Three True Outcome Percentage: Paul Molitor

It's been awhile since I did a post about Three True Outcome Percentage, or TTOP if you prefer to call it that. But the Minnesota Twins hiring of Hall of Famer Paul Molitor as their new manager this week inspired me to put his career through the formula I created.

As a reminder, here is the formula for Three True Outcome Percentage:
Home Runs+Strikeouts+Walks/Plate Appearance=TTOP

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Now let's take a closer look at Molitor.

Paul Molitor's career TTOP:

234 Home Runs+1,244 Strikeouts+1,094 Walks/12,167 Plate Appearances=

Career Three True Outcome Percentage: .211

Since Molitor was not a power hitter who struck out or walked a bunch in any of his 21 seasons, it's no surprise that his TTOP is not great.

But Molitor's TTOP is actually far better than Tony Gwynn's. Gwynn, as you may recall based on a previous post, had a career TTOP of .133. The two Hall of Famers seem like comparable hitters in a lot of ways, but Molitor struck out close to three times more than Gwynn did (434 times) and he also walked a substantial amount more (790 walks for Gwynn).

Going through all 21 seasons of Molitor's career to determine his best TTOP seasons would be an arduous task, and it's one I may take on at some point. But in the interest of brevity, I'll highlight the seasons he had career-highs in the "three true outcome" categories and calculate his TTOP for those seasons.

1993 with the Toronto Blue Jays, Career-High 22 home runs

22 Home Runs+71 Strikeouts+77 Walks (Tied For Career-High)/725 Plate Appearances= .234 TTOP

1982 with the Milwaukee Brewers, Career-High 93 Strikeouts

19 Home Runs+93 Strikeouts+69 Walks/751 Plate Appearances= .241 TTOP

1991 with the Milwaukee Brewers, Career-High 77 Walks (Tied With 1993)

17 Home Runs+62 Strikeouts+77 Walks/752 Plate Appearances (Career-High)= .207 TTOP

It's no surprise that Molitor's career-high in home runs and one of the two seasons that he had his career-high for walks drove his TTOP up to a high level. But my educated guess is his 1982 season would stand as the highest TTOP of his career, with 19 home runs representing the second-best total of his career and the fact he only struck out more than 75 times in two other seasons (1985 and 1986),