I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but it is going to be interesting to find out.

When Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were active, the majority of fans rated Mays ahead of Mantle, often with the disclaimer that if Mickey had Mays’ health, it might have been different.

Now that we have “experts” such as Bill James and his ilk, a bevy of measurements exist that have led to the conclusion that Mickey was better than we thought.  The primary reason is that his peak years were better than Willie’s.

Mickey Mantle’s best season was 1956, when he won the Triple Crown, leading the majors with a .353 batting average, 52 home runs, and 130 RBIs.

His next best season was 1957, when he batted .365, hit 34 home runs, and had 94 RBIs. 

Following the 1957 season, New York Yankees’ general manager “Lonesome” George Weiss wanted to cut Mickey’s salary, claiming that with the exception of batting average, Mickey had fallen well short of his 1956 numbers.

Bill James and his sabermetricians have changed all that.

It is difficult to conclude that any one of a number of seasons was Willie’s best.  His highest batting average of .347 was achieved in 1958, but he hit “only” 29 home runs in Candlestick Park.

In 1955 Willie hit 51 home runs, and in 1965 he hit 52.  His best RBI season was 1962, when he drove home 141 San Francisco Giants.

Let’s select 1954, when he won the batting title, as one of Willie’s best two seasons, and 1955 as the other.

Mickey Mantle                            
Year   2B    3B    HR    RBI    BA    OBA    SA
1956    22    5    52    130    .353    .464    .705
1957    28    6    34    94     .365     .512    .665
                           
Willie Mays                            
Year    2B    3B    HR    RBI    BA    OBA    SA
1954    33    13    41    110    .345    .411    .667
1955    18    13    51    127    .319    .400    .659

It is closer than one might think, but Mantle gets a slight edge.  While Mickey’s walks bolstered his on base average, Willie hit many more triples.

Another factor is that Willie’s role with the 1955 New York Giants was to drive in runs, because he was the primary, and with the possible exception of Henry Thompson, the only real RBI threat on the team.

Mickey had Yogi Berra, Moose Skowron, Hank Bauer, and a young Ellie Howard, which meant there was more of a chance that a Mickey Mantle walk would lead to a Yankees’ rally, than a Willie Mays walk would lead to a Giants’ rally.

Now let’s examine their third and fourth best two seasons.  

For Mickey, let’s take 1961, which some claim was his second best season, and 1958.

For Willie, let’s use 1965, when he hit 52 home runs, and 1957, when he had at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs playing on a terrible New York Giants’ team.

Mickey Mantle                            
Year    2B    3B    HR    RBI    BA    OBA    SA
1961    16    6    54    128    .317    .448    .687
1958    21    1    42    97     .304    .443     .592
                           
Willie Mays                           
Year   2B    3B    HR    RBI    BA    OBA    SA
1965    31    3    52    112    .317    .398    .645
1957    26    50    35    97    .333    .407    .626

It is impossible to decide which player had the best four top offensive seasons, especially since Willie played on Giants’ teams that often were out of contention and Mickey didn’t, at least until 1965.

All that the above does is confirm the greatness of both players, but let’s conclude by examining the top four offensive seasons of the best player in the game today.

Albert Pujols                           
Year   2B    3B    HR    RBI    BA    OBA    SA
2006    33    1    49    137    .331    .431    .671
2004    51    2    46    123    .331    .415    .657
2009    45    1    47    135    .327    .443    .658
2003    51    1    43    124    .359    .439    .667

Any comments?

References:

Mickey Mantle at Baseball Reference

Willie Mays at Baseball Reference

Albert Pujols at Baseball Reference

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The talk in Boston prior to the Red Sox-Dodgers series was how to treat Manny Ramirez. Should he be booed?  Cheered?  In the end, there were mixed reactions.  But nonetheless, fans paid more on the secondary ticket market to see Manny and the Dodgers play the Sox at Fenway Park.  

We looked at the Dodgers ticket prices at Fenway this weekend and it is pretty interesting:

The Dodgers versus the Red Sox is a top matchup, so we would expect ticket prices to be above average. Even so, it is interesting to speculate the degree to which Manny Ramirez’s return to Fenway impacted this jump as well. Note also that the series trends are in-line with our previous analysis on MLB Ticket Prices by Day and Time. Please comment below with your thoughts.

