Well, that might be a little strong, not to mention sacrilegious. Let’s just say that Cust is the Archbishop of statistical oddities.

Cust, in his second year with the Oakland Athletics, is batting a middling .243. And yet he is second in the American League with a .421 on-base percentage.

That’s what happens when you walk 32 times in your team’s first 41 games. You tend to have a pretty good on-base percentage. And a pretty good on-base percentage means that you’re a pretty darn good hitter.

Conventional wisdom, the kind that dominated baseball for its first 100 years or so, would tell you that Cust is nothing special as a hitter. He doesn’t hit for a high average, and he strikes out a lot, the kind of things that fill baseball executives with doubt.

After playing in 70 major-league games spread out from 2001-06, Cust had to wait until last year to get a shot as a major-league regular.

He spent that down time setting a Pacific Coast League record with 143 walks for Portland in 2006, hitting .293 with 30 homers along the way.

Given that track record, it’s no surprise that Oakland general manager Billy Beane was the one who decided to give Cust another shot at the big time. Beane is far ahead of his competitors when it comes to understanding what truly constitutes a major-league hitter, and Cust is the kind of player who has made the A’s a consistently overachieving organization.

So in May 2007, Beane bought Cust from the Padres organization and inserted him into the A’s lineup. The results have been productive.

Since joining Oakland, Cust has had 647 plate appearances, equivalent to roughly one season of full-time play. All he has done is hit 30 homers with 137 walks, scoring 80 runs and driving in 94.

And along the way, Cust has become the poster boy for secondary average.

Nothing secondary about it

Secondary average is a creation of Bill James, and it is designed to measure those things a hitter does that don’t show up in batting average.

As James explains it, there are two facets to offense: Batting average, and everything else. Secondary average measures everything else — extra bases, walks and stolen bases.

The formula is simple, as long as you remember your algebra:
(TB+BB+SB-CS-H)/AB

That’s total bases plus walks plus stolen bases, minus caught stealing and hits. Then divide by at-bats.

A player with some power and a motherlode of walks, like Cust, scores well in secondary average. A player who hits singles and doesn’t walk much, like Ichiro, does not.

That’s not to say that Cust is a better offensive player than Ichiro. It’s just to say the difference in their productivity isn’t as great as the 86-point difference in their career batting averages.

Last year, for example, Cust created 7.8 runs per 27 outs; Ichiro created 7.0.

Last season, Cust ranked fourth among major-league qualifiers in secondary average. His mark of .509 trailed only Carlos Pena, Alex Rodriguez, and Ryan Howard .

This season, Cust is second among American League hitters with a secondary average of .454.

Players with high secondary averages typically are overlooked and underrated. At least by those who cling to the myth that batting average is an important measure of a hitter.

Cust played 736 games in Triple-A, batting .270 with a .414 on-base percentage and a .495 slugging percentage before getting a chance as a major-league regular.

Note to general managers: Anybody with a .909 OPS in Triple-A is ready to face major-league pitching.

Which brings us back to secondary average. Part of the reason it took so long for Cust to get an opportunity was his strikeouts. But another part was a failure to understand the value of secondary average.

Translating into runs

The typical secondary average is similar to batting average. This season, AL hitters are batting .259 with a .246 secondary average; in the NL, the numbers are .260 and .267.

But the deviation between hitters is far greater than it is with batting average. Pena led the majors last year with a .557 secondary average; Kansas City’s Tony Pena Jr. was last among regular players with a .106 mark, and Seattle’s Jose Lopez was next-to-last at .139.

The importance in that is profound. Colorado led the NL last season with a .280 batting average; Philadelphia was fourth at .274. But the Rockies had a .279 secondary average while the Phillies had a mark of .318. The result: Philadelphia scored 32 more runs than Colorado.

In the American League, Seattle ranked third with a .287 batting average. But the Mariners’ secondary average of .215 relegated them to seventh in the league in runs.

So, yes, secondary average is important. It directly translates into runs, and it’s a much better gauge of a hitter’s ability than batting average.

Jack Cust is living proof.

Questions or comments for by the Numbers? You can reach Greg Jayne, Sports editor of The Columbian, at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/Sports/GregJayneBlog/