Batting .200 means a player gets a hit only once in every five at-bats, which is historically considered the bare minimum acceptable performance in professional baseball.

Mendoza's elite fielding as a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1970s made him highly valuable to the team, excusing his weak lifetime .215 batting average.

Corporate managers use this idiom to mark the lowest acceptable threshold for employee productivity or financial returns, below which a worker or asset must be replaced.

In 1980, Brett mentioned the phrase during an ESPN interview while describing how he used the statistical threshold to playfully mock his slumping teammate U.L. Washington.