18 Responses to “140+ HRs Since 1919 In Games Team Lost”

1. Jimbo Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 12:50 pm

   Apparently Babe Ruth's teams won a lot of their games.

2. Snark David Chapman Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 1:01 pm

   According to Mr. Bonds' splits page, he batted .242 in games his team lost, with an OPS of .859. While the number of home runs is on, something else is wonky with this chart.

   I mean, Babe Ruth was good, but I kind of doubt he batted .470 in losses.

3. Seth Rodgers Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 1:21 pm

   I'm shocked Chuck Klein isn't on this list, so much for the "Klein hits two as the Phillies Lose" headline myth.

4. Dr. Doom Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 1:22 pm

   I'm guessing that this only includes games in which the player hit a home run. That would account for the inconsistencies in the data.

5. Dave Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 1:38 pm

   Totals are different if we don't count PH and extra innings

6. Albanate Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 3:37 pm

   When I read the headline, I instantly thought of sluggers--like Ernie Banks--who spent their careers with bad teams. It might be interesting to generate expected %age numbers, and see how much players deviate from this.

7. Richard Chester Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 3:55 pm

   @2, @3, @4

   Obviously it is only for games in which the player hit a home run. There is nothing wonky about the stats. Any player's BA is higher in only those games in which he got at least one hit. BA in those games can easily be 100 or more points higher than his seasonal BA. The fact that he hit a home run or that his team lost has nothing to do with it.

   It is a simple matter to determine how many times Chuck Klein hit two homers in a loss by using the PI. I am not a PI subscriber but was able to determine that he had 27 two homer games. My PI search provided data for 12 of those games and his team won 7 of those 12 games.

8. DavidRF Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 4:08 pm

   @7
   Klein's reputation probably comes from the 1930 season where 27 of his 40 homers were in losses. The Phillies had a historically bad pitching staff that year. They gave up 7.69 R/G. Team ERA+ of just 82 in the peak of the live ball era translating to an ERA of 6.71.

   Klein is 60th on the list above and 128th on the all-HR list so his win-loss splits are less favorable than most.

9. DavidRF Says:
   March 26th, 2011 at 5:05 pm

   I ran a comparison of the list of top 300 loss HR's from the link above (going all the way down to Preston Wilson) with the all-time HR list. Jorge Posada hit the most HR's of players not on that list (only 60 of 261 HR's were in losses). It would be too much work for me to hand-check all those players so 262 HR is my cutoff. 🙂

   Here are the ratio leaders, (HR_Total >= 262)

   The highest percentage of HR's in losses:
   1. Roy Sievers 45.6%
   2. Frank Thomas (the Elder) 44.8%
   3. Matt Stairs 44.2%
   4. Ralph Kiner 43.9%
   5. Hank Sauer 42.7%
   6. Chuck Klein 42.7%
   7. Bob Johnson 42.4%
   8. Brian Giles 42.2%
   9. Todd Helton 41.7%
   10. Jay Buhner 41.0%

   Followed by Sosa, Sandberg, Banks, Kingman, Hrbek, Bichette, Staub, etc.

   The lowest percentage of HR's in losses:
   1. Lee May 22.3%
   2. Joe DiMaggio 23.0%
   3. Babe Ruth (asterisk) 23.2%
   4. Lou Gehrig 24.1%
   5. Steve Finley 24.7%
   6. Gil Hodges 24.9%
   7. Brooks Robinson 25.4%
   8. Darryl Strawberry 25.7%
   9. Manny Ramirez 25.8%
   10. Andruw Jones 26.0%

   Followed by Ventura, Greenberg, LanParrish, Pujols, DSnider, Berra, Cey, RYork, Stargell, GFoster, etc.

   The asterisk is by Ruth because I'm not sure his 13 loss-HR's from 1919 are hooked up to the list above yet (click the Ind Games link) and a few of his 20 pre-1919 HR's were probably in losses. Hornsby's numbers would be slightly corrected as well, but at 35.5% he's not close to either extreme.

10. barkie Says:
    March 26th, 2011 at 9:15 pm

    Steve, this is a really challenging list. You really have a knack for that.

    Such a dark mix of longevity, futility and ...

    Look at Aaron's numbers. 242 HRs in games lost. How many in games won?

    Could you do this list again as HRs in wins - HRs in losses?

    I think I know what that would look like, but I'm not sure.

11. MichaelPat Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 1:37 am

    @10
    Wouldn't that be 513? (755 - 242) Or am I missing something?
    (Aaron probably homered in a few ties, I guess)

    Great list, BTW

12. Gerry Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 6:12 am

    Sosa seems to have had far and away the most multi-HR games among the games in which he homered and his team lost.

13. Al Dimond Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 1:04 pm

    @12: Growing up as a Cubs fan during the Sosa years, I recall frequent mentions of Sosa's multi-HR games -- he had a disproportionate number of multi-HR games for someone with his HR total.

