Yesterday, James Fegan wrote a great story on Sox Machine about how Chase Meidroth became one of the most patient players in baseball. The White Sox hopes Meidroth is more aggressive, but after a recent call, his chase rate is small. Last season, he played the exact same chase rate in Triple-A, ranking fifth among 381 players, who are at least 500 goals outside the area. At Fangraphs, Michael Baumann also reported on Meidroth's patience a few weeks ago. Not surprisingly, Baumann's articles do not have: paragraphs on the determinism of the subject. The defining feature of Meidroth profile is that he is a chase that does not pursue. But Medros isn't the only chase in baseball. Maybe he is an outlier. Perhaps other players named Chase are working hard, even if only out of a sincere desire to obey the fifth commandment.
Chase Utley is the first major league chase. He made his debut in 2003, a year after Sports Information Solutions began tracking the tones. This means we can track the chase rate of every chase ever. I went through his year-over-year chase rate to calculate a number adjusted by the league, which we will call in the rest of this article the chase rate plus. Utley's Chase Rate Plus is 88, 12% lower than the league average, which makes him walk 6% higher than the league average. In other words, the first pursuit in history has not been too much. What about the rest?
This is very disappointing. The only one who once failed his name in our four chases is Chase D'Arnaud. Chase Headley chases almost as much as Utley and walks a lot. Meidroth's patience is the reason we are here first. He is determined to discover how far you can get in the profession without taking the bat off his shoulders. Fortunately, D'Arnaud did make part of himself. Not only is he the most chased chase ever, but he is also the most chased D'Arnaud ever. His 35.9% career chase rate beat his brother Travis D'Arnaud's 27.8% score. Of course, all of these chases may lead to all strikeouts and lack of walks in the pursuit of the career, which is much shorter than his brother, but the siblings’ right to brag is more important. In honor of Chase D'Arnaud's achievements, this is the highlight scroll of his greatest pursuit.
We can also feel comforted by Hal Chase, the first baseman who played for from 1905 to 1919. Over his career, he has walked 52% lower than the league average. He must be chasing. We also know he is chasing paper because Martin Kohout's Chase's Sabr all called him “the most notorious corrupt player in baseball history.” So maybe he is not the chase we should have, but on the other hand, he is not a pony in terms of the certainty of the nomination decisiveness. His middle name is Homer, and his 57 professional home runs did make him average above average and isolated slip percentages in that era.
So the batsman disappointed us a lot. It was a lot of disappointment just by excellent board discipline, which helped them become good batsmen. The good news is that there are a lot more than batsmen. Let us believe them. So far, we have seen nine pitchers named Chase, three of whom made their debut this season like Meidroth. We also saw two pitchers called Chasen, and you'd better believe we'll be adding Gerunds to the sample. How did our 11 chases perform?
The pursuit of not making money (n)
The pitcher didn't catch up with the chase either! Our combined chase rate plus 98 for the entire sample of our nine chases and two Chasens. They are below average when making money, and that number is actually exaggerated as our ringtone, Chasen Shreve and Chasen Bradford are supporting it with third and fourth highest scores in the group. Even our position player hero Chase D'Arnaud didn't win a chase when throwing garbage time in 2018.
Look, I know it's coming, there's no particular reason to believe that a player named Chase will chase more or win more chases. But I can't pretend I won't be disappointed. Grammatically speaking, it is reasonable to use this name as an exhortation, and most of the chases we have seen at the major league level so far do not comply with it. They are not chasing. They didn't make money. They just chase the world less, which is really sad. But I have hope for the future, it mainly depends on the information I collect from janky, automatically generated websites.
If you have never seen anyone named Chase grow up, but you feel like the name suddenly occupying the baseball world now, you are not alone. Chase is a relatively young name and it is indeed everywhere. It wasn't until 1972 that the Social Security Administration's website showed any records, as it was only then that it was one of the most popular names for boys. But by 1983 it was only in the top 200 and has been there ever since. It peaked at 61 in 2009, when 0.348% of boys were named Chase. The following image is provided by namestrends.net.
In recent years, the name has not only become increasingly popular. It's also about the source of all these pursuits. According to a website called Mynamestats.com, Texas is the most chased state, and the name is usually more popular in the South. If you are from the Northeast or the Midwest, you may never chase. They are not coming from your woods neck. They live in places where all baseball players are. (This name is also very popular in Utah, and the baby name is slightly different from anywhere else in the country.)
Only 13 major league players are named Chase. They all made their debut this century, and a quick baseball reference search has left me with another 15 of the minors now. I think the name has taken over baseball now, but it will take several years to wait. Eric Longenhagen's recent top 100 prospect update had four chases, highlighted by Colorado Chase Dollander, who made his debut a month ago. The chase explosion has just begun. We will have more opportunities to find a chase that takes the name seriously.
