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Friday, July 30, 2010

Manley: How many homers has A-Rod REALLY hit?

According to most Mariott-i-teamsters, 6.

In order to accomplish what I wanted to, I determined what the number of home runs should have been hit each season in each park per at-bat. I did that by looking at average league home runs per year as well as park tendencies. Those numbers can be found in a variety of places. I established, for example, the average player on Seattle’s team should have hit 15.43 home runs in 1993 based upon the league averages and the Kingdome – AND assuming the number of at-bats that Ken Griffey had (582). He happened to hit 45 that season which was 29.57 above average (45.00 minus 15.43). It just so happens that his 29.57 AA in 1993 is #100 all-time.

In other words, given the league average home runs per at-bat, given 582 at-bats, given the home field as the Kingdome, Griffey was almost 30 home runs above what he should have been – above average (AA) – above what an average player would have done with the exact same 582 at-bats.

As you can imagine, I simply added up all the seasons for each player – whether they were above average (as was the case the vast majority of the time) or below average. The cumulative number indicates who was really the all-time best home run hitter.

Repoz Posted: July 30, 2010 at 10:52 AM | 2 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
  Tags: history, sabermetrics, yankees

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   1. UCCF Posted: July 30, 2010 at 12:04 PM (#3603382)
Doesn't it seem obvious that Ruth will run away with the lead for this? He was hitting more HRs than whole teams in the league.

At least I was wrong when I figured this was just another steroid article.
   2. Misirlou's got a busy day, he's wearing a vest Posted: July 30, 2010 at 12:37 PM (#3603391)
I established, for example, the average player on Seattle’s team should have hit 15.43 home runs in 1993 based upon the league averages and the Kingdome – AND assuming the number of at-bats that Ken Griffey had (582). He happened to hit 45 that season which was 29.57 above average (45.00 minus 15.43). It just so happens that his 29.57 AA in 1993 is #100 all-time.


Doesn't it seem obvious that Ruth will run away with the lead for this? He was hitting more HRs than whole teams in the league.


I wonder if the author is figuring out the averages while excluding the player in question. Most of the time it won't matter, but with some of the earlier sluggers, particularly Ruth, it will.

For example, in 1920, the Yankees hit 115 HR in 5176 AB, thus, the average Yankee, given Ruth's 458 AB, would be expected to hit 10.2 HR. But nearly half of those Yankee HRs were by Ruth himself. The average Yankee not named Ruth would be expected to hit 5.9 HR in 458 AB. In 1919, Ruth hit 29 of the Red Sox 33 HR. If his +/- for that year is anything lower than 28.5, the methodology is flawed.

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