Tony Gwynn's recent death at age 54 produced a torrent of positive reactions from writers who recalled his earthy side and ability to connect with Joe Fan through a smile or a kind word. His humility was a major piece of his legacy.

Beyond his eight batting titles, 3,141 hits and .338 career batting average, Gwynn elicited praise for his artistry at the plate. Moments after Gwynn's passing, Greg Maddux took to Twitter and called the man known as Mr. Padre "the best pure hitter I have ever faced."

Gwynn showed signs of brilliance long before he wore that gaudy yellow and brown uniform in San Diego and staked his claim to the 5.5 hole between shortstop and third base. Gary Hughes, a longtime scout who now works as a special assistant with the Boston Red Sox, flashes back to a Joe DiMaggio League tournament in California in the late 1970s. The first year, a lefty hitter unfamiliar to Hughes collected 12 hits. The next year, the same kid showed up and banged out 11.

"I followed him after that purely out of interest," Hughes said. "And then, of course, he became Tony Gwynn."

Which hitters in baseball today personify the attributes that Gwynn showed at Long Beach Polytechnic High School through his retirement as a Padre in 2001? A lot of players earn reputations as good, productive, consistent hitters. Some, like Matt Stairs, even ascend to the coveted status of "professional hitter." But pure hitters dwell in rarefied air.

Who makes the cut? Hughes and three other baseball authorities -- Miami Marlins general manager Dan Jennings, Tampa Bay Rays hitting instructor Derek Shelton and Texas Rangers hitting coach Dave Magadan -- pondered the question and shared their thoughts on the term "pure hitter" and which active players best define it.

What is a pure hitter?

Ted Williams springs to mind, but one of his prime contemporaries and generational rivals is just as deserving of the label.

"The guy I think of when you talk about 'pure hitter' is Joe DiMaggio," Shelton said. "Those guys don't strike out. They control at-bats. They drive the ball the other way. Their swing mechanics are near flawless. There's a wide group of guys in the game who are good or even great hitters, but pure hitters are really a select category."

" [Miguel Cabrera] has very few holes, and if you execute a pitch or he does have a hole, he adjusts. ... Very few hitters can change their lower-half load and have the same swing and timing. That puts him in an elite status. " --Rays hitting instructor Derek Shelton

By most objective standards, any discussion of pure hitters should factor in hand-eye coordination, strength, a professional approach at the plate, an understanding of game situations and a devotion to the craft. Everyone loves hearing about the guy who could "roll out of bed and hit," but the reality is that Manny Ramirez was a hitting savant who spent countless hours studying pitchers and refining his unique skill set.

Are fluid hitting mechanics a prerequisite? Not necessarily. Vladimir Guerrero and Pablo Sandoval both merit discussion, and neither of them would appear in an instructional video. The same applies to Ichiro Suzuki, who has amassed 4,065 hits between Japan and the U.S. A lot of those hits came while he was halfway out of the box on his way toward first base.

"Ichiro may be the best hitter I've ever seen, and he was like watching a slow-pitch softball guy," Hughes said. "He could do anything he wanted with the bat and put the ball anywhere he wanted to put it."

Does power give a player an advantage over a singles-and-doubles guy in the pure hitter debate? In the estimation of most talent evaluators, yes. When Cabrera and a prime-time Albert Pujols hit .330 with monster power numbers, it places them a notch above the rest. Gwynn, Ichiro and Wade Boggs probably could have hit 20-plus homers a year, but they ultimately determined they would have sacrificed too much production at the other end.

"A lot of it is mindset," Magadan said. "Some guys are more wired to get base hits and not make outs. I think Tony and Wade were built that way."

Do an abundance of strikeouts hurt a player's case? Again, yes. David Wright is a wonderful hitter who's building a Hall of Fame résumé. But he'll go through long fallow stretches when he tries to do too much (in part because he doesn't have much help) and loses his grasp of the strike zone, and the whiffs begin to mount. The pure hitter rarely if ever gives away an at-bat.

Every baseball fan has his or her own perception of the ideal. I remember watching George Brett against the Yankees in the postseason in the late 1970s and thinking, "If my life was on the line and I had to depend on one player to get a hit, he'd be a pretty good choice." That's the ultimate test.

What attributes come into play?

Dan Jennings: "For me, the purity comes with guys who use their hands and remove their body from their swings. Most of them are linear hitters -- they're not rotational. They have the ability to deliver the barrel with their hands, ride through and extend. It's a thing of beauty."

A "rotational" hitter, in contrast, is on and off the ball and works more like a merry-go-round. Jennings classifies Mickey Mantle, Vladimir Guerrero and Adrian Beltre as hitters who've enjoyed great success in the majors with rotational swings. Beltre is so rotational, he'll routinely drop to his right knee after particularly vicious hacks.

Rays hitting instructor Derek Shelton on Robinson Cano: "As he's gotten stronger and more aware of the strike zone, he's just become more dangerous." Elsa/Getty Images

Derek Shelton: "If you're looking at the pure mechanics of the swing, it's someone who's able to stay balanced, control the barrel and stay short to the ball. But the pure hitter also stays within the controllables of the at-bat and doesn't get too amped up or try to do too much. Tony Gwynn's swing was beautiful, but you never saw him get outside of his approach. Very few guys in the game have that combination."

Dave Magadan: "A pure hitter has the ability to use the whole field. He's disciplined at the plate, and I don't mean having a lot of walks. I think of discipline as knowing what he wants to hit, and when he gets it, he swings at it and hits it hard. And if he doesn't get it, he takes it and waits for the pitch he's looking for. You can be disciplined and swing at the first pitch and line it to left-center for a double.

"Pure hitters all have great hand-eye coordination -- or hand-to-barrel of the bat coordination. They can manipulate the bat head and still make hard contact even when they're a little bit fooled or out in front. Look at Tony Gwynn's 3,000th hit. He was way out in front of that pitch and still managed to hit a soft line drive to the middle of the field. He always knew where the barrel of the bat was."

Gary Hughes: "The first thing for me is bat speed, because that gives a guy the ability to wait. And the pure hitter has great balance. You don't see him falling all over himself at the plate. He gets in the box, he's set and he stays in the box. He's not taking 10 minutes to get in there until his song finishes playing [over the P.A.]. He never looks not ready to hit."

The statistical definition

There's no litmus test for statistical purity at the plate, but ESPN Insider analyst Dan Szymborski classifies a pure hitter as "a guy who hits what he swings at and gets good results." So Szymborski looked back at hitters with a minimum of 2,000 plate appearances from 2008-14. He multiplied contact rate by batting average and came up with the following lists among active hitters:

With a little tinkering, Cabrera and Pujols would probably climb the list and overtake Scutaro and Pedroia in the top group. But you get the picture.

The gold standard