Raw Ticket Data (Dodgers at Red Sox)

Dodgers vs Red Sox: 6/18/2010— $128.68 average ticket price

Dodgers vs Red Sox: 6/19/2010— $139.62 average ticket price

Dodgers vs Red Sox: 6/20/2010— $121.78 average ticket price

Red Sox Season Average— $81.85 average ticket price

Don’t forget, Boston Red Sox tickets and Los Angeles Dodgers tickets are aggregated on our site with price forecasts if you are looking to head out to the ballpark sometime this season.

Continue to check back for more sports data from our great team of writers. As always, shoot us specific ideas for analysis or reports on Twitter at @SeatGeek or email me at chad[at]seatgeek.com.

This article is also featured on  SeatGeek Blog

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

At SeatGeek , we use ticket data from transactions on the secondary market to make many inferences about the sporting world and fan sentiment. Today, we took a look at the change in prices of tickets for each team in the MLB from 2009 to 2010. The teams with the largest percentage increase from last year to this year were dubbed the “Surprise Teams” of 2010.

As you can see from the title, the two surprise teams of 2010 are the San Diego Padres  and theTampa Bay Rays . Coincidentally, these two teams begin a three-game series tonight in Tampa. They are also currently two of the best in baseball. If the season ended today, both would make the playoffs; the Padres as the NL West Champion and the Rays as the AL Wild Card Winner (TB is currently tied with the Red Sox for the Wild Card, so they’d actually have to play a one-game playoff, but my point is that they’re good). As of June 22, the Rays have a 42-27 record, while the Padres are 40-29.

In 2009, the Rays were still really good, finishing the season in third place in the AL East behind the Yankees and Red Sox, with an 84-78 record. However, this year they are even better. They’ve had the best record in the league for most of the season and only recently have fallen back into the pack a bit. Undoubtedly, their stellar start to the season has had a reflection on ticket prices on the secondary market, causing the increase in average ticket price transaction from 2009 to 2010.

Last year, the average transaction price for Tampa Bay Rays tickets was $33.68. In 2010, that price has risen to $42.56. The superstar play of Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, David Price, and Jeff Neimann have given the Rays a lot of success this year, which in turn has driven up the price of tickets on the secondary market.

The Padres have seen an even greater improvement in their play from 2009 to 2010. Last year, the Padres finished with a 75-87 record but have turned it around due in large part to their pitching staff. The likes of Jon Garland, Mat Latos, and Heath Bell, coupled with perennial MVP candidate Adrian Gonzalez, have put the Padres in first place and have increased the price of tickets for their home games on the secondary market.

In 2009, Padres transaction ticket prices were $35.83. This year, their prices have risen to $46.74! In percentage terms, the Padres ticket prices rose a league-leading 30.5 percent, while the Rays’ prices rose 26.4 percent.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @SeatGeekMLB, or email justin@seatgeek.com for more MLB news, analysis, and ticket information.

This article is also featured on   SeatGeek Sports Blog

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There probably isn’t a single baseball fan in the country who hasn’t heard Ubaldo Jimenez  called “lucky.”

For several weeks now, analysts have devoted countless hours and vast amounts of energy to debunking the theory that Jimenez is—as his 13-1 record and 1.15 ERA suggest—one of the best pitchers in the history of the game. And with good reason.

There’s no question Jimenez is a talented pitcher entering the prime of what will certainly be an impressive career. But he’s not an all-time great, and he’s definitely not the greatest of all time.

Jimenez’ 7.8 K/9 rate is impressive (though not legendary—he’s looking up at not only Tim Lincecum and Josh Johnson, but guys like Javier Vazquez and Felipe Paulino), but it’s not enough for us to turn a blind eye to his occasional control problems (3.2 BB/9). A 2.44 K/BB ratio is nothing to sneeze at, but he’s got nothing on Dan Haren (5.05), Roy Halladay (5.63), or the superhuman Cliff Lee (16.75).

As a result, Ubaldo’s FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching—an estimate of what a pitcher’s ERA would be with a neutral defense, based solely on strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed) is an impressive but significantly less godlike 2.93. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and it’s the seventh-best mark in the game. But it’s more than two-and-a-half times his ridiculous 1.15 ERA.

