Kuzul

There are 25 players who have hit 50 or more home runs in a single season, and they have combined to accomplish the feat on 41 different occasions.

While hitting 50 home runs in a season is certainly more common now than it traditionally has been throughout baseball history, it is still a rare feat nonetheless.

But imagine for a moment being one of the 17 players who have hit 49 home runs in a season, like Andre Dawson, who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next month.

If these guys had played 155 games instead of 154, or played one more game in a hitter-friendly park, or perhaps even batted one spot higher in the batting order that day they watched the game end from the on-deck circle, they would have joined the 50 Home Run Club.

Instead, they are forever linked to one another by the one swing of the bat that kept them from immortality.

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When you are a fan of a team like the Philadelphia Phillies, sometimes you’d rather score 10 runs and lose than score one run and win, particularly when your team has been struggling to score runs.

Saturday was one of those days.

The Phillies lost to the Minnesota Twins on Saturday afternoon by a score of 13-10 in a wild game in which the Phillies led 9-4 going into the ninth inning and managed to blow a five run lead.  

The Phils tossed the game when four different relievers allowed runs to give the game away the Twins in the later innings.

The positives from Saturday’s game far outweigh the negatives. The Phillies got off to a fast start, scoring eight runs in the first three innings. The Phillies came up with some clutch hitting, with Ross Gload hitting a game-tying two-out home run in the bottom of the 10th inning to extend the game.

Most of all, the Phillies hitters have come back to life, and frankly the entire City of Philadelphia finds itself climbing back in off the ledge.

Ryan Howard hit his fourth home run in the last four games and is now batting .291, Chase Utley went 3-for-5 to get his batting average “up” to .267, and Jayson Werth is starting to salvage his contract year after a devastating drought.

Hell, even Wilson Valdez hit a home run and failed to add to his staggering 10 double plays on the season.

Cole Hamels also had an effective outing for the Phils, which is always re-assuring. After giving up three runs in the first inning, Hamels settled down and gave up only one more run while going seven innings. Hamels finished with seven strikeouts and only one walk.

In fact, the only part of the Phillies game that failed to function on Saturday was the part of the Phillies team that they expect to get trouble from—the bullpen. Jose Contreras, Brad Lidge, Chad Durbin, and Danys Baez combined to give up nine runs in less than four innings of work.

And you know what?  The Phillies will take it.

When Roy Halladay pitched his perfect game against Josh Johnson on May 29th in Florida, it was a very exciting game for everyone involved.

At the same time, though, there was something disconcerting about the win: the Phillies managed only a single unearned run against Johnson, and barely won the game despite Halladay’s dominance.

That is not how this team wins games.

At the end of the day, the Philadelphia Phillies will win games in 2010 the same way they did in 2009 and 2008: by scoring lots of runs and surviving their pitching. And when a team follows that model, there are going to be days in which that team is going to lose 13-10. But on most days, the team will come away with a victory.  

And if scoring 10 runs on Saturday is another sign that the Phillies offense is back, then they know there will be plenty of victories to come.

This is where the Phillies need to be.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The NBA FInals are always fantastic. A Lakers-Celtics Finals is all-the-better. A Lakers-Celtics Game Seven is a can’t miss.

We understand that you were pre-occupied with basketball last night. That’s why we provide this primer on the top 10 things you missed in baseball yesterday.

This is a must read, because some of what you missed was nothing short of historical.

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The Philadelphia Phillies face off against the New York Yankees this week in Yankee Stadium, providing baseball fans in the northeastern United States with an opportunity to enjoy interleague play, cast their All-Star Ballots, and enjoy a potential World Series preview.

And in this sense, this week’s Phillies-Yankees series presents yet another reminder that Major League Baseball is broken.

Here’s how you fix it.

Problem 1: The Designated Hitter Rule

The current broken state of the MLB began in 1973, when the American League first introduced the Designated Hitter. 

While the problems with the DH to baseball purists are many—it eliminates strategy, it unfairly inflates offense, it encourages one-dimensional athleticism, it allows players to hang on well past their primes—in my opinion, there is only one problem with the designated hitter.

They only use it in one league.

