In Praise of Adam Duvall, Baseball's Last True Galoot

Adam Duvall is hitting the crap out of the ball. This is not too surprising in and of itself: hitting the crap out of the ball is his job, and it's a skill he has demonstrated throughout a six-year baseball career that has mostly unfolded in the minor leagues. It is still early in the season, a time when hot streaks have outsize importance and a youngish guy can put up stunning stats in his first time through the league. This time of year is built for players like Duvall.

At 27, Duvall is improving in his first full big-league season, and getting at-bats every day with the Cincinnati Reds; as I write this, only three players in the league have more home runs. Duvall is nothing like the lithe superstars-in-waiting like Manny Machado or Nolan Arenado, nor is he a surly old cut of meat like David Ortiz or Nelson Cruz. No, Duvall is something unique to the game of baseball in 2016, if also something like a cousin to Mark Trumbo, the dark-horse MLB home run leader. What makes Duvall different is that he is a galoot.

What makes him a galoot? He's got these short meaty arms, for one. A mouth that never quite closes and indeed often curls into a "Would you like that pie a la mode?" sort of smile. But it's more than that. Duvall is hitting .258/.291/.587 so far this season. According to statistician Joel Luckhaupt, hitting the ball so hard while getting on base so rarely has never been done for so long. The closest anyone had come were legendary lunkhead Matt Williams and Dave Kingman, surly avenger deity of the Three True Outcomes and former straw man to the anti-Moneyball crowd.

Duvall is making remarkably inelegant history. He doesn't walk. His left-field defense is, if you want to be nice, lightly regarded. He has stolen two bases and has been caught in the act three times, and honestly that there have been five attempts at all is the most surprising part. What Duvall does, and what he has done very well, is turn on a pitch every so often: he has 16 doubles and 18 dingers in 61 games.

This blessed galootishness goes beyond the statsheet. There's also Duvall's pedigree. He's a local boy for the Reds, born in Kentucky and educated down the road at the University of Louisville. A 2013 scouting report uses terms like "no intention of more closely examining" and "rather thick in the torso" but it waxes reverent about his power. For Duvall, there was always that power.

It is a one-note scouting report. If this were 1998, it would be enough to make Duvall a millionaire and one of the most sought-after players in the game. But it is not 1998 and Duvall is instead the one true galoot. He hearkens back to the days of baseball as carnival entertainment. Even low-OBP, high-SLG guys like Daniel Murphy and Trumbo, each having remarkable seasons in their own right, aren't quite as remarkable. And unlike those two, who are presently taking unexpected star turns for the winning Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles squads, Duvall plays for a pitiful Cincinnati Reds team.

And on that team, Duvall is just about the only show in town. Sure, there's Zack Cozart, who leads his team in fWAR, but Cozart is literally boring enough to name his two dogs Champ and "Sport" and is himself a less useful asset than Cincinnati's stumpy slugger; Jay Bruce is having what seems to be shaping up as a bounce-back season, but it all feels like a prelude to his inevitable trade to a contending team. There are other nifty and well-regarded Reds, and there is always Joey Votto, but Duvall is not one of them, or at least not precisely. He's just a basher of baseballs, and as such he's both a throwback and something of a circus act.

As baseball has tilted ever more toward defense, with a renewed emphasis on brilliant pitching and athletic fielders, one-dimensional pure-beef power hitters like Duvall have become increasingly scarce. This is not sad, since that 1998 arms race was not good baseball and led to rampant PED abuse. I'm not saying this to cast aspersions on Duvall's cleanliness; I cannot imagine him taking bad pills and, by the looks of him, he may not even cook his steaks.

But it's a little sad, because the last of a dying breed is always a little sad, and because Kentucky could probably use more baseballing heroes. Mostly it's sad because hearing and seeing a baseball fly 450 feet is fun as hell, and in what may otherwise be charitably described as not-fun times that is a valuable thing. It's surely not a great sign when the broader world makes reasonable people yearn for the comforting presence of Adam Dunn, but here we are.

Watching Duvall do his thing is exultantly predictable. The lumbering guy with the short arms is going to swing as hard as he can. He's going to whiff a few times as a result. But once every two games, oh boy, the big fella is going to hit it a mile. It isn't going to win the day, and it may not win the Reds 70 games. Still, it will at least make the losing more bearable. That's all a galoot can do, but that's something.

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