And that’s before you consider Jimenez’s ludicrously low 3.8 percent HR/FB rate. That’s why his 3.61 xFIP (same as FIP, but with home runs allowed replaced by “expected” home runs allowed, based on the pitcher’s fly ball rate and the league average HR/FB rate) is significantly higher even than his FIP. And that’s normalized for a pitcher in a neutral park, not one who plays half his games at the launching pad of Coors Field.

Substitute his xFIP for his ERA and ignore the wins (naturally, he wouldn’t have as many if he gave up more runs) and you’ve got a questionable All-Star, not a unanimous Cy Young.

I don’t think that Jimenez really deserves an ERA approaching 4.00, but his true talent is probably a lot closer to his xFIP than his ERA.

So where is all this luck coming from?

The fishiest thing about Jimenez’s season so far is his 91.2 percent LOB rate. In other words, fewer than one out of every 11 baserunners he’s allowed have ended up crossing the plate. The discrepancy between his strand rate and the norm (72 percent) is greater than the overall range of qualified pitchers’ LOB rates in 2008.

It makes sense that a better pitcher would strand more runners; the better the pitcher, the better the chance of making an out, so the other team has fewer opportunities to score. But Jimenez’ 91.2 percent figure places his performance well outside the reach of logic and fully inside the realm of luck.

Consider the case of John Candelaria, whose 88.8 percent strand rate in 1977 stands as the closest anyone has come to pulling a Ubaldo over a full season since at least 1973. The year before that, his strand rate was 72.5 percent; the year after, it fell to 76.8 percent. Simply put, you can’t sustain a number like that for long unless you’re playing Xbox.

Then, of course, there is the issue of Jimenez’s BABIP. I’m a firm believer that pitchers have some degree of control over where and how hard the ball is hit. I wouldn’t think it noteworthy if Ubaldo’s hit rate had merely slipped to .290, or .280, maybe even .270. But if you think the ability to induce weak contact is the reason his hit rate stands at an historically low .239 mark, I’m going to have to stop you right there.

It takes a lot more than talent for a pitcher to sustain a hit rate that low for more than a few weeks. Since 1989, only one pitcher (Chris Young in 2006-7) has posted a hit rate at or below Jimenez’ current .239 mark over a full season without it ballooning 50 points or more the following year.

Now, some say that Jimenez’ hit rate is explained by the kind of contact he’s induced—his 13.8 percent line-drive rate is the third-lowest in the league, and his 54.9 percent groundball rate ranks fifth. But there’s no refuge in that argument, either.

Looking at tRA, a statistic similar to FIP but which also takes a pitcher’s batted-ball profile into account, Jimenez is expected to give up 3.09 runs per nine innings. That’s not a bad number by any stretch, but it’s not good enough to put Ubaldo in the history books.

So even if you assume that his low line drive and HR/FB rates are the product of sustainable skill and not felicitous chance (statements which many statheads would vociferously rebut), Jimenez could be expected to give up nearly three times as many runs as he is now if he had neutral luck.

There’s no question Ubaldo Jimenez is a good pitcher, or that his is an arm to watch for years to come. But once the winds of fortune stop blowing in from the Coors bleachers, no one will mistake him for the best pitcher in the game.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Through his first 13 starts in 2010, the Atlanta Braves have given pitcher Kenshin Kawakami pitiful run support.

With the Braves scoring just 3.13 runs in KK’s outings, it’s hardly a surprise that he is 0-9. Bad luck combined with mediocre pitching can do that to you.

Last year, the lack of run support given to Mets ace Johan Santana was a hot topic in baseball. I wrote an article (spurred by some moronic comments from Steve Phillips) and concluded that Johan’s lack of run support was mostly due to the opposing pitcher (and not the vibe that Santana gave off on Mets hitters).

Kawakami earned the nickname “Dragon Slayer” last year, as he faced opposing teams aces a fair amount of the time despite pitching out of the back of the rotation.

With that in mind, I think it is worth taking a look at his 2010 opponents to see why the Braves fail to score when he is on the mound.

In his first four starts (in which KK went 0-4) he faced Tim Lincecum, Ubaldo Jimenez (who threw a no-hitter that night), Hisanori Takahashi, and Jaime Garcia.

Of those four pitchers, Takahashi has the worst ERA at 3.13. A 3.13 ERA could make someone an ace (or at least a quality number one starter).

In May, the opponents got a little easier for KK. He lost to Livan Hernandez (2.94 ERA, which makes him a top pitcher this year even if we all know he isn’t), Cole Hamels (the first non-ace Kawakami faced, although Hamels is a solid second starter), and Anibal Sanchez (3.22 ERA, good for the top spot on most teams).

