Carl Furillo—Went 2 for 10 in 1960 and It Cost Him His Lifetime .300 Batting Average

 By JT 

Carl Furillo 

Yes, it's true. Going into the 1960 season Carl Furillo had a .300 batting average. In 1960 he had just ten at-bats and got two hits for a .200 batting average. That lowered his lifetime batting average in he majors to .299.

Through the convenience of rounding that's what happened. 

Via Baseball-Reference.com here is his career batting chart—

As can be seen, his batting average though 1959 was .300 on the nose, but add in 1960 and you see the .299.

Here is the breakdown—

After 1959 he was at .29962, which rounds to.300. That 2 for 10 took him to .29947. A tiny, tiny difference, but enough to lower him from the mythical .300 average and all that goes with it (Mickey Mantle fretted for years that he ended up at .298—"I know I was a .300 hitter") to the less-;ess-than-wonderful .299.

Amazing, there is no difference between the two but one wonders if that .300 hurt him for the Hall of Fame. It was one les nugget that the voters (haters?) could have used against him.

After all he was a great fielder with one of the best outfield arms of all-time (The Reading Rifle had 152 outfield assists from 1946-59), he has two World Series Rings, and during his prime (1949-58 he hit .301 and averaged 21 home runs and 102 RBIs per 162 games. Not bad—

The only thing that prevented him from being a Five-Tool player was he didn't run well on the bases though he was not deadly awful, either. 

So, .299 or .399 he was a good hitter with some power and a player who saved a lot of runs defensively, depending on the source anywhere from 55-75 or so. 

Nice job, Carl, you had a very good career.