Demotion To AAA Suspends Dayan Viciedo’s Pursuit Of History

Craig Robinson can’t quite celebrate yet, but he’s a little closer to holding onto his record now.

On Friday the Chicago White Sox optioned Dayan Viciedo to AAA Charlotte to make room for Mark Teahen on the roster. Perhaps unknowingly, this roster move suspended Dayan Viciedo’s pursuit of Craig Robinson’s record for most plate appearances without a walk to begin a season. Robinson’s mark, set with the Phillies in 1973, is 148. Viciedo heads to Charlotte with zero walks in his first 82 trips to the plate. Also suspended is Viciedo’s pursuit of the career/multi-season mark, set by Alex Sanchez back in the mid-1980s. Over multiple seasons, with multiple teams, Sanchez went walk-less in his first 207 Major League PAs. He is now a roving hitting instructor for the Kansas City Royals. (No, actually he’s not.)

Despite his distance behind Robinson and Sanchez, Viciedo’s walkless 2010 is a significant achievement. Amongst players this season with at least 50 PAs, only six position players have a walk rate under 2.0%. In reverse order, those players are: Drew Butera (2 walks in 102 PAs), Emilio Bonifacio (1 BB in 55 PAs), DeWayne Wise (1 BB in 62 PAs), Jesus Feliciano (1 BB in 68 PAs), Josh Bell (0 BBs in 55 PAs) and Viciedo. Bell, recently called up again by the Orioles, can certainly inject himself into the conversation with another two weeks of hacking.

The interesting thing about Viciedo’s 2010 season was that he was actually almost a productive player. Almost. Viciedo managed to slug .451 for the White Sox (3 HRs, 6 2Bs) but when his batting average/OBP combo of .268/.268 means, in the end, he’s an out machine. Unless a player hits for extreme power, when you make an out 73% of the time, you’re a net negative on the offense. Viciedo was able to maintain a decent batting average for a while, but once pitchers found out that he swings at everything, the results started to decline. Viciedo finished his most recent stretch of play with a 1-19 string that lowered his OPS from .857 to .720.

And that’s part of why Robinson and Sanchez’s records have lasted so long. Players that don’t walk, at all, are usually fundamentally bad baseball players, with a severe methodological problem in their approach. As such, they tend not to stick around for very long, as Viciedo was unable to do.