His three no decisions in May came against the likes of Ian Kennedy (3.57 ERA), Aaron Harang (5.44) and Paul Maholm (3.77). Harang is the only back of the rotation pitcher out of that bunch.

In his first three June starts, Kenshin, a number five starter himself, faced Clayton Kershaw (2.96), Ian Kennedy (again), and David Price (2.31).

So all in all, through his first 13 starts of 2010, Kawakami faced exactly one pitcher (Aaron Harang) with an ERA over 3.80. While KK is pitching out of the fifth rotation spot, he clearly isn’t facing other teams’ worst starters.

The great ERAs show the guys Kawakami has faced this year are shutting down just about everyone, not just the Braves. While the lack of run support KK gets is disturbingly low, it’s not all that unexpected when you see who he is pitching against.

In short, the small run support Kenshin Kawakami is getting isn’t just bad luck, but bad matchups as well.

All in all, Kawakami’s 0-9 record might be a blessing in disguise for the Braves. Instead of having the entire rotation line up, they likely have a better pitcher four out of every five times out.

The times they are facing another teams’ ace, KK takes the loss (which is the likely outcome for the Braves anyway) and the Braves have a better chance to win 80% of the time.

This article is also featured on Tomahawk Talk

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Here’s a look at the unheralded players who played well yesterday:

Jesse Litsch, Toronto Blue Jays (pictured)
Litsch threw 7 scoreless innings allowing just 3 hits. He got bombed in his first start (2-1/3 IP, 7 runs) so you’ll have to give it a few more starts before you know what you’re dealing with.

J.D. Martin, Washington Nationals
Martin took the loss despite giving up 1 run in 6 innings with 6 Ks. He’s 0-3 with a 3.55 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP.

Justin Smoak, Texas Rangers
Smoak went 3 for 4 with a HR (8) and 3 RBIs. He has 7 RBIs in the past two games.

Russell Branyan, Cleveland Indians
Branyan went 1 for 4 with a HR (9) and 3 RBIs (23). He’s hitting just .248.

Lastings Milledge, Pittsburgh Pirates
Milledge went 3 for 4 with a run and 3 RBIs. He’s hitting .276 with 22 RBIs.

Gaby Sanchez, Florida Marlins
Sanchez went 3 for 6 with a run and an RBI. He’s hitting .287 with 7 HRs and 29 RBIs.

Potent Middle Relievers
Hong-Chih Kuo, LAD:  1-1/3 IP, 0 Runs, 3 Ks (26 Ks, 21 IP)
Matt Guerrier, MIN:  2 IP, 0 Runs, 4 Ks (21 Ks, 32 IP)
Joel Hanrahan, PIT:  1 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Ks (44 Ks, 28-2/3 IP)
Andy Sonnanstine, TB:  Save, 1 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Ks (25 Ks, 38 IP)
Jason Motte, STL:  Save, 1 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Ks (35 Ks, 29 IP)
Jason Berken, HOU:  1 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Ks (26 K, 37 IP)
Edward Mujica, SD:  1 IP, 0 Runs, 2 Ks (35 Ks, 35 IP)

Also check out:  
Fantasy Baseball Streaming Option for Father’s Day

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

If you are a true baseball fan, you’re probably a regular visitor to Baseball-Reference.com. 

If you are a sports writer, you most likely set your sails for Baseball-Reference.com prior to writing your baseball pieces.

What exactly is Baseball-Reference.com?

It is a virtual warehouse of statistics covering every player who has played an inning of Major League Baseball.

It is the vast file cabinet where all baseball numbers reside, waiting to be retrieved at your command.

If you want to know what Roy Halladay’s career record is against the New York Yankees, you will find it there. By the way, as of this morning (Saturday, 6/19/2010) he is 18-7 with a 2.98 ERA, and the Yankees are collectively batting .241 against him.

All of that information is found with less than a handful of mouse clicks. Impressive?

I wouldn’t think of beginning a baseball article without spending some time at Baseball-Reference.com.

I must warn you, if you have never visited the site, be prepared to clear your day calendar as it is addictive and can cause the clock on the wall to go by much faster than usual.

