Can Ben Revere Ride Into History?

For his three years and a cup of coffee in Major League Baseball, speedster Ben Revere has contributed some wins to his teams - first Minnesota and last year the Phillies. He's swiped 96 of 123 bases, batted .285 and reached base at a roughly average .324 clip.

Given roughly average glovework with plus footwork in the outfield, Revere would grade out to an above-average player except for one small issue:

Revere has come to the plate exactly 1400 times. He has fanned 136 of those, walked 73 and gotten himself plunked on five occasions. He has accumulated 326 hits, 45 of them doubles and triples. He has slapped four sacrifice flies. But he has never gone yard.

This is significant because, in the history of baseball, only seven non-pitchers with more at bats than Revere have finished their careers without a dinger. All of them played before the turn of the century, by which we now mean the century before the last one, led by Bill Holbert, a catcher and outfielder who lasted 13 seasons from 1876-1888 for the likes of Syracuse, Troy, the NY Metropolitans and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Holbert collected 2335 mostly fruitless at bats, posting a .208/.228/.232 career line, good for less than half the average output. How he hung around so long could only be explained by your dearly-departed great-great-grandfather.

The most recent career slapper with significant visits to the plate was Gil Torres, an infielder for three years with the wartime Washington Senators. His record comes with a double asterisk: he was a fill-in from 1944 to 1946 and he played for the Senators.

So Revere is in rarefied air. Three more years of this, followed by retirement, puts him at the top (bottom?) of the list. But in case he manages to smash one over the fence, or more likely blitz around the bases while his double ricochets around outfield walls, he still has opportunities to enter the record books.

First, Revere can challenge Tommy Thevenow, a shortstop mostly for the Cards, Phils and Pirates in his 15-year career culminating in 1938. In his breakout 1926 season, Thev blasted 15 doubles, five triples and a pair of unfortunate home run blemishes en route to a .254/.291/.311 line in 156 games. He never powered a four-bagger again, despite 3,347 more at bats, the longest unbroken string of staying in the park in history.

More recently, Indian and Giant second-sacker Duane Kuiper failed to remain yard-bound just once in his 3,754 plate appearances from 1974-85. Unlike all the aforementioned, Kuiper was not necessarily pinch-hit fodder. He coaxed 248 walks in his day and posted OBP over .330 four of the 10 seasons in which he played more than a handful of games. But he is the poster boy for modern slugging ineptitude to which Ben Revere can aspire. 

(Kuiper was also a paragon of pointlessness on the basepaths, to the point that his managers eventually forbid him from attempting to steal. In his first five seasons, he attempted 112 swipes and was returned to the dugout 64 times, a 43% success rate. In his next five seasons he lit out for the next base on just nine occasions, failing in six of them. For Revere to equal Kuiper's futility rate on the bases, he would have to run into outs his next 202 consecutive attempts. Bet the under.)