Ok so this little gem comes courtesy of ESPN and therefore I encourage you to jump there and read the whole article, but I couldn’t help but post this part of it…I just couldn’t believe it was true, plus it’s written with some decent humor.

Apparently, Pudge Rodriguez has never read Moneyball. He might not know a “take” sign from a road sign. In case you hadn’t checked the old BB column on your local stat sheet lately, Pudge is making Neifi Perez look like Rickey Henderson.

We’re 5½ months into this baseball season. Which means enough baseball has been played that, last time we looked, 69 different players had drawn at least 50 walks.

Pudge, on the other hand, had drawn seven.

Five of which were even unintentional.

Think about this. Jeff Bagwell once walked six times in one game. Pudge has walked seven times all year. In 476 trips to the plate.

For the first five months of this season, this man drew exactly one unintentional walk in Comerica Park. And it was in the All-Star Game.

It took eight more weeks (until Sept. 6) before he drew another one, in a real game. Which might be the most bizarre fact of this entire season.

Now there may be some people who think it’s time Pudge started taking more pitches. But not us. We want him to keep that walk total right where it is. Because only three players in history have drawn this few walks in a season of 500 at-bats or more.

And the last one — the immortal Art “Green Light” Fletcher — played during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

There was George “Hack Man” Stovall (six walks in 565 at-bats, in 1909). There was Candy “Let It Rip” LaChance (seven walks in 548 at-bats in 1901). And there was Fletcher (six walks in 562 at-bats in 1915).

Then again, all of those guys played before the invention of the intentional walk (not to mention QuesTec). So, with the help of Lee Sinins’ ever-invaluable Sabermetric Encyclopedia, we checked the intentional-BB era (1955-now) to see if anyone has even come close to drawing just five unintentional walks in this many at-bats.

Turns out only one player in that whole glorious half-century ever got to ball four less in a 400-at-bat season — Alfredo “The King of Swing” Griffin (four unintentional BBs in 419 at-bats, in 1984).

But if Pudge stays at five, and reaches 525 at-bats, he’ll officially have the worst walk rate of any full-time player in the modern walking era. (For which he really ought to win a boxed set of Swing Music CDs.)

So Pudge, keep on hacking, pal. Our panel of history lovers has given you (what else?) the green light, to swing at every pitch for the rest of the season.