Wikipedia defines ‘The Mendoza Line’ as:

An expression in baseball deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200 (Mendoza’s career average was slightly better than that, at .215) and, when a position player’s batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be “below the Mendoza Line”. This is often thought of as the offensive threshold below which a player’s presence on a Major League Baseball team cannot be justified, regardless of his defensive abilities. The term does not apply to pitchers, who are not expected to be effective hitters.

MLB.com simply has it as: “A .200 batting average,” with it’s origin being:

“The Mendoza Line was a term coined by a teammate of Mario Mendoza on the 1979 Mariners – usually credited to Tom Paciorek or Bruce Bochte – as a joke on the light-hitting shortstop, who typically carried an average around .200 (though he actually finished with a career mark of .215).”

There is a new line in Major League Baseball – ‘The Barnes Line.’

There is no kind or gentle way to put it; 30-year-old Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes sucks right now – regardless of his defensive abilities. In fact, the only reason he is still on the Dodgers current 28-man roster instead of at their alternate training facility at USC is because guys named A.J. Pollock, Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, and an unhittable bullpen are carrying the team right now and have the Dodgers in second place in the NL West a half-game behind the division-leading Colorado Rockies.

Through the Dodgers first 16 games of the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, Barnes has appeared in eight of them. In those eight games, he has 22 official at-bats. In those 22 official at-bats, he has two hits, both singles. He has also struck out nine times while walking twice. His slash line through those eight games is (brace yourselves): .091 / .167 / .091 / .258. In other words, Austin Barnes makes Mario Mendoza look like Mike Trout.

To be fair (or at least in an attempt at such), Barnes is indeed a good defensive catcher; so good, in fact, that Dodgers ace and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw prefers to pitch to him over 25-year-old Will Smith. And even though Smith is slashing only .214 / .361 / .464 / .825, he does have two home runs in the eight games that he has appeared in thus far as the Dodgers catcher. And regardless of which definition you prefer, he is hitting above The Mendoza Line.

During his pregame Zoom press conference on Saturday afternoon, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked why Kershaw prefers pitching to Barnes instead of Smith when, in fact, both have identical (perfect) 1.000 fielding percentages. And even though Roberts gave the expected answer that his ace feels comfortable with Barnes behind the plate, he also hinted that even he is beginning to see ‘the forest for the trees,’ as they say.

“It’s history, they think a lot alike, there’s certainly… there’s trust in there,” Roberts answered, as he tiptoed through the minefield. “Austin’s receiving, we’ve often talked about, is very elite. But to be quite honest, I really feel very confident in Will Smith catching Clayton, as well.

“It’s just kind of right now, we got a day game [on Sunday], I just felt that it kind of lined up with Austin,” Roberts added. “But, yeah, you’ll see Will catch Clayton as well.”

Will we?

In that Saturday game, Barnes went 0-for-2 with a strikeout. He did, however, pick up an RBI on a 6-3 ground out, so there’s that.

I would be negligent if I did not mention that Austin Barnes is a great guy and a very good teammate.

Then again, so was Mario Mendoza.

Play Ball!

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