I would agree with the hit is more valuable than a walk, generally.  But a walk has its advantages too. It can

make the pitcher have to throw more pitches for the batter to strategically eke out a walk, and it may force

the pitcher to then make his pitches  more "fat", thus making the next hitter more prone to getting a good

pitch.  Of course this is not a foregone conclusion, and I am not sure that evidence actually supports this,

but it is an observation made from watching many games and noticing  the post non-intentional walk

AB's.

I think for a player who does it once, what effect did an aberration in BABIP play

in that year.   Was the 200 hit year an outlier, or was it consistent with the players

career, even if it was his best year?

I can.  One out bottom of the ninth tie game. Man on third, batter gets an infield hit to third with third baseman playing in.

Runner on third decides not to run, batter gets an infield single to first.  Next guy hits into a DP and inning is over game

goes to extra innings.  But a long fly ball out, turns into a sacrifice fly, and wins the game.  So an out was better than

a hit.   Baseball is a fun game to have to explain.

Its a little bit unfair to say that he is a bad hitter with 200 hits, mostly singles. How many times

did he steal second base? third base?   A single for Pierre, especially when no one was

batting ahead of him, often turned into a man on second, or if not, the threat of the steal

had to disrupt the opposing pitcher.  Plain old stats, even sabermetrics do not always

place true value on a players worth.  Some of the intangibles are not in the equation. As

some of you recall, the ideal gas equation works fine under certain conditions, but under

other conditions those calculations can be way off, and one must provide the appropriate

corrective equation for vanderwahls forces.  One might say Pierre had value that did not

show-up in the calculations.  Anyway, i was working on some quantum equations

unifying dark matter, with dark energy, then low and behold, Melky comes along, and

we are seeing cold fusion, heating-up. 

You caught me in a bit of hyperbole, Lefty. Hits are valuable, even singles. However, while Pierre accumulated lots of hits, he often got on base at below league average rates. (Six of Pierre's 13 seasons have OBPs that are under the league average OBP.) Getting on base is a totally useful thing; Pierre just wasn't always good at it, even with all those hits factored in.

His career stolen base percentage is 74 percent, btw.

Excellent point, but I have a quibble: there's no such thing as a "useless" hit. Getting on base is a useful thing; I can't imagine an instance when it's less useful than making an out. What's more, if you're Juan Pierre and likely to steal 2nd base with a high success rate (though I haven't looked up SB% for the years listed above), hitting a single is a very useful thing.

To be fair part of the point he was making was that it is much easier to luck into 30HRs in a year than 200 hits in a year, which seems like it would be true. Sure there are some bad 200 hit players on that list, but there are probably far more bad 30+ HR players out there.  

That being said they have had very different 200 hit seasons: Cabrera OPS+ 120 in his 200 hit season where as Pierre had OPS+ 89, 94, and 82 in '01, '03, '06.  So while he could have made his point a little better, I do think that there is some validity to it.

These complex stats are too much for our friend Hank. RBI's are good, ERA is gooder and things like wRC+ or OPS+ are IRRELEVANT