This is our old blog. It hasn't been active since 2011. Please see the link above for our current blog or click the logo above to see all of the great data and content on this site.
«
»

K/HR

Posted by Andy on January 6, 2010

In comments on a recent post, the question came up for leaders among players with lots of home runs but not too many strikeouts.

There are 5 guys in history with at least 300 HR and no more than 1.5 strikeouts per HR hit.

Rk HR SO From To Age
1 Ted Williams 521 709 1939 1960 20-41
2 Stan Musial 475 696 1941 1963 20-42
3 Johnny Mize 359 524 1936 1953 23-40
4 Joe DiMaggio 361 369 1936 1951 21-36
5 Yogi Berra 358 414 1946 1965 21-40
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2010.

It's easy to see that among this group, Joe DiMaggio has the closest ratio, with just 8 more strikeouts than HR.

Over a career, pretty much nobody has had fewer strikeouts than homers. Here are the post-1913 leaders:

Rk Player HR SO From To Age
1 Keith McDonald 3 2 2000 2001 27-28
2 Rick Short 2 1 2005 2005 32-32
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2010.

I chose post-1913 since strikeouts were not recorded for some years before then in each league.

If we look for just the top single seasons that qualify, here they are:

Rk Player HR SO Year Age Tm
1 Johnny Mize 51 42 1947 34 NYG
2 Ted Kluszewski 49 35 1954 29 CIN
3 Lou Gehrig 49 46 1936 33 NYY
4 Lou Gehrig 49 31 1934 31 NYY
5 Ted Kluszewski 47 40 1955 30 CIN
6 Joe DiMaggio 46 37 1937 22 NYY
7 Barry Bonds 45 41 2004 39 SFG
8 Mel Ott 42 38 1929 20 NYG
9 Ted Kluszewski 40 34 1953 28 CIN
10 Johnny Mize 40 37 1948 35 NYG
11 Stan Musial 39 34 1948 27 STL
12 Joe DiMaggio 39 30 1948 33 NYY
13 Rogers Hornsby 39 39 1925 29 STL
14 Ken Williams 39 31 1922 32 SLB
15 Ted Williams 37 27 1941 22 BOS
16 Andy Pafko 36 32 1950 29 CHC
17 Willard Marshall 36 30 1947 26 NYG
18 Al Simmons 36 34 1930 28 PHA
19 Ted Kluszewski 35 31 1956 31 CIN
20 Joe DiMaggio 32 21 1938 23 NYY
21 Lefty O'Doul 32 19 1929 32 PHI
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2010.

It had escaped me that Barry Bonds accomplished the feat in 2004. I checked and the next-best such performance in the last 20 seasons was Jason Lane in 2003 with 4 homers and 2 strikeouts.

Finally, here are all the guys with minimum 100 career homers and no more than 2 strikeouts for each homer.

Rk Player HR SO From To Age G
1 Hank Aaron 755 1383 1954 1976 20-42 3298
2 Babe Ruth 714 1330 1914 1935 19-40 2503
3 Ted Williams 521 709 1939 1960 20-41 2292
4 Mel Ott 511 896 1926 1947 17-38 2730
5 Lou Gehrig 493 790 1923 1939 20-36 2164
6 Stan Musial 475 696 1941 1963 20-42 3026
7 Albert Pujols 366 570 2001 2009 21-29 1399
8 Joe DiMaggio 361 369 1936 1951 21-36 1736
9 Johnny Mize 359 524 1936 1953 23-40 1884
10 Yogi Berra 358 414 1946 1965 21-40 2120
11 Chuck Klein 300 521 1928 1944 23-39 1753
12 Ted Kluszewski 279 365 1947 1961 22-36 1718
13 Hal Trosky 228 440 1933 1946 20-33 1347
14 Don Mattingly 222 444 1982 1995 21-34 1785
15 Sid Gordon 202 356 1941 1955 23-37 1475
16 Bill Dickey 202 289 1928 1946 21-39 1789
17 Ken Williams 196 287 1915 1929 25-39 1397
18 Ernie Lombardi 190 262 1931 1947 23-39 1853
19 Willard Marshall 130 219 1942 1955 21-34 1246
20 Frank McCormick 128 189 1934 1948 23-37 1534
21 Vic Power 126 247 1954 1965 26-37 1627
22 Zeke Bonura 119 180 1934 1940 25-31 917
23 Mickey Cochrane 119 217 1925 1937 22-34 1482
24 Don Hurst 115 210 1928 1934 22-28 905
25 Lefty O'Doul 113 122 1919 1934 22-37 970
Rk Player HR SO From To Age G
26 Irish Meusel 106 199 1914 1927 21-34 1289
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2010.

Pujols is the only active player to qualify.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 7:27 am and is filed under Season Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “K/HR”

  1. JohnnyTwisto Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    DiMaggio, Berra, and Mize all played on the '49-'51 Yankees. All the guys on that first career list played around the same time. It was an era when some power hitters had developed, but batters were probably still using more controlled swings with two strikes, and pitchers probably weren't going for strikeouts/pitching all out as much as they do now.

    Pujols almost did it in '04 and '06 (49 HR, 50 K in '06).

  2. whiz Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 4:07 pm

    Some other exceptional HR/SO seasons (with HR > 2*SO) that didn't quite make your list are:

    1941 Dimaggio 30/13
    1950 Berra 28/12
    1945 Holmes 28/9

    Holmes actually had HR > 3 *SO!

«
»