Baseball is all about great performances, milestones being crossed, and records being broken.  If Frank Thomas needs to DH in order to stay on the field each day, so be it.  If we get to watch Edgar Martinez enjoy a full and complete career because he DH’ed, fine.  If we get to be enamored of repeated David Ortiz heroics because he can be a DH, great.

Baseball should be all about allowing aging and lumbering superstars continue to play in the league, at the expense of a handful of sacrifice bunts here and there.

The problem with the DH, though, is that by allowing one league to use a DH, while the other league does not, Major League Baseball has two different leagues playing by two different sets of rules.  This creates problems both visceral and substantive. 

From an aesthetic perspective, it is annoying having to compare AL pitchers to NL pitchers, always remembering that Dave Steib, Jimmy Key, Andy Pettitte, Ron Guidry, and Mark Langston likely would have enjoyed much more success if they’d been able to pitch in the National League, whereas Curt Schilling, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Mike Scott, and Dwight Gooden were able to rack up superior looking statistics while facing an empty slot in the lineup each time through the order.

More importantly, though, the designated hitter causes an imbalance between the leagues. 

American League teams are built with nine hitters, and the DH is often amongst the best hitters on the team—the Frank Thomases, Edgar Martinezes, David Ortizes, Jason Giambis, Paul Molitors, Jose Cansecos, and Don Baylors—while National League teams are built with eight hitters.

When an American League team and a National League team meet up, this means one of two things—either the AL team has to sit one of its hitters to let a pitcher hit (in NL parks) or the NL team has to add one hitter to play DH (in AL parks). 

The result of this is that the AL team always has the advantage: Either the AL team gets to pick eight of its best hitters, or the NL team has to put a back-up into its starting lineup.  Either way the AL comes out on top.

This was not really an issue when AL teams and NL teams only met in the World Series.  For a maximum of seven games each year, there was an imbalance, but it was usually inconsequential; the AL has won 21 of 37 World Series since the DH was introduced. (What appears to be a DH-related advantage is probably explained away by the advantage of having the New York Yankees in the AL.)

Once interleague play was introduced, however, the imbalance between the NL and the AL became magnified.  Coming into this season, the AL has had 1673-to-1534 won-loss advantage over the NL, and it has to be because of the day-in-and-day-out advantage of having the DH in the lineup.

We have created a professional sports league in which half of the teams have a decided advantage over the other half of the teams.

Solution?

Fortunately, the solution to the Designated Hitter problem could not be more straight forward: Introduce the Designated Hitter in the National League.  Yeah, sure, some people would hate it, but they’ll be gone eventually.

Problem 2: Unbalanced Divisions

The American League’s advantage over the National League is only enhanced by Major League Baseball’s unbalanced divisions.  At present, the NL has 16 teams, divided into two divisions of five and one division of six.  The AL, meanwhile, has only 14 teams, divided into two divisions of five and one division of four.

Despite the disparity, though, each league gets the same number of playoff slots—three division winners and a wild card—which means that the AL teams have less competition for a spot in the post-season than the NL teams do.  Further, four AL West teams get to take a shot at the automatic playoff berth that comes with winning their division, while six NL Central teams get to compete with one another for the same slot.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have definitely been bad the last 15 years, but keep in mind that they are the only team to finish in sixth place in their division six times in the last decade because they play in the only division that has a sixth place.

Is it fair to allow the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to go to the playoffs every season by beating three lowly teams while requiring the St. Louis Cardinals to have to bust through five other teams?

I think the answer to that question is clearly, “No.”

Solution?

If I were having this conversation with the Commissioners of Major League Baseball, I would imagine his response to the Unbalanced Divisions problem would be:

“We have to have unbalanced divisions because we can’t have 15 team leagues.”

To this I would say, “Hogwash.”

Major League Baseball currently treats Interleague Play as a grand spectacle, a special part of the season dedicated to a special part of baseball, a magic time when the AL and the NL face off, almost as though for exhibition.

The grand spectacle treatment of Interleague Play was necessary when the MLB schedule first featured games between the leagues back in 1997, because there was a lot of opposition to Interleague Play, and the MLB needed to acknowledge, in some way, that it was slaying a sacred lamb of sorts.

This is no longer the case.  Nearly 15 years later, Interleague Play has been accepted by nearly everyone, and it is not even sensational any more.  The Phillies are playing the Yankees this week—yawn.  It is no longer novel, it is no longer unique, and it is no longer special.

So . . .

In order to solve the Unbalanced Divisions problem, Major League Baseball should give up the ghost on Interleague Play and eliminate the practice of having discrete times of the year, in which all of the AL teams play NL teams (with two NL teams always facing off against each other, oh by the way).

Instead, with balanced divisions and 15 team leagues, at all times there would be one interleague series going at a time: 14 of the AL teams would face each other, 14 of the NL teams would face each other, and then 1 AL team and 1 NL team would face off in the one interleague series.

That way, every team is playing two series every week, and every team has an equal chance at the playoffs.

If the MLB still wants sacred ceremonial times of the year, we can still set aside certain weeks for Rivalry Week, when all 15 AL teams play NL teams, with each series featuring a rivalry (Mets vs. Yankees, Dodgers vs. Angels, etc.).

Problem solved.

(The NL teams, of course, will have to draw straws to determine which team moves to the AL, but for my money you move the Kansas City Royals to the AL West and you move the Pittsburgh Pirates to the AL Central.  That way Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Chicago-Detroit-Minnesota becomes an uber-regional division and the Pirates and Phillies can play on Rivalry Week).

Problem 3: The Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports

The third problem with Major League Baseball is the Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports: the “Winner of the All Star Game Gets Home Field Advantage in the World Series Rule.”

How do we solve it?

Easy: Get rid of it.  Let the team with the best record in the World Series get the home field advantage, and, if the freakin’ All Star Game is tied after 11 innings, let the pitching coaches throw batting practice balls to each team until one of them comes out of an inning with more runs.

Or whatever.  Who cares?  Just don’t give home field advantage to the league that won the big exhibition game in the middle of the season.

And then baseball will no longer be broken.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

He was a Gold Glove center fielder, a four-time World Champion, a batting title winner, and a fan favorite for the biggest, most important baseball team in the history of baseball.

So, let’s ask: Is Bernie Williams a Hall of Famer?

Statistics: Career Ranking Amongst Center Fielders

Perhaps the best place to start this analysis would be historical comparison to other center fielders.  In order to figure out whether we should consider Bernie Williams to be one of the best major league baseball players of all time, we need to first know if he was one of the best center fielders of all time.

For example, Williams hit 287 career home runs, which makes him 12th all-time in that category behind guys like Jim Edmonds, Ellis Burks, Fred Lynn, Steve Finely, and Jimmy Wynn.

Williams finished his career with 1,257 RBI, which is good for eighth amongst center fielders, behind seven guys who are either in—or will be in—the Hall of Fame.  He finished 12th in runs scored, behind a couple of non-Hall of Famers like Finley, Vada Pinson, and Kenny Lofton.

Bernie’s career batting average is 22nd all-time behind lots of non-Hall guys, like Lofton, Juan Pierre, Matty Alou, Dom DiMaggio, and Wally Berger.

Williams ranks 15th all-time in terms of center fielder OPS, but I think we all know that playing in the 1990s can inflate an OPS when compared to other eras.  His career OPS-plus was 125, which ranks 19th all-time behind several non-Hall guys.

There are several other less meaningful statistics that bear mentioning: 17th in hits, eighth in doubles, 60th in triples, ninth in walks, and 18th in strikeouts.

The statistic that makes Bernie look the best, though, is adjusted batting runs, in which Williams ranks 10th all-time, behind seven Hall of Famers and two possible future Hall of Famers in Ken Griffey Jr., and Jim Edmonds.

However, Bernie ranks 22nd amongst all center fielders in “wins above replacement” (WAR), which is designed to measure a player’s value compared to other players in his position in the league during his career.

And this point, it actually makes a lot of sense.  Keep in mind that Williams was a contemporary of Griffey, Edmonds, Andruw Jones, Kenny Lofton, Mike Cameron, Carlos Beltran, Kirby Puckett, and Mike Cameron.