I enjoy the site so much (I’m a subscriber) that I wanted to find out more about the site and discover a little about the man behind the statistic factory known as Baseball-Reference.com

The following is an interview I conducted with the founder of the site, and President of Sports Reference LLC, Sean Forman.

CE: Sean, first I want to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions and to enlighten the public on the many attributes of Baseball-Reference.com. My first question is, when did you launch the site?

SF: April 1, 2000.  I had to wait until I could find a cheap web host offering 200MB of disk space.

CE: My how times change. Today, 200MB is a bb rolling around in a boxcar. What was the impetus for this endeavor, what drove you to develop such a fantastic source for baseball fanatics?

SF: Basically, at that time there was no site that had historical stats.  You couldn’t get Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb’s stats on the internet.  I also thought that the Internet was the perfect form for an encyclopedia.  Centrally updated for all, lots of good hyperlinking and infinite space available.

CE: Do you have a background in sports, mathematics, computers or what is the extent of your knowledge and experience?

SF: I have a Ph.D in Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences from the University of Iowa.  I played a lot of sports growing up through high school.  Golf was actually my main favorite.  I’ve always loved sports stats from sorting my baseball cards by stats on the back, keeping track of my fantasy league’s stats, or collecting tackle stats for my dad’s football team while in junior high.

CE: Almost everything on the site is free. The “Play Index” area (probably 95 percent) is free to sample and experiment with, but due to the enormous amount of information that is crunched in such a short time, a subscription is required to gain full access to it. What are some of the things it enables a researcher to discover?

SF: I like to say we put a friendly face on the RetroSheet data.  You can search for things like all five-hit games against the Yankees.  The most doubles by a catcher in the 1950s.  The most pitches thrown in relief in 2000, and lots, lots more.  You can get 95 percent of the data for free, but we think that last five percent is a compelling reason to subscribe.

CE: I concur completely. Being a Cincinnati Reds fan, I was watching a FoxSports Ohio game broadcast by Chris Welsh who mentioned that he had a subscription to Baseball-Reference.com.  Obviously, the site is so popular, it is not only frequented by bloggers and freelance writers like myself, but also professionals such as Welsh and so many other writers and announcers. Did you ever, at the beginning, envision the far-reaching effect of this website?

SF: Certainly not.  It was really just a site that I wanted to use.  I have to admit that it is a lot of fun to sit in a press box or in the press room at the winter meetings and see most of the writers on your site at one time or another.

CE: Everything is menu-driven and linked together seamlessly. The entire process seems overwhelming and daunting to me. The fact that so many numbers are crunched and moved around every day, by the box scores of 14 or 15 games, that my head spins just thinking about it.  How are your pages updated after each game? What has to be entered manually on a daily basis?

SF: Nothing happens manually. There are like 20,000 or more pages that are updated each morning, so it is all automated.  We purchase the data for the in-season, so that arrives each morning and it all starts while I’m asleep. Occasionally something breaks or the stats don’t arrive, but generally it is seamless.

CE: I can’t imagine the programming that went into that design. Not only are the old school “tried and true” statistics such as BA, HR, RBI, OBP, ERA, etc. found there, many stats that most of us have never heard of can be found there as well. What are your personal thoughts on sabermetrics?

SF: I’m obviously a fan.  I have a copy of every Baseball Prospectus ever written and really got into this because of an interest in sabermetrics.  The field has obviously exploded, so I struggle sometimes to keep up with all of the research going on, spend time with my family and run our company (we have six, soon-to-be seven sites now).  I don’t think we are at the bleeding edge like FanGraphs or Baseball Prospectus, but we try to be very easy-to-use and also present numbers and data that will expand fan’s interest in the game.

CE:  I know that you have expanded your online presence to include the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. What other sports are offered by your company and do you have plans for further expansion?

SF: We have baseball, football, basketball and hockey. The Olympics data behind our Olympic site is just insane.  It takes things like wind speeds for individual long jump attempts and much more.  We just launched college basketball in the winter and we expect to launch college football this summer.

CE: Do you offer special customized (paid) services to high-profile clients?

SF: We can do specialized things every once and awhile, but we are pretty focused on the consumer.

CE: How about player photos? Have you entertained the thought of placing photos of the players on their pages? What legal hurdles would that bring with?

SF: We just did add photos for players who debuted pre-1960.  We have the post-1960s in hand, but as you mention, those are at first glance not in the public domain, so it’s on my to do list to talk with our attorney as to whether we can use those or not.  I’m hoping we can work something out.

