Dave Jones is a long time friend of mine of going on forty years now. He is a frequent golf partner, fellow degenerate sports better, and has served for God only knows how long as the commissioner of the North Park League (NPL) fantasy baseball league, of which I am a retired member and two time champion (ahem!). As a member emeritus of the NPL, Dave keeps me on the mailing list, and today he sent out a most interesting email about baseball's "Three True Outcomes" and how they relate to Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz. I thought it was pretty interesting, and I asked Dave if I could reproduce it here for your reading pleasure while giving him full credit as a Special Guest Blogger here in The Grandstand.
He said OK, so take it away, Dave.....
I mentioned this baseball term in the Monday morning NPL e-mail. It was brought to the attention of the baseball stat geek world by Christina Kahri of BaseballProspectus. But here is what piqued my curiosity to take a look at it. Or should I say I say who? Answer: Oneil Cruz.
When watching the Pirates on TV lately (and they are hard to watch) I found myself thinking that geez - Cruz seems like he strikes out an awful lot. Currently he's 3rd in MLB striking out with 89 K's, behind Riley Greene of Detroit with 93 and Austin Riley of Atlanta with 90. HOWEVER, Cruz has only 275 Plate Appearances while Austin Riley and Riley Greene have more PA's - 310 and 296 for their K total.
But the Three True Outcomes (TTO) then factors in strikeouts along with Walks and Home Runs. In other words, a type of player that in a high percentage of plate appearances will have one of those three outcomes. Just think Adam Dunn.
Dunn had 8,329 plate appearances and had the TTO in 49.9 percent of the time he came to the plate, basically half of every time up one of those three things were the result in a 14-year career. So just for fun I looked up on Baseball Reference some random guys that I recalled being this type of player. Such as Ryan Howard, Rob Deer, Miguel Sano. They all had percentages in the 40's, but the King of TTO at least of the dozen or so guys I checked was Joey Gallo. Joey Had 3,403 Plate Appearances, 208 HR, 497 BB, 1,292 K's for a TTO percentage of 58.6 of the time he did one of the three. Guys like Bonds (38.5) and McGwire (45.6) were looked at and I thought Bonds would be higher, but he actually did not have a high K total. Current players in this mold are Schwarber (48.7) and Judge (51.0) for their careers.
Of course, this doesn't make them bad players or bad fantasy picks. On the contrary some of the best. But okay, what's the story with Oneil Cruz? It seems he's turning into at TTO guy. Prior to this 2025 season and granted he's only in year 5 of his career, his TTO percentage was 44.1. But in this 2025 season Oneil is cruising at a 52.0 TTO percent. The King of Exit Velocity is Striking out in 38.8% of every time he bats, which inflates his TTO number.
But hey, not trying to knock the guy (at least too much!), he's still a good fantasy asset. In our fantasy points scoring format he has 241 points in official at bats of 229 (and 275 plate appearances) as the LOCKHORNS 2nd leading batter behind Corbin Carroll and drafted by Harv in round 5 (#48 overall). He's a better player for our points format over Rotisserie, as in Roto the .227 batting average would probably hurt that category.
It's just frustrating watching him wave at a ball in the dirt or look at one right down the middle for strike 3 when watching them on TV.
So, maybe I should stop watching if I'm so annoyed. And another thing that annoys me in these TV broadcasts..... How many times can Greg Brown keep saying the Pirates are playing "Donnie Ball." Yep, grabbing the remote.....CLICK!
Thanks, Dave, and thanks also for the shot taken at Pirates Chief Propaganda Minister Greg Brown and his frequent references to "Donnie Ball", or any reference to the Pirates skipper as Donnie. The only people who should be calling a 45 year old man "Donnie" are his mother and his old classmates from whatever Mt. Lebanon Middle School he attended.
Here is a photo of our Guest Blogger and me taken last year when it was "Hawaiian Shirt Day" for our Tuesday Retiree Golf Group. Obviously, neither Dave nor I owned a Hawaiian shirt so we both scurried to Amazon to buy one. Thank God we didn't pick the same color!
POST SCRIPT: One guy who popped into my head as possible prime TTO guy was retired Cubs and Mets outfielder Dave Kingman, so I looked it up. In a sixteen year career, Kingman a .236 lifetime hitter, accumulated 6.677 at bats, hit 442 home runs, struck out 1,816 times and drew 608 bases on balls. Pro-rated on a "per 162 game" basis, that would give you 37 HR, 51 BB, and a whopping 152 K's. His career TTO percentage was 38.4%, lower than I would have expected. He remains, however, the worst defensive outfielder that I have ever seen.
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