Williams did not play during an era marked by a dearth of center fielders who could hit like, say, Mays and Mantle did, or like Cobb and Speaker did, or like Joe DiMaggio did.

In terms of overall value, meaning offense and defense, it would be hard to put Bernie Williams very high above his contemporary center fielders.

Certainly Jim Edmonds, who was a superior player to Williams on both offense and defense, would have to be a Hall of Famer before Bernie.

Intangibles: A Career Yankee

Bernie played for the New York Yankees from 1991 to 2006, and during that time he played in six World Series, winning four of them.  Is that great?

Yes, it is.

Bernie performed right around his career averages during the playoffs, with a .275 batting average and an .850 OPS, but he was positively terrible in World Series games, hitting .208 with a .677 OPS.  Does that matter?

Not really.

Whenever someone argues that part of the greatness of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, or Andy Pettitte is their record in the postseason, I am always forced to ask: Would they have performed as well if they weren’t Yankees?

Does the greatness of Derek Jeter equate to five World Series rings if he ends up playing for the Detroit Tigers instead of the Yankees?  Does Andy Pettitte pitch the Chicago Cubs to five World Series titles?  Does Mariano Rivera lock down five World Series titles for the San Diego Padres?

So, for Williams, my question is the same: Does Bernie Williams play center field for four World Series champions if he spends his career as a Los Angeles Dodger?

I think the answer to that question is “no.”

The reason I ask that question is this:

The Hall of Fame is not the Hall of Guys Who Played for the Yankees.

We want to put great players in the Hall, Yankees or not, but we don’t want part of the definition of a great player to be “played for the Yankees at a time when they were winning lots of World Series.”

For my part, I think Jeter, Posada, and Rivera are all Hall of Fame players before we even get to the “performed well in the postseason” part of the test, so this is no knock on them.

But for Williams and Pettitte, I am not so sure.

So What’s the Point of All This?

Bernie is a big-time borderline player.

To me, if I’ve got a vote, I don’t think I am casting it for Bernie Williams.

But at a bare minimum, I will say that if you think Bernie should be in the Hall, then you better also think Andruw Jones and Jim Edmonds should be as well, because they both out-shined Bernie over the course of the same period as players.

And if you think Williams, Edmonds, and Jones all belong in the Hall of Fame, then you better think of a good reason why Cesar Cedeno and Jimmy Wynn aren’t in the Hall of Fame.

But that is a conversation for another time.

Asher lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Andruw Jones of the Chicago White Sox stands just two home runs away from joining the 400 Home Run Club, a once exclusive club which now boasts 45 members.

There was a time when joining the 400 Home Run Club was a big deal, and usually meant automatic entry into the Hall of Fame.

Now, not so much.

I began watching baseball in 1987, and at that time there were twenty-one baseball players who had hit over 400 home runs, including then-active players Reggie Jackson, Dave Kingman, and Mike Schmidt.

By the time I turned 16 years old, that list also included Darrell Evans, Eddie Murray, Dave Winfield, and my childhood hero Andre Dawson, though it notoriously did not include Dale Murphy, who left the game after 42 homer-less at-bats in 1993 stuck at 398. We consider him an honorable mention.

Obviously, though, when we are discussing the 400 Homerun Club, implicitly we are talking about guys who did not hit 500 home runs. This is because, in baseball, 500 home runs is the Golden Ticket. With 500 home runs, you get the keys to the kingdom, you are royalty, and all others will bow before you or perish where they stand. Players who hit 500 home runs know where they stand in baseball history.

Players at 400-499 home runs, however, are harder to judge.

Different Eras, Different Players

As of 1993, the year of the first 1990’s expansion and the beginning of the current era as we know it, there were 12 players with more than 400 homeruns but less than 500, including Honorable Mentions Al Kaline (399) and Dale Murphy (398).

Since 1993, that list has doubled, including new Honorable Mentions Andres Galarraga (399) and Joe Carter (396).

For me, the 400 Home Run Club presents two questions that the 500 Home Run club does not:

First: Why was this player able to hit over 400 home runs?

Second: Why didn’t this player hit 500 home runs?

