Mendoza, who (unfairly?) became the go-to reference for hitting under .200, appeared in 50 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1976 season, you guessed it, hitting under .200 with a .185 figure based on his 17 hits over 92 at-bats.
Now granted, the man hit under the .200 threshold five times during his career, but he did end up with a career .215 average by the time he retired from Big League ball in 1982.
I guess you can say that in back-to-back seasons in 1980 and 1981 he was positively raking when he hit .245 and .231 for the Seattle mariners and Texas Rangers respectively.
Nevertheless, by the time he retired, he finished with 287 hits over 1337 at-bats spread out over 686 games between 1974 and 1982, good for the .215 average, with 106 runs scored and 101 runs batted in.
Some say (and I agree), that it was unfair to make HIM the poster child for the light-hitting set, and though I cannot at this very moment remember many of the players, there are a handful that were actually much worse at the plate than he, including who I consider the worst, former catcher Bill Bergen, who hit .170 over eleven seasons between 1901 and 1911, and the guy pretty much played FULL TIME!
Go check out his numbers. I think you’ll all agree.
