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When Babe's in a Bond, a Hammer Comes to the Rescue: Deciding Who Should be Baseball's Home Run King9/9/2018 Before I start my second post I encourage you to take a look at my first post, which investigated the implications that the 1961 Major League Baseball increase in games played had on the total career hit count of Ty Cobb. We concluded (or better yet, I concluded, seeing that every response to last week’s poll still voted Pete Rose as baseball’s hit king) that the additional 8 games per year actually had a massive impact on Cobb’s statistical potential, as he was deprived of roughly 650 at-bats which was translated to about 225 more hits for his career. This week’s post will deal with a very similar issue, but instead of the impact that the switch to 162 games had on certain players’ career hits, we will look at the impact that the switch had on certain player’s career home runs. The subject of home run king has been an icy topic, as baseball’s current leader Barry Bonds (762 career homers) has been highly believed to have used steroids/PEDs. This controversy has thwarted Bonds from being inducted into Cooperstown despite more than enough achievements to deem him worthy of the reward. In fact, because of his alleged steroid use, many true baseball fans still consider Hank Aaron (755 home runs) to be the home run king. However, it is neither of these two leaders, but the third-place finisher Babe Ruth (714 home runs), who we will be taking the deepest look at. As I’ve mentioned before, in 1961 the MLB increased the number of games played in a season to 162 – 8 more than the previous 154 used since 1904 (with the notable exception of 1919, when 140 games were played). Bonds had the 162-game luxury his entire career, as he played from 1986-2002. Ruth, on the other hand, was deprived of these extra games every year of his career from 1914-1935. Unlike last week, this time around we will have an exciting third player and element to take into the picture, as Hank Aaron was actually also deprived of the 162-game mark for several seasons being that he played from 1954-1976. So again, let’s try to answer the question: If all three players were able to play 162 games each season, who would be the home run king? As I said last week, not every player plays in every single game of their team’s season. Thus, we will take the percentage of the 154 games that Ruth and Aaron played and use it to find the number of games they would have played in a 162-game season. Starting with “The Bambino”: ** We did not include the 1914 season since Ruth hit no home runs that year. He was primarily a pitcher during his stint with the Red Sox and thus deprived of more could-have-been homers. More on this later.** By adding up all of the New Games Played for each season, we get a New Career Games Played of 2,650 for Babe Ruth; 147 more games than his actual career total of 2,503 thanks to the MLB rule change. Now we’ll calculate the same thing for the 7 seasons in which “Hammerin’ Hank” was only able to play a maximum of 154 games: By adding up all of the New Games Played for each season with all of his career games played from 1961 to 1976, we get a New Career Games Played of 3,353 for Hank Aaron; 55 more games than his actual career total of 3,298 thanks to the MLB rule change. Now that we know how many extra games each player would have had, we can use this information to calculate how many extra at-bats they would have gotten as well. Again, we’ll start with the “Sultan of Swat”: Adding up the total of the New Total At Bats in Season gives us a New Total At Bats in Career of 8,890 for Babe Ruth; an extra 491 at bats more than his actual career total of 8,399 thanks to the MLB rule change. Again, now we’ll do the same process for Hank Aaron: Adding up the total of the New Total At Bats in Season with his total at bats from 1961-1976 gives us a New Total At Bats in Career of 12,577 for Hank Aaron; an extra 213 at bats more than his actual career total of 12,364 thanks to the MLB rule change. Lastly, we can now use each player’s New Total At Bats per Season and multiply it by their home-run percentage (home runs hit in season divided by at bats in season) in order to get their New Home Runs in Season. Then we’ll simply add up the new home runs in each season in order to get the new total career home runs for each player. Like before, we will start with the “Colossus of Clout”: For one last time, by adding up the total of the New Home Runs in Season, we get the New Total Home Runs in Career of 746 for Babe Ruth; 32 more home runs than his actual career total of 714 thanks to the MLB rule change. These numbers obviously show that Ruth would have been able to increase his home run amount by a fair amount, but still wouldn’t be have enough to top Aaron or Bonds. But will Aaron have the same fate? Let’s check it out: Adding up the New Home Runs in Season with his total home runs from 1961 to 1976 gives us a New Total Home Runs in Career of 763 for Hank Aaron; 8 more home runs than his actual career total of 755 thanks to the MLB rule change. Thus, had Aaron been able to play 162 games for the first seven years of his career, he likely would have barely had more homers than Bonds, beating him out by literally one career home run. But wait! There’s more! Remember how we mentioned that Babe Ruth was mainly a pitcher during his years with the Red Sox? What if Ruth was able to be the legendary slugger that he went on to be during the first six years of his career? Although Ruth was finally allowed to be a position player in his 5th and 6th years with the Red Sox, he still was used often as a pitcher, pitching in 20 and 17 games respectively. For the purpose of this extra add-on, we’ll recalculate Ruth’s New Home Runs by multiplying his Home Run Percentage for those years with the average New Total At Bats Per Season he had throughout the rest of his career. Let’s do it: *Note: the New Total At Bats in Season from 1920 to 1935 add up to 7,684; dividing this by 16 gives us the Average New Total At Bats in Season of 480.25, which we round down to 480* **Also, since Ruth didn’t hit any homers in 1914, largely due to his lack of games played, we are forced to assume that he still wouldn’t have played often or hit any home runs that year** Adding up Ruth’s New Home Runs in Season for his first 6 seasons (86) with his New Home Runs in Season for the remaining 16 seasons (693) gives us a New Total Home Runs in Career of 779 for Babe Ruth; 65 more home runs than his actual career total of 714 thanks to the MLB rule change and his being primarily a pitcher for the start of his career. Thus, with the information that we’ve gathered, had all 3 sluggers been able to play as position players their entire career and play 162 games each season, Babe Ruth would likely be our home run king with about 779 homers compared to Aaron’s 763 and Bond’s 762. However, Ruth’s pitching status was a decision made based on his skill at an early age, something that he could have hypothetically changed had he shown a greater aptitude for hitting rather than pitching. On the other hand, the switching of the number of games played each season was an executive decision made by the MLB and totally out of the players’ hands. It is for this reason that I believe that Hank Aaron should be considered baseball’s all-time Home Run King. Even though his new numbers only show him beating Bonds by a mere one home run, he was able to accomplish that feat steroid-free. The topic is still largely up for debate, but I hope this investigation helped to put each of the careers of the three players involved into a better perspective. As always, this post used statistical assumptions that both Ruth and Aaron would continue to hit homers at the same rate they had been doing all season in their extra games. Both players could have hit or more less homers than predicted and thus changed their hypothetical career totals. Thanks again for sticking around and giving this a look. Best wishes, Aaron Springer Sources used: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/aaronha01.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthba01.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron
1 Comment
SCOTT SPRINGER
9/9/2018 06:54:30 pm
Though I had you pegged as an "Aaron", you hit this one out of the park by going with George Herman Ruth hitting dead balls with authority while training on nothing but hot dogs and beer.
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