Mendoza Line

The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball in the United States, deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200 (although Mendoza's career average was .215) and, when a position player's batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be "below the Mendoza Line". This is often thought of as the offensive threshold below which a player's presence in Major League Baseball cannot be justified, regardless of his defensive abilities. The term is used in other contexts when one is so incompetent in one key skill that other skills cannot compensate for that deficiency.