Any Willie Horton, Ron Gant, or George Foster can hit 300 home runs. And the greatest power hitters of all time don’t even look upon 500 home runs as a big accomplishment. But the 400-500 hom erun range is such a small window, and so few players have landed there, that it makes me wonder what it is about these players that got them there.

The Fundamental Issue

Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.  Maybe, in reality, all 400 Home Run Club members are actually either overachieving 300 Home Run Club members or underachieving 500 Home Run Club members.

So, our two questions slightly rephrased become:

Which members of the 400 Home Run Club are really 500 home run hitters in disguise, and which members of the 400 Home Run Club are really 300 home run hitters in disguise?

And so we adjust.

Adjusting the Pre-1993 400 Home Run Club

For the pre-1993 crew, this is a pretty simple exercise.  Of the 12 members, three guys right away stand out at 500 home run caliber players who were hampered into the 400 club.

Had Lou Gehrig not ended up with the terrible disease that now bears his name (ALS), he would have easily hit the seven more home runs he needed to get from 493 to 500.

Stan Musial , with 475, is certainly a 500 home run player when one considers his other extra base hits – 177 triples, most of which were hit in his prime, and 725 doubles – and his missed 1945 season due to World War II.

And Willie Stargell , with his 475 home runs, is clearly a 500 home run caliber hitter when one considers that he only played over 130 games ten times during his career.  Had he managed to play 15 more games per year, he more than likely would have been taking aim at 550 home runs.

I would also make the case for Dave Winfield , who finished his career with 465 home runs.

Dave Winfield

This is a hard case to make, because Winfield didn’t lose time to any wars, or to injury. In fact, Winfield reported straight to the Padres after being drafted as the fourth overall pick in 1973 and played in 56 games that season. Then he played until he was 43, which is hardly a short career.

Nevertheless, consider the following:

First, Winfield hit 247 home runs during his career on the road, compared to just 218 at home. This is a shocking number. What if he’d played for the Braves in the 1970s and 1980s? He’d have 600 home runs. What if he’d played in a neutral park? 494 home runs?

Second, Winfield played through two strikes. During his prime, in 1981, he played 105 games and hit 13 home runs. Was he good for eight more that season? Then, in 1994, he played in 77 of the Minnesota Twins 113 games, and he was healthy when the strike began, with 10 home runs. Was he good for five more that season?

I don’t think it is a stretch to say the guy was good for 35 more home runs if he’d played in neutral ballparks and had not missed time due to two strikes.

The Rocky Colavito Rule

At the other end of the list, there are four players who are clearly 300 home run caliber hitters in disguise at 400 home run caliber hitters. Maybe we could call this the “Rocky Colavito Rule.”

Rocky Colavito hit 374 home runs in about 14 full seasons during his career. He had 193 home runs at home, and 181 home runs on the road, about what you’d expect.

So what is the difference between Rocky Colavito and, say, Dale Murphy ? Well, as it happens, Murphy also hit 181 home runs on the road, but managed 217 home runs at home. And those 24 homeruns at home make up the difference between Murphy, an honorable mention 400 home run Clubber, and Colavito, who is pretty much the quintessential 350 guy.

Guess who else had 181 home runs on the road? Billy Williams , who is not an Honorable Mention but up in the 400 home run Club with 426. The home field advantage makes up the difference for Williams as well.

Of course, we don’t need Rocky Colavito to see through Duke Snider . The Duke hit 40-plus homeruns four years in a row playing for the Dodgers in Ebbets Field. The Dodgers moved to L.A. when Duke was 31, and he only hit over 16 home runs one more time during his career. If not for Ebbets Field, Duke may not even be a member of the 300 home run Club.

We also don’t need Colavito to see through Al Kaline . I love Al Kaline, and take nothing away from him. Indeed, I have always considered his 399 home runs maddening.

No need.

During his career at Tiger Stadium, Kaline hit 54 more homeruns at home than on the road (226/172). He would not have finished anywhere near 400 without the boost.

Quintessential 400 Homerun Club Guys

After eliminating those four players, on top of the four at the top of the list, we are left with just four remaining members of the 400 home run club from pre-1993 – Carl Yastrzemski (452), Dave Kingman (442), Andre Dawson (438), and Darrell Evans (414).

