Here are the players in 2009 to have less than 5% of their plate appearances result in extra-base hits (minimum 400 PAs):

These are among the least productive players at the plate, at least in terms of slugging. Many of them still had good OBP, although it's beyond me why any team would let certain players play a full season. (Hello Willy Tavarez, Edgar Renteria, Cesar Izturis, and Emilio Bonifacio.)

To give you an idea, here are guys who finished their career with less than 5% of their PAs going for XBHs.

There are lots of good players on there, but they generally were leadoff batters who played middle infield positions during eras in baseball when those positions tended to produce little offense. In other words, these guys were never expected to produce lots of extra-base hits, and these are among the best such players since they amassed the most plate appearances.

Following are the active leaders for the same calculation (less than 5% of PAs are XBHs.)

Same deal with this list, in the sense that most of these guys are leadoff hitters and not expected to hit for a high SLG. But when a pitcher sneaks onto a list like this (see #9), it's telling you that the rest of the guys are in trouble.

During the regular season, a lot of my posts are of the so and so has a chance to do such and such variety.  Most of these don't come to fruition and are often not worth revisiting. However, there is one in particular that seems worth mentioning.

On August 28th, we looked at Joel Pineiro's push to become the 8th pitcher since 1954 to finish a season with at least 200 innings pitched without allowing a SB. At the time, Pineiro had 170 IP and was driving hard. In fact Pineiro made it to 200 innings and beyond. However, on the last day of the season, in what would be his second to last inning, Alex Alcides Escobar stole 3rd base with Pineiro on the mound and Pineiro's name was banished from the list. The 2009 leader in IP without a SB allowed was Dallas Braden with 136.2.

Tony Gwynn (Sr., that is) is likely to be the last great player of his particular mold, at least until the style of the game changes significantly. I am referring specifically to his incredibly low strikeout totals.

Over his career, Gwynn mashed 3,141 hits while striking out only 434 times. That's a ratio of 7.237 hits per strikeout. Here are the career hits leaders (1901-present) among players with a ratio at least as large as Gwynn's:

So, wow, only Gwynn and Nellie Fox played as recently as 1950 from that group.

Among active players, only R.A. Dickey meets the criteria with at least 2 career hits. He's had 5 plate appearances, two singles, and no strikeouts.

If we drop the ratio requirement all the way down to 4, meaning 4 times as many hits as strikeouts, then we get these few active players:

Pierre is actually juts a few hits shy of a ratio of 5.0, but it's likely that all active players will see their ratios decline as their careers advance, since strikeouts tend to get a little more common over time.

Tony Gwynn, who ranks among my all-time personal favorite players, was simply amazing. Keeping in mind that he averaged only 9 HR every 162 games, that makes his career OPS+ value of 132 all the more impressive. Here's another way of looking at it: fewest career homers for a player with an OPS+ of at least 132 and at least 1000 games played:

First, chuckle your way past #1 Roberto Hernandez, and then check out Gwynn's company. In this day and age, it's tough to get such a high OPS+ without hitting many homers. The guys just had so many hits. I carried the list down to the first active player, Miguel Cabrera.

Anyway, I have my doubts that we'll ever see another player like Tony Gwynn.

Steve's post about players with some RBI but no career hits got me to thinking.

Here are the players with the most career RBI, where they have at least as many RBI as career hits:

Here are the single-season leaders for the same category:

It seems like McGwire always sneaks onto lists like this, but until now Jason Giambi's 2006 had entirely escaped me. I think that most of the players making this list had one or both of the following true: they hit a lot of homers, hence a lot of RBI per hit, or they played for good offensive teams and thus had a lot of runners on base, making it easier to score multiple runners with a single hit.

Going back to career totals, if we set a cutoff of 80%, meaning RBI total is at least 80% of hits total, just a few players make it with significant playing time:

This is one of the things that bugs me about Ryan Howard. I feel like his RBI totals have been inflated by virtue of high home run totals and because the Phillies have been a very good offensive team. I have not felt that Howard is as productive as his numbers suggest. This is a moot point if he continues to hit at least 45 HR per season but if his long ball numbers fall, his overall seasons might not look quite so good anymore.

Let me expand the above list by droppnig the requirement to 70%. Here are all players with at least 500 career RBI where their RBI total is at least 70% of their hit total.

Now perhaps you can see what I mean about Howard. Yes, there are some of the most talented offensive players in the game on this list. However, we also see a bunch of names of players who, while productive, did not have excellent all-around offensive talent. These are guys who typically didn't hit a lot of extra-base hits other than homers and didn't have particularly good batting averages. Among the players I'm referring to are Kingman, Vaughn, Fielder, Buhner, Sexson, Burrell, Thomas, Dunn, and Deer. Right now, I'm worried that Howard is going to end up in this group. Hopefully that will not be the case.

How 'bout this list via Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder - since 1901, most career RBI for those players with zero career hits: