26 Responses to “Seasons With 40+ HR, Less Than 160 Hits & Less Than 100 BB – Since 1961”

1. N17317 Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 2:05 pm

   Some of these guys not hitting 100 walks surprised me. Sosa in 03, for example. How about ole Kevin Mitchell taking 32 IBBs but fewer than 100 walks combined?

   It's "fewer than" 160 hits and "fewer than" 100 walks, by the way, not "less than."

2. Steve Lombardi Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 2:06 pm

   N17317 - Thanks. I'm the Rob Deer of the Grammar Class. Lots of swings and misses.

3. Jon Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 3:11 pm

   Sosa, before steroids elevated him to a superstar, had all the statistical markings of a player whose poor strike-zone judgment would cause him to vastly underperform his talent.

4. Dvd Avins Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 3:23 pm

   Steve, if you want to miss this one less often, if you count it, it's "fewer," if instead you measure it's "less." Traditionally, that means any number gets "fewer" but modern usage is inconsistent when it comes to decimals and numbers so large that they're presumed to be inexact estimates.

5. John Autin Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 3:39 pm

   @1 & 2 & 4 -- FWIW, while I'm usually a strict constructionist on grammar, I can't stand that particular rule, and I no longer follow it consistently.

   Doesn't grammar exist mainly to promote clarity and ease of reading or hearing? If so, what is improved by requiring "fewer" in this instance? Steve's meaning is immediately clear, and in my opinion "less than" reads more smoothly in that sentence.

6. Raphy Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 4:06 pm

   In baseball history 122 players have hit between 40 and 42 HRs in a season. If you rank them by "times on base", Granderson ranks 75th. If you do this since 1961, Granderson ranks 51st out of 86.

   Granderson is having a unique statistical season by a variety of measures. I'm not quite sure that this is one of them.

7. Ted Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 5:37 pm

   Rico Petrocelli-
   1 less homer, one more hit, 2 more walks and there would be an even 45 players on this list

8. Dvd Avins Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 5:47 pm

   I'm not sure about the value of the distinction between "less" and "fewer" but I'm sure there's value added in maintaining the distinction between "grammar" and "usage." If the sentence has the same form, then it's not a matter of grammar.

9. Paul Drye Says:
   September 25th, 2011 at 7:17 pm

   I've university-level training in writing English and I can safely say that most of the famous so-called grammar rules are, to use the technical term, hirsute chundering nonsense. They're an outgrowth of modern nation states trying to impose standardized speech in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, and were usually developed by people who had a poor grasp of how language learned , or an inappropriate desire to impose Latin usages (or both).

   Don't get me started on Strunk & White.

   (And before anyone picks out any errors in this post, I direct you to Muphry's Law.)

10. Paul Drye Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    (whoops, an error in my HTML reduces a clause to nonsense, thus proving my point about Muphry)

11. Bobbi Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 7:55 pm

    46 players 159 and fewer hits and 99 and fewer walks
    47 players 159 and fewer hits and 100 and more walks
    98 players 160 and more hits and 99 and fewer walks
    36 players 160 and more hits and 100 and more walks. Not surprising this is the smallest set.

12. RobM Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 9:47 pm

    Granderson has received zero intentional walks, which is not surprising since he's hit second most of the year. Intentionally walking Granderson to face Teixeira, A-Rod and Cano is not something recommended.

    Since none of these players broke 100 BBs, I'm guessing many of them had a low number of IBBs these seasons. Anyway to run the list adding them in?

13. RobM Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    @12, to myself!

    Apologies. I see IBBs are included as a column.

14. Anthony Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    Roger Maris was NEVER intentionally walked in his 61-homer season. I understand Mantle was behind him, but that's still fascinating.

15. Johnny Twisto Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    Roger Maris was NEVER intentionally walked in his 61-homer season. I understand Mantle was behind him, but that's still fascinating.

    For some reason I feel like looking at this tonight. It's a well-known "fact" that Maris and Mantle always hit 3-4 that season, but sometimes I like to check to see how often these regular lineups were used. How often did Ruth-Gehrig hit 3-4? Surprised to see how much Mattingly hit 2nd in '85.

    Anyway.