Basically, Yaz, Kingman and Dawson aren’t going anywhere – they are too low to boost to the 500 Club, but too solid to drop below 400.

I initially counted Darrell Evans amongst the “300 Home Run Clubbers in Disguise,” and a fair argument could be made. At the end of the day, he’s really just like Yaz – he played forever, which is allowed, he hit 195 home runs on the road, which is reasonable. He didn’t slam dunk 400 home runs, but I think he earned it.

Adjusting the Post-1993 400 Homerun Club

We will leave aside era for the time being, because I would argue away that none of the contemporary 400 Homerun Cub members could hang with the pre-1993 crowd, but that is not what this is about. So, same analysis as before.

First, which of these guys is actually a 500 home run clubber in disguise?

Off the top of the list, three guys immediately stand out.

The first is Fred McGriff , who is tied with Lou Gehrig at 493. Why? First, seven home runs is negligible over a 20-year career. Second, he had 34 home runs when the 1994 strike broke out – I think he would have managed seven more that season alone. And third, he hit 252 career home runs on the road – neutralize that and you’ve got a 500 homerun hitter.

The next guy that stands out on the list is Jose Canseco . Say what you will about Jose and his antics, his steroids, his ego, and his off-the-field behavior – in a vacuum, this guy was an elite homerun hitter.

Canseco finished his career with 462 home runs, with a 219/243 split. He played in 154 games in 1991, then managed to play just one more full season from 1992 to 2001 before retiring at the age of 36. If he manages to make two of those seasons complete, or if he manages to not get blacklisted late in his career, he gets 38 more home runs just by showing up with a bat.

Then there is Carlos Delgado . He is currently 38 years old, has 473 home runs, and appears to be out of baseball. Could he hit 27 more homeruns if he played this year and then again until 40 or 41. Yes, yes he could.

There is one more player I am going to bump up into the 500 home run category, but you need to brace yourself because I am about to drop some drama – Mike Piazza , and his 427 home runs, are in the 500 home run club.

Craziness, right? Well, not exactly.

Piazza, in my opinion, is the single most home-field disadvantaged player of all time. He has a home/road OPS split of (.880/.960); the number of players with a .960 OPS on the road period you can count with two hands.

Plus, playing catcher, Piazza pretty much stopped playing full seasons after the age of about 33, long before his home run hitting ability left him. Not only is Piazza a 500 home run caliber player, but I would put him ahead of many of the players on the 500 home run list.

The bottom of the list is a really difficult exercise, because there are so many players that you could say “If he hadn’t played in the 1990s, he wouldn’t be on the list.” But again, that’s not the point, or at least isn’t yet.

Joe Carter , who is only on the list as an Honorable Mention, fails the Colavito test, with 183 career home runs on the road. He too played through the 1994 strike, but that balances his home/road, if anything. Plus, Joe Carter sucked.

Andres Galarraga fell short of 400 by one, but unlike Kaline, he had a 202/197 home/road split so he doesn’t get disqualified there. He also played through the strike in 1994, and had 31 home runs, so he almost certainly would have hit his 400th home run, and probably his 410th home runs.

Plus, Galarraga missed all of 1999 due to cancer, after three straight years of 40-plus home runs, so he probably would have hit another 30-40 there. Dude’s a 400 home run clubber, and may even be a 500 guy if you really got me started.

Obviously, Galarraga benefited from Coors Field, and we have to take that into account. But we did – he only hit five more home runs at home than on the road in his career.

Quintessential 400 Home Run Clubbers from After 1993

I can’t really take anything away from the rest of these guys – Cal Ripken, Jr. (431) played every single day forever and did so in, at best, a neutral park; I’d say he earned it. Chipper Jones has spent his career in a park not known for giving up home runs, and has been injured often. Juan Gonzalez makes a better case for the 500 home run club than the 300 home run club – 237 home runs on the road (vs. 197 at home); missed the strike year; played his last full season at the age of 31. He also has steroids written all over him, but that’s a different matter – this guy is Ralph Kiner of the modern era.

The Result

So tallying up the score, and making the correct adjustments, we redistribute the 400 home run club as follows?

