Baseball’s stupidest cliché

Can we put this ridiculous cliché to death right here and now? Star players fail much less than 70 percent of the time. If you take the current top 10 Adjusted OPS+ leaders in each league (or the “stars” if you will) and average their On Base Percentage (which is how basic success or failure should be gauged on the offensive side in baseball), it’s around .387, which means they are only failing about 61 percent of the time. In fact, both leagues in their entirety don’t fail 70 percent of the time. The American League currently as an OBP of .320 and the National .314.

I realize that I’m venting over an electronically produced poster sourced from an old pulp magazine, but still, this silly and misguided aphorism has been out there for a number of years now and it’s time to nip this shit in the bud, if only for the sake of future generations.