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Recently, Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton belted his 300thcareer home run on August 31st. At age 28 and in just 1,119 games, he was the 5thfastest player to do so; beating him to it were Ralph Kiner, Ryan Howard, Juan Gonzalez, and Alex Rodriguez. As you may have noticed, none of the top three home run hitters in baseball history were quicker than Stanton. Therefore, we can conclude that Giancarlo will be our next home-run king, correct? Not so fast. Remember when Miguel Cabrera hit his 400thhome run back in 2015? He too was on a better pace than baseball’s home-run greats of Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds. However, in the past two seasons, Miggy has hit a depressingly low 19 home runs combined, making a home-run-record breaking career pretty much impossible. The truth of the matter with baseball’s home run record, and most of its records in general, is that it doesn’t matter how quickly or early a player accomplishes something. All that matters is that the player gets it done eventually and continues to do it consistently throughout the remainder of his career. Of the players that reached 300 quicker than Stanton, only one of them (Alex Rodriguez, 696 career home runs) went on to live up to -or at least around- his pace. Ralph Kiner only made it to 512. Juan Gonzalez only to 434. Andruw Jones, another one of the fastest players to reach 300, matched Gonzalez at 434. Ryan Howard failed to even continue to the 400-home run club, ending up with 382. The mid-to-late 30s (and at times even the early 30s) are a crucial period in a player’s career in terms of record-breaking. Players either hang around and continue to prove their worth or show their age and retire. It’s a large facet of what makes a player an all-time great. Let’s take a look at how several different players compare in their mid-to-late 30s: You probably see the pattern by now. The key to having a career with more home runs involves playing when you’re older and still hitting a lot of homers while doing so. With the exception of Ruth, all of the top career home run hitters (we’ll look at Pujols later) were hitting 25+ homers at age 39, whereas their counterparts that had more productive first-half careers were sitting at home on the couch at the same age. Breaking records is exciting. We all hope and prematurely predict players to break records, but unfortunately many of our predictions come up short. Players aren’t robots and many hit a sort of career wall by age 35. Stanton is on pace to be the next home run great, but he’ll have to keep it up for many years to come to be legitimate. The second half of a player’s career is just as important, if not more important, than the first half in deciding their relative greatness. With all that being said, the remainder of this week’s post will involve taking a look at today’s players and seeing who might (or might not) be giving the home run record a run for its money. I only used players that I found to be projected into the 600s, as well as notable active career home run leaders. Some important things to acknowledge before looking at the list are:
Before we start the actual list, let’s quickly find the number of additional home runs players will hypothetically hit the rest of this season as mentioned above: Now, we can finally proceed to our actual list: *note that the “current” home run values INCLUDE tthe Hypothetical Additional Home Runs calculated above* Please note below how I determined the average home runs per season for each player:
Thanks again for reading. I know this post was harder to understand and took more calculation time on my part, but hopefully you still found it interesting. Aaron Springer Sources Used: https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/05/16/miguel-cabrera-tigers-400th-career-home-run https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/200_Home_Run_Club https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/300_Home_Run_Club https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/400_Home_Run_Club https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/500_Home_Run_Club http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24527546/yankees-slugger-giancarlo-stanton-hits-300th-hr-5th-fastest-mark https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/HR_active.shtml I also used the Baseball-Reference Pages for the following players: Barry Bonds Hank Aaron Babe Ruth Alex Rodriguez Willie Mays Juan Gonzalez Andruw Jones Ryan Howard Albert Pujols Adrian Beltre Miguel Cabrera Giancarlo Stanton Mike Trout Khris Davis Nolan Arenado Joey Gallo Aaron Judge Cody Bellinger
1 Comment
Scott Springer
9/17/2018 07:52:19 am
Outstanding work as always. I would say no one threatens the HR mark as there is no longer a financial incentive to play to 40 and beyond which is where you would need to be to break it. Guys now have their lives set by the time they sign their bonus, so other than personal pride, there’s no career motivation to keep grinding. Players used to play longer because they had to.
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