Fun with baseball-reference.com and JPA

Only five catchers in baseball history have played more than 100 games in a season, hit 20 or more HR and slugged .400 or less.  Here they are:

Roy Campanella (1956) - 124 games, 20 HR, .219/.333/.394 (BA/OBP/SLG)
Jeff Newman (1979) - 143 games, 22 HR, .231/.267/.399
Gary Carter (1987) - 139 games, 20 HR, .235/.290/.392
Brian McCann (2012) - 121 games, 20 HR, .230/.300/.399
J.P. Arencibia (2013) - 138 games, 21 HR, .194/.227/.365

So I think we can definitively say that JPA had the worst offensive season ever for a catcher with 20 or more home runs.

But we can say more.  There are only four players in history who have seasons in which they have played at least 130 games and ended up with BA .200 or below, OBP .230 or below and SLG .370 or below.  Every one except JPA is a shortstop (Bob Lillis 1963, Rob Picciolo 1977, Mario Mendoza 1979).

And there are only three players who have had seasons in which they've hit 20 or more HR but slugged .370 or under. Two of those seasons occurred this year.  Dale Murphy "did it" in 1989, a season in which he hit .228, was on-base .306, hit 20 HR and slugged .361.  JPA's companion this year was Dan "Not on the Playoff Roster" Uggla, who hit 22 HR and slugged only .362, but hit .179 and was on-base .309.  However, there is not much doubt that JPA's season was even worse than Uggla's - that 82-point difference in OBP was caused by the fact that JPA walked 18 times (with 148 strikeouts) while Uggla walked 77 times (with 171 strikeouts).

Most worryingly, perhaps, for those of us who really want to be JPA fans - he's 27, and both Murphy and Uggla were 33 when they scaled these heights.

JPA is the only player in baseball history to have 20 or fewer walks and 145 or more strikeouts in a season.

(All statistics courtesy of baseball-reference.com and its magical Play Index tool.)