Moneyball is the classic story of a guy who abandons his daughter in search of strange, yet talented men. It's actually not as crazy as it sounds; I heard from a buddy that the latest Disney film basically has the same premise.

Seriously though, everyone who has seen the film or read the book knows that walks are extremely valuable to front office types. A walk not only puts a runner on base, it raises the opposing pitcher's pitch count by, on average, 4.9 pitches. If you start an inning with two walks, the pitcher has already thrown 10 pitches, and now has to worry about his control AND the baserunners. Not an ideal scenario. He also has no outs, which brings me to another reason why walks are so rad; they aren't outs. There is nothing better in baseball than not getting out. It sounds dumb, but it's true. That's essentially what OBP really means, at the core. How often does this guy not get out?

So, walks are great. But the holy grails of walking are the players who walk more than they strike out. They make a lot of contact, they have a good eye, and their plate appearances are less likely to end in outs. These guys are pretty rare though, right now there are only 5 guys with more than 100 plate appearances who have more walks than strikeouts

Stats as of July 27th. Scroll horizontally to see more

I am a Gary Sanchez apologist through and through. But if I'm being honest, his inclusion on this list is almost certainly anomalous; in The Sanchize's two All Star seasons (2017, 2019) he walked 40 times and struck out 120+ times. He also hit 33 and 34 bombs in those seasons, respectively, with the 34 in 2019 being a career high. Though, given the juiced ball rumors of that season in particular, the 33 in 2017 is possibly the more impressive campaign. Tangent aside, we can disqualify Sanchez without much debate simply by raising the threshold to 300 plate appearances, in which case we have only Perdomo, Arraez, Kwan, and Soto.

Now, what do these guys all have in common? They are all top-of-the line, top-of-the-order players. These guys can probably HEAR the difference between a ball and a strike. Of the four, though, Soto is probably the only one you could call a power hitter. Kwan and Arraez are not as hefty in the SLG department, Arraez especially, though we know that is by design. I bet Arraez could easily pop 20 homers a year if he was cool with hitting .240 or so.

Perdomo is a young player but has shown extreme promise so far, leading the NL in bWAR last year (7.1 - but, surprisingly, didn't make the All Star team). He walked more than he struck out last year as well, going 94/83 for a ratio of 1.13, while also hitting 20 home runs. Despite the relative down year this year, this power aspect coupled with his eye is what makes Perdomo so intriguing: no one else more closely compares to Soto regarding the things Soto does extremely well. And if you forgot, those things are what made him worth the largest sports contract in history (15 years, 765MM). Given that potential, we should be seeing Perdomo in pinstripes or Dodger blue any day now.