The Toughest Out in Baseball

In last night's Twins-Yankees game Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver called Ichiro Suzuki "the toughest out in baseball". Is that so?

Not really. If you define the "toughest out" as the person who makes the fewest outs per plate appearance then Suzuki actually ranks 12th. Here are the leaders

       Outs Outs/PA

Bonds   238  0.388

Helton  357  0.527

Berkman 372  0.546

Drew    360  0.562

Thomas  175  0.565

Snow    233  0.567

Abreu   401  0.568

Walker  181  0.569

Edmonds 348  0.576

Pujols  396  0.580

Mora    363  0.582

Suzuki  442  0.584

The strange thing about this list is that 9 of the top 10 are all in the National League. You'll also notice that because Suzuki had so many at bats (702) he also made the most outs in baseball. Of course, this list is in the same order as a list in descending order by on base percentage.