The Paciorek Problem

What to do about the perfect hitter?

The Paciorek Problem

Special thanks to the person who pointed this out to me on YouTube.

John Paciorek is one of those problematic players, especially for those of us who like replays. You see, the problem is that he played in only one game — and he just so happened to have had a perfect offensive game.

Paciorek played class A ball for the Modesto Colts as a 19 year old in 1963. He played 78 games, hit a pretty woeful .219, but managed a .747 OPS, thanks in part to 9 home runs in 330 plate appearances.

You’d probably be interested to know that this team included Joe Morgan:

From The Modesto Bee, September 18, 1963, page 25

Morgan started every game for the Colt 45s between September 21 and September 29. Paciorek, however, only started the September 29 game:

From The Houston Post, September 30, 1963, Section IV Pages 1 and 8

Paciorek went 3 for 3 and walked twice, giving him a perfect 1.000 batting average and 1.000 slugging percentage. And, as you can see above, he was basically the hero of the game.

In fact, in early 1964 it really looked like Paciroek was going to be a starting outfielder in Houston:

From The Houston Chronicle, March 29, 1964, Section IV Page 6

Manager Harry Craft, however, thought that Paciorek needed some more time to work on his swing. The problem, of course, is that Paciorek was a right fielder — and the Colts had another good young right fielder named Rusty Staub.

From The Houston Post, April 3, 1964, Section V Page 3

Now, you could argue that Paciorek should have been with the major league team at the beginning of the season. Walt Bond was in left field on opening day, Staub was in right, and Jim Wynn was in center. Both Wynn and Staub were rookies, and Bond had bounced between the minors and majors for a few years. Paciorek was young, sure — but he had already proven that he could hit major league pitching.

But it didn’t work out.

And so Paciorek went to the minor leagues, while Staub played 150 games with Houston in 1963.

From The Durham Sun, April 18, 1964, page 10

As fate would have it, Paciorek was never able to make it back to the major leagues.

In fact, if you look closely his minor league stats aren’t even impressive:

He showed a little bit of power in 1968 at the age of 23, but otherwise never really amounted to much as an offensive player. And, well, the world is filled with good fielding outfielders who can’t hit.

But the biggest problem here is how to treat him in a baseball simulation.

Do you use major league equivalencies and figure that the 3 for 3 game was an outlier? Do you give him a perfect card to reflect his 3 hits and 2 walks in 5 Major League plate appearances?

Let me know what you think.