500 Home Run Club
Lou Gerhig
Willie Stargell
Stan Musial
Dave Winfield
Fred McGriff
Jose Canseco
Carlos Delgado
Mike Piazza

400 Home Run Club
Carl Yaztrzemski
Dave Kingman
Andre Dawson
Darrell Evans
Andres Galarraga
Cal Ripken, Jr.
Chipper Jones
Juan Gonzalez

300 Home Run Club
Dale Murphy
Billy Williams
Duke Snider
Al Kaline
Joe Carter

As for Andruw Jones, well, for now his numbers look pretty unassailable.  He actually has 216 home runs on the road compared with just 182 on the road – a shocking split.

He has also been basically M.I.A. since the age of 30, which makes his numbers shocking.

When Andruw joins the 400 home run club in the next week or two, he’ll definitely deserve it.

I just wish we’d have seen him stay healthy and active and make a run at 600.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

We’ve officially had two perfect games this season, and really we’ve had three.

How shocking is that?

Before 2010, Major League Baseball had only seen 18 perfect games – 16 if you don’t count the two in 1880, during an era in which baseball was very different from its post-1901 incarnation.

To have two (three) perfect games in one year defies logic and common sense. But sometimes these things happen.

Take a look.

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Jamie Ambler and I are both Featured Columnists covering the Philadelphia Phillies for Bleacher Report.

As we quickly learned upon meeting one another and becoming acquainted with each other’s perspectives on the Phillies and sports in general, there is very little we agree on.

From Ryan Howard to the Phillie Phanatic to Mike Schmidt to Richie Ashburn, ask these two guys a question, and chances are we’ll disagree.

In honor of our bipolar views on the world of sports, we present the first installment of The Philadelphia Feud: a new weekly feature in which Jamie and I debate hot topics from the Phillies, the NL East, Major League Baseball, and the world of sports.

Away we go.

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Cal Ripken, Jr., is one of the most celebrated players in baseball history.  Practically the Patron Saint of the state of Maryland, Ripken was beloved by home fans and road fans alike.  

Towards the end of his career, fans would flock to the ballpark in droves in order to catch a glimpse of what was palpably a living legend.

Why?  Because he played the game the right way, he showed up for work every single day, and in the 1990s, as his skills began to erode, he kept playing long, hard games every day, and kept working to get better.

Everyone loved Cal Ripken, Jr.

Albert Belle is one of the most loathed horse’s asses in baseball history.  Essentially the nastiest piece of work to hit the major leagues in the last 50 years, Belle was loathed by road fans and home fans alike.  

In 1995, when he had one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time for one of the greatest teams of all time, he was passed over for the AL MVP in favor of the clearly inadequate Mo Vaughn.  When Belle became Hall of Fame eligible, he didn’t get a sniff.

Why?  Because he was truly a horse’s ass.  He hated his coaches, his teammates, the fans, and of course the media.  One of the most talented players in the game during the 1990s, he’d just as soon hit a guy as talk to him.

Everyone hated Albert Belle.

If Albert Belle and Cal Ripken, Jr., reside at opposite ends of the player-popularity spectrum, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter has a time-share at one end and a luxury apartment at the other end.

Derek Jeter is one of the most polarizing players in Major League Baseball, and has been for the last 15 years.  Why?

Because he isn’t Albert Belle, and he isn’t Cal Ripken, Jr.  He is both, but he is also neither.

What makes Derek Jeter so polarizing is as simple as this: he is no where as good as Yankees fans/Jeter-lovers want to think he is, and yet he is no where near as bad as Yankee-haters/Jeter-haters are convinced that he is.

And that’s the whole problem: the nationwide war of attrition over Derek Jeter actually has little to do with Jeter’s actions—either on or off the field—and everything to do with his supporters and his detractors.

Jeter supporters have created a Cult of Jeter Personality whereby the right and just Jeter is, at once, one of the greatest hitters of all time but also one of the greatest shortstops of all time, to say nothing of being the greatest clutch hitter of all time.

The Great Jeter will one day surpass Pete Rose as the All-Time Hits Leader, or so we’re told, at which point he will become the greatest player in the history of baseball.

