin Yount
Yount collected 3142 hits and two Most Valuable Player Awards as a Brewer, and punched his ticket for the Hall of Fame with a pretty spectacular run in the 80’s. Many fans forget or overlook the fact, however, that Yount was rushed to the big leagues when he was very young and had a pretty noticeable dip in his offensive production in his final years.
Yount had four hitless streaks longer than Braun’s longest, and they all occurred in the late '70s and early '90s, on the bookends of his career. He had a pair of 0-for-23’s: One in his first full-time MLB season in 1975 and again in his final campaign in 1993.
Paul Molitor
Even if you eliminate Molitor’s declining years by limiting the search to his time in Milwaukee, he also had four streaks longer than the longest of Braun’s career, and two longer than Yount’s longest. His rookie campaign (and possibly his AL Rookie of the Year hopes) took a significant step back with an 0-for-24 skid in September of 1978. He received three first place votes but finished second in the AL RoY balloting to Tigers second baseman Lou Whitaker.
A few years later Molitor fell victim to another slump and topped his personal record with an 0-for-25 stretch that nearly spanned three weeks in May of 1983.
Cecil Cooper
Cooper was arguably the most consistent hitter in the history of the franchise, posting a batting average over .300 in seven consecutive seasons from 1977-83. Even he fell victim to the occasional tough stretch, though, and had three hitless streaks longer than Braun’s longest to date.
Cooper’s worst hitless stretch came near the end of his career and was too long to fit into one season: He was held without a hit in his final 24 at-bats in 1985 and his first six in 1986 for a combined 0-for-30 slump. Cooper was an All Star in 1985, but 1986 was his final full season as a big league regular.
Ryan Braun remains a polarizing figure among Brewers fans, as clearly demonstrated by some of the early reactions I received to the Twitter feed I mentioned above. Whether Braun is your favorite or your least favorite Brewer, however, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that his consistency is impressive even when compared to some truly elite players.