    Mantle hit 3rd in a plurality of his career PA. But he batted 4th in every game he started in 1961. In '60 he and Maris flip-flopped quite a bit, with Mantle ahead of Maris more often than not. In mid-August, Mantle settled in as the cleanup hitter, and he remained in that spot for the most part through 1963.

    While Mantle was ensconced at #4 from the start of the '61 season, defending MVP Maris was bouncing around a bit. He was hitting 5th to begin the season. He batted 7th against some lefties. But by the end of May, he was the clear #3 hitter.

    It looks like Maris and Mantle hit 3-4 in 130 games that season.

16. BSK Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    OT, but Ellsbury just hit his 3rd HR of the day (he had 2 in the early game and 1 in the late game). What is the most amount of HRs hit in a day? I know the record is 4 in a game, and my hunch is that the most hit in a day is 4, but how would we go about searching the most X in a day, accounting for double-headers?

17. BSK Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 11:37 pm

    And I mean games that are started and played on the same game. I don't mean games that run past mid-night and then the following day's game.

18. Johnny Twisto Says:
    September 25th, 2011 at 11:46 pm

    Stan Musial and Nate Colbert both hit 5 homers in doubleheaders.

19. gdc Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 11:01 am

    Wow, Old Henry played only 120 games in '73 for his 40. It's almost like they didn't want him to break Ruth's record until the next year. Having played some 1B the previous few years, he only played RF and LF in '73 and presumably rested some to stay sharp. But the Braves 1B in 73 was Mike Lum, who previously was an OF and over 10 years younger. So if playing the OF was that much more physically taxing, one suspects that in another dozen starts he could have gotten his usual 44 HR at age 39 and spent the winter as the HR king.

20. Rich Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 11:22 am

    @ 19
    He also only played 129 in '72. He was getting old, that's all.

21. Jeff Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 2:19 pm

    @16

    I wonder how a player who's hit 20 HR's in 4 years and 1,400+ AB's turns around and hits 31 in 646 Ab's.

    Career year at 27(magic age, we know)...

    Ellsbury is an odd power hitter this year unlike Batista who never got a full seasons worth of AB's til he was 30.

    It's just strange to me how a typical speed guy/leadoff hitter suddenly becomes this power hitter after missing an entire season no less.

22. Tmckelv Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    In math and programming "<" means "less than". In many programming languages the "<" syntax can be replaced directly with "LT" or "LESS THAN".

    The Play Index is a program. This is a direct text description of the query. I would go with "less than".

23. mosc Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    The column that sticks out to me is the R column. Granderson didn't reach base many times to accumulate 134 runs. I'm curious about H + BB / R basically.

24. Raphy Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    Mosc: here are the players with R/TOB > .542 sorted by runs scored:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/7JNfy

    Granderson is one of a handful to have that rate with 100 runs scored.

    BTW it should be noted that Granderson has 12 HBP, so combined with his 85 walks he has a pretty high total of free passed.

25. mosc Says:
    September 26th, 2011 at 5:19 pm

    wow, thanks! That to me explains Granderson's importance to the Yankees more than any other list. He scores an incredibly high percentage of their runs considering how much offense the yankees have. Some of that is home runs, but a lot of it is his speed and also the guys behind him in the lineup. Elsbury has Crawford right behind him frequently though, which probably explains why he isn't competing for runs this year.

    Doing a little team R / 9 to give you the highly improbably evenly expected run production for every lineup spot, A typical Yankee (not a typical replacement player) would be at 95 runs in 687 PA (granderson only has 680, but it's pretty close). At 134, he's putting up about 44 runs in his lineup spot more than the other 8 average yankee hitters.

    Stat guys don't generally care about R's anymore than they care about RBI's for much the same reasons but R's are in many ways another way to highlight speed. I think we forget that too often. Granderson isn't asked to steal much with power hitters behind him so his SB total doesn't reflect his speed.

26. Cheese Says:
    September 27th, 2011 at 4:35 pm

    @25: Elsbury has Crawford right behind him frequently though

    FYI: Ellsbury has hit #1 in the lineup in 142 of his 156 games this year. Crawford has only hit #2 in 10 games this year.