CE: As a writer and baseball historian I can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am for the services you provide. I want to thank you for taking the time to answer these questions and share this information with me and the rest of the baseball community.  Thank you and I wish you all the success in the world.

SF:   You’re welcome Cliff.  It has been a very rewarding project to build and create.  I’m just so happy that people like the site as much as they do and want to use it.

Just a few other things that the site allows you to do are:

Find information about how a player does against left-handers; night games, away games, at a certain park, with runners in scoring position with less than or two outs.

It lets you know the percentage of runners a catcher has thrown out; what a pitcher’s stats are with a 3-1 count; what a pitcher’s stats are the third time in a game that he faces a batter.

It is just fascinating what all you can find.

You can see the 555 teammates that Tommy John had during his career.

Have you ever heard of the six degrees to Kevin Bacon? There are only five “degrees” from Babe Ruth to Barry Bonds: Tony Lazzeri, Phil Cavaretta, Minnie Minoso, Jim Morrison, Bonds.

If you have never visited the site, or have been in seclusion for several years, go to Baseball-Reference.com and have yourself a blast.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Nick Blackburn has always been tough to figure out. Finishing the last couple seasons with a “well-rounded” total of 11-11, he looks to be skidding into similar figures towards the end of June. 

But what worries me isn’t so much the new advent of suck, but it coming after a phenomenal month of May. Blackburn was 5-0 in May, winning all of his decisions. He pitched at least seven innings in every start, as well as starting off the month with a complete game.

With a 2.65 ERA during the month, Blackburn started out to 6-1 and looked like one of the best pitchers in the league. 

This month, Blackburn is 0-3 in four starts. Besides his great start in Atlanta where he got no run support, Nick lasted 3.2, 2.2 and 1.2 innings. Last night he all but imploded, giving up 8 runs to the fledgling Phillies. To add another hurtful statistic, Blackburn’s ERA for the month of June is a lofty 12.00. 

So what happened? Blackburn seemed to find something in May, and seemed to lose just about everything that made him successful during June. If he continues on the down-slide, is he worth being kept around?

I think the Twins should think about being shoppers before July 31st’s trade deadline and retool the starting rotation that remains consistently been inconsistent. 

But there might be hope: Something that really caught my eye is Blackburn’s month-by-month ERA. April ended at 6.85, May at 2.65 and June at 12.00. What could possibly make someone a completely different pitcher based on the month? (And don’t think I’m asking a ton of questions to reveal a genius answer, I have no clue.)

So here’s to July, Nick Blackburn. If it’s an every-other-month kind of thing, we’ll be sitting pretty.  

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 .

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Heading into this season, many people surrounding the Indians organization hoped that Matt LaPorta would mold himself into a key part of the rebuilding offense.

A young talented prospect, LaPorta finished the 2009 season in fourth place for slugging percentage in the International League and tied for 11th in home runs with 17 longballs to his credit.

Matt also played a total of 52 games for the Tribe last season, covering two different trips up to the Majors. 

During the end of the 2009 season, LaPorta played in the final 39 games collecting 6 home runs, 17 RBI, and an average of .273. Those numbers were good enough to lock him into a spot on the 2010 roster and also gave Indians’ fans many reasons to be optimistic.

Fast forward to present day and LaPorta’s situation within the Cleveland organization is much different. In 2010, Matt only managed to compile a .218 average over the course of 35 games and only had one home run to his credit.

Among the many struggles that Matt went through over the early course of this season, none could be much worse than his performance at home.

Within the familiar confines of Progressive Field, LaPorta only hit .157. Not exactly the numbers that the organization was looking for.

Because of a lack of production and consistency, LaPorta was sent down to Triple-A Columbus last week.

In many cases, being demoted from the “big team” can be very harsh on a player’s confidence and overall attitude but luckily for Cleveland, the result was completely opposite.

Over the course of the seven games, LaPorta has had with Columbus, Matt has hit .407 with 5 home runs and 9 RBI. Not only has this propelled life throughout the Clippers, it has also seemed to give Matt the overall kick to get himself back on track.

If LaPorta can put up consistent numbers against the Triple-A competition, expect him to be back with the Indians sometime in July until the end of the season.

With the team slowly becoming more focused on development than contention, younger players will begin to get time at the big league level in hopes to find talent for seasons to come.

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