Jeter detractors have created this evil emperor, a Kim Jong-Jeter of sorts, who plays terrible defense, hurts his team with consistent me-first hitting that is lacking in any sort of palpable value, and gets all the credit for several World Series Championships bought and paid for with the highest payroll in baseball.

The so-called “Jeter”, whom his fans would say puts the team and the game above himself, failed in the ultimate moment—according to his detractors—when he had the chance to do the right thing by handing over the shortstop job to Alex Rodriguez, the better defender, when he arrived in New York.

No matter the offensive accomplishments that Jeter stockpiles, they will never be enough to undo the damage he has done to his pitchers and his team over the years with his defense, his ego, and his need for self-fulfillment.

Or so we’re told.

At the end of the day, the truth of the matter is: both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.

You’re wrong, Jeter-haters: Derek Jeter has been an incredibly valuable hitter over the years, regularly hitting .300 with around 200 hits and scoring tons of runs.

But you’re wrong, too, Jeter-supporters: In 1999, at the age of 25, Jeter hit 24 home runs with 102 RBI, led the AL with 219 hits, scored 134 runs, and batted .349.  Hitting for power suited him, but he never developed into that player.

And that player would have been far more valuable than the player Jeter became.

And you’re also wrong, Jeter-lovers, about his clutch-hitting: Mr. November isn’t always so clutch as you’d like to believe he is, like in the 2001 World Series against Arizona, when he hit .148 with a .438 OPS.

And, he didn’t win all those World Series by himself, you know—Jeter has always been surrounded by elite talent.

But at the same time, Jeter-detractors, his post-season career is just amazing—he’s had ten separate post-season series in which he’s hit over .400, and his career World Series batting average is .321.

Nevertheless, Jeter-supporters have really missed the boat regarding Jeter’s defense. They’ve been fooled into believing that flashy plays equals great defense, while subtly ignoring Jeter’s horrendous range.

Not one but two studies have now been done in the last few years that involved watching actual videotape of every play that takes place during the season, and both studies show Jeter to be a horrendous defender, consistently amongst the worst in the league.

On the other hand, Jeter-detractors jumped on this nugget of information and ran with it for years.  They ran with it so fast that they failed to notice that, perhaps in response to those studies, Jeter has actually massively improved his defense the last couple of years, taking steps to improve his horrendous range and actually becoming a very good defender at an age that many would have thought too old to actually improve defensively.

This fact is, in a very underrated way, perhaps one of the great selfless moments in Jeter’s career.

And really, that is just one part of the reason that, like him or hate him (like the Yankees or hate the Yankees), there is no doubt that Jeter definitely falls into the Cal Ripken, Jr., class of talented players with lots of charisma and charm, rather than the surly, nightmare, bastard group with Albert Belle.

Jeter is, like Ripken, something good about baseball, and a face worth putting out there.

But at the same time, like him or hate him, Jeter is not a.) the greatest shortstop of all time; b.) the greatest hitter of all time; or c.) the greatest Yankee of all time, and frankly the girth of his myth is kind of insulting to everyone around him and around baseball, including Cal, Alex Rodriguez, a handful of Yankees, a handful of shortstops, and not a few fans of Pete Rose.

At the end of the day, if we could have some understanding between Jeter-supporters (read: New Yorkers) and Jeter-detractors (read: everyone else), and reach a compromise about his rightful place in Yankee/shortstop/baseball history, then maybe we could all relax and enjoy the rest of his career together.

Because to me, Derek Jeter is one of the Top 100 greatest players of all time, and it is a joy to get to watch such a talented player play the game of baseball.

The fact that half of the people reading the previous paragraph disagree with it because they think it is too low, and the other half disagree because they think it is too high, means we probably aren’t there yet.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of baseballevolution.com .

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In his book, “The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract,” Bill James described Darrell Evans as “probably the most underrated player in baseball history.”

James supported his argument by pointing out that while Evans had a low batting average (.248), he had a very high “secondary average,” which is a statistic Bill James uses to measure, well, everything else.

Whatever. I’ll take his word for it.

So in honor of Bill James and the underrated baseball player poster-boy Darrell Evans, I present the list of the 25 most underrated players in baseball history.

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