Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball called Kevin Youkilis the “Greek god of walks.” In the book, a Major League Baseball organization finally recognized patience at the plate. The Oakland A's wanted to find undervalued attributes in the baseball marketplace and latched onto plate discipline. They thought that then minor leaguer Youkilis might be easy to obtain from Boston in a trade. Boston never traded Youkilis. Did Boston make the right decision? Apparently. Let's see how he is doing in his third MLB season.
One way to measure plate discipline is on-base percentage minus batting average. Youkilis has an OBP 101 points higher than his BA. That's patience at the plate.
However, he doesn't make the MLB top ten. Below we show that list.
| Name | OBP-Avg | OBP | Avg |
| Barry Bonds, Giants | 196 | .457 | .261 |
Jason Giambi, Yankees | 160 | .410 | .249 | | Morgan Ensberg, Astros | 160 | .389 | .229 |
| Nick Johnson, Nationals | 137 | .431 | .294 |
| Bobby Abreu, Yankees | 134 | .429 | .296 |
| Travis Hafner, Indians | 130 | .439 | .308 |
| Adam Dunn, Reds | 129 | .372 | .243 |
| Pat Burrell, Phillies | 125 | .375 | .250 |
| Jim Thome, White Sox | 124 | .415 | .292 |
| Manny Ramirez, Red Sox | 117 | .436 | .318 |
The Yankees, the highest scoring team in baseball and the team with the best record in the AL, have two players in the top five. Youkilis is 24th (out of 235 players with 300 or more at-bats thus far this season). Not too shabby; the average hitter has an OBP 67 points higher than his BA.