    The conventional wisdom on Sosa was that he would demolish mistakes in the zone, but chase sliders in the dirt. Maybe Sosa has a bigger split depending on pitcher faced than most players. That's a hypothesis that could be tested statistically, but I'm not really sure how to go about that.

14. DoubleDiamond Says:
    March 27th, 2011 at 4:33 pm

    @13 In 1998, when McGwire had 70 homers and Sosa 66 at the end of the regular season, the Cubs had to play one more game against the Giants to determine the last NL postseason game. As you almost certainly know, the statistics from the tiebreaker games, unlike those in the actual postseason series, do count in the players' seasonal statistics (which is how Matt Holliday passed Ryan Howard for the 2007 NL RBI crown).

    Before that Giants-Cubs game, which, if I recall correctly, was at Wrigley Field, I predicted that Sosa would set a new record of five home runs in a game, thus also surpassing McGwire's newly-set single season record, but also that the Cubs would extend their futility and lose the game, probably by some score like 21-20.

    Of course, I was wrong all around, with Sosa staying stuck on 66 and the Cubs winning that game, only to lose at some other point in the postseason that year. But it looks like I wasn't too far, pardon the expression, off base, in thinking that Sosa could have a multi-homer game, with his team losing.

    Regarding homers in games one's team lost, I wonder what percentage of these were solo shots. I thought I remembered that someone on the Orioles once hit two grand slams in a game that Baltimore eventually lost, but it turned out that two different Orioles hit grand slams in that game. Of course, the fact that a player on the opposing team also had a "salami" in that game also may have helped to determine the result. (And the Orioles had a two-run dinger in that game, too, by a third player. They scored 11 runs, one of which came on a no-RBI play. Thus, all 10 of their RBIs were the result of multi-run homers.)

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL198608060.shtml

15. John Autin Says:
    March 28th, 2011 at 12:08 am

    This is a tangent, but anyway....

    Anyone remember the outcome of Bob Horner's 4-HR game on July 6, 1986?
    Horner's Braves lost to the Expos, 11-8.
    http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL198607060.shtml

    Horner is the only player to hit 4 HRs in a loss.

    Johnny Mize had the most 3-HR games in losses, with 4.
    In those 4 games, Mize had no other hits (not that 3 HRs isn't a day's work) and no walks.
    Two of the games came with the Cardinals, one each with NYG and NYY.
    Two of the losses were blowouts, by 14-5 and 10-5.

    Six players had a pair of 3-HR losses: Sammy Sosa, Babe Ruth, Dave Kingman, Glenn Davis, Joe Carter and Ernie Banks.
    Ruth had 6 RBI in both games, one of which was his famous last big power display with the Braves. (Babe would have had a chance to bat again, but he was replaced in RF by Joe Mowry, presumably for defensive purposes after Babe's 3rd HR had tied the game in the top of the 7th.)

16. John Autin Says:
    March 28th, 2011 at 12:27 am

    Of the players with one 3-HR loss, a couple stand out:

    -- Lee Thomas had 8 RBI and a WPA of 0.859 on 9/5/1961, but the expansion Angels lost to the KC A's, 13-12. The 0.859 WPA ranks 27th among losing players (in the WPA-searchable era). Thomas had two huge HRs in terms of WPA -- a game-tying grand slam in the 6th, and a 3-run shot in the top of the 8th that gave the Angels a 12-11 lead. But with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th, Bobby Del Greco won it for KC with a 2-run HR.

    -- For unlikely heroics in a losing cause, you can't top Art Shamsky's performance on 8/12/1966. (Afficianados of box-score rarities know this game well.) Shamsky, who didn't even enter the game for Cincinnati until the 8th inning, wound up with 3 HRs in 3 trips, and 5 RBI. In the bottom of the 8th, his 2-run shot gave the Reds an 8-7 lead. Pittsburgh tied it on Jerry Lynch's pinch-HR in the 9th, and went ahead on Willie Stargell's blast in the top of the 10th -- but Shamsky leveled it in the bottom half with a blow off Roy Face. The Bucs scored twice in their 11th, and the first 2 Reds went down quietly in the bottom half. But Johnny Edwards worked Face for a walk, and Shamsky greeted Billy O'Dell with yet another game-tying HR. Unfortunately for the home crowd, Pittsburgh scored 3 in the 13th, and Shamsky didn't get another chance to be the hero.

    Each of Shamsky's HRs was worth about 0.5 WPA, giving him a game total of 1.503 WPA -- by far the highest WPA by a losing batter. (The next highest is 1.112 by Hank Aaron.)

17. John Autin Says:
    March 28th, 2011 at 12:32 am

    As someone alluded to above, Sosa is easily tops in multi-HR losses, with 25. McGwire and Bonds had 18 each. Chuck Klein had 10, with 4 of them in 1930.

18. Home run winning percentage » Baseball-Reference Blog » Blog Archive Says:
    March 29th, 2011 at 7:23 am

    [...] Steve's post a few days ago about most homers coming in a loss, it got me wondering what the team's winning percentage looks [...]