More homers than walks
Posted by Andy on January 22, 2010
Here are the all-time leaders for most homers in a season with a matching or fewer number of walks.
| Rk | Player | HR | BB | Year | Age | Tm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andre Dawson | 49 | 32 | 1987 | 32 | CHC |
| 2 | Dave Kingman | 48 | 45 | 1979 | 30 | CHC |
| 3 | Andres Galarraga | 47 | 40 | 1996 | 35 | COL |
| 4 | Juan Gonzalez | 47 | 45 | 1996 | 26 | TEX |
| 5 | George Bell | 47 | 39 | 1987 | 27 | TOR |
| 6 | Vinny Castilla | 46 | 40 | 1998 | 30 | COL |
| 7 | Juan Gonzalez | 46 | 37 | 1993 | 23 | TEX |
| 8 | Orlando Cepeda | 46 | 39 | 1961 | 23 | SFG |
| 9 | Matt Williams | 43 | 33 | 1994 | 28 | SFG |
| 10 | Juan Gonzalez | 43 | 35 | 1992 | 22 | TEX |
| 11 | Tony Armas | 43 | 32 | 1984 | 30 | BOS |
| 12 | Juan Gonzalez | 42 | 33 | 1997 | 27 | TEX |
| 13 | Hal Trosky | 42 | 36 | 1936 | 23 | CLE |
| 14 | Tony Batista | 41 | 35 | 2000 | 26 | TOR |
| 15 | Sammy Sosa | 40 | 34 | 1996 | 27 | CHC |
| 16 | Vinny Castilla | 40 | 35 | 1996 | 28 | COL |
| 17 | Dante Bichette | 40 | 22 | 1995 | 31 | COL |
| 18 | Alfonso Soriano | 39 | 23 | 2002 | 26 | NYY |
| 19 | Matt Williams | 38 | 27 | 1993 | 27 | SFG |
| 20 | Joe Adcock | 38 | 32 | 1956 | 28 | MLN |
| 21 | Dave Kingman | 37 | 28 | 1976 | 27 | NYM |
| 22 | Ernie Banks | 37 | 30 | 1962 | 31 | CHC |
| 23 | Alfonso Soriano | 36 | 33 | 2005 | 29 | TEX |
| 24 | Tony Armas | 36 | 29 | 1983 | 29 | BOS |
| 25 | Dave Kingman | 36 | 34 | 1975 | 26 | NYM |
The first thing that popped into my head was to think about Dawson and the 1987 Cubs. Dawson won the NL MVP that year despite the Cubs finishing with a 76-85 record, last place in the NL East. The Cubs were a little bit below average offensively (as compared to the rest of the NL) and the Cubs didn't have a particularly good hitter to follow Dawson in the batting order. Check out the Cubs' batting orders for that season. For the first half of the year Dawson batted 3rd almost exclusively and was followed most often by Keith Moreland or Leon Durham. Those guys had their upsides but they certainly had little business hitting cleanup. In the second half of the season Dawson hit mostly cleanup and was followed by a mix of players including Moreland, Durham, Jerry Mumphrey, and a rookie named Rafael Palmeiro.
This makes me wonder why Dawson didn't walk more. I would have thought that with the lower quality of talent hitting behind Dawson, he would have received more walks. The fact is that any team offense issues may have been overridden by the fact that Dawson just didn't walk very much. For his career, he averaged only 36 walks per 162 games. Of the 66 players with at least 10,000 plate appearances since 1901, Dawson is one of just 3 with fewer than 6% of his PA's turning into walks. Dawson's walk rate was 5.47%, Pinson's was 5.52%, and Buckner's was an astounding 4.49%.
More generally, this list seems to be populated by two types: players on good offensive teams (1990s Rockies and Rangers, for example) and players who simply did not draw a lot of walks in their careers (Alfonso Soriano and Dawson, for example.) The good offense makes sense since a pitcher is less likely to walk a guy when there's another good hitter coming up next.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:41 am
Juan Gone almost did it for his career, 434 walks to 457 strikeouts!
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:13 am
Fun list.
Protection may have helped the guys on good offenses avoid walks a little bit, but they also had to be free swingers to make a list like this as well. There's plenty of cases where guys on great offenses walked a ton with great players on deck. Ruth batted before Gehrig. Mantle batted before Berra. Morgan batted before Bench.
Its fun looking at old batting orders. Looking at the list above, Cepeda was the least protected player in the Giants line-up in his best season. He generally batted after Mays and McCovey.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:51 am
MY first reaction to Dawson's numbers was that he may have homered in a bunch of lop-sided games, and probably lop-sided losses. A quick look, however, reveals that not to be true. The Cubs were 25-15 in games in which Dawson homered -- several were multi-homer games -- and I count only about five that were never close. (I didn't dive into the specific game situations at the instance of each home run.) Anyway, it seems that Dawson just had an awesome season (even by 1987 standards), and was very difficult to pitch away from, as most would remember him.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Good point by reader pageup although he/she meant to say Gonzalez had 434 HR and 457 walks.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:34 pm
If you're wondering, Kingman, Gonzalez, Castilla, Williams, Armas, and Soriano show up multiple times on the list.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Regarding Gonzalez, I also notice that he averaged better than one RBI/G over a four-year period (514 RBI in 511 G from '95-'98). That must be unique in the post-WWII era.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Manny averaged exactly one RBI per game from 1998 to 2001.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Dawson's '87 was not particularly awesome, though he did hit extremely well with RISP. He didn't create that many more runs than an average right fielder that season. If you're going to look at all the RBI, you also need to consider he only scored 41 runs when he didn't homer (ok, he didn't have great hitters behind him, but he wasn't getting on base all that much). Terrible MVP choice.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Gonzalez, Bell, Dawson, Cepeda, Banks, were all MVPs.
Cepeda, Galaraga and Bichette have won batting titles.
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
DAWSON 1987: he didn't walk very much because he was playing under a contract he left blank and let the team fill in his salary - so he HAD to swing, to put up numbers and earn a bigger contract for 1988. Walks don't equate to $1-Million, home runs do that. As for the hitters around him in the line-up, they all seem "weaker" because none of them was Andre Dawson. Hitting was actually the Cubs strength that year, it was the pitching that failed them.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Well, Dawson never walked much. But it is true that his BB-rate was even lower in '87 than in the surrounding seasons, so perhaps there is something to your theory.
Hitting may have been the Cubs' strength, relatively speaking, but they were still only 8th (of 12 teams) in scoring that season.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:54 pm
The first thing I noticed was a disproportionate number of players with Hispanic names on this list. I've heard a phrase that goes something like, "You don't get off the island by not swinging," in connection with at least one Dominican Republic native (don't remember which one, though). (Well, there's at least one Mexican and at least one Venezuelan on the list, and those countries aren't islands, unless you count the Americas continents as one big island, but the same concept may hold in these places.)
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:47 pm
yeah, I did mean walks, he had a few more strikeouts than that...
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:54 pm
as for the rbi per game thing, Sosa had 597 over a 4 year span (637 games though) which is obviously a large number that probably hasn't been matched in a while
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Also an extreme home road split
OBA of about 288 and SA about 480 on the road as I recall
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:16 am
DoubleDiamond, I have not heard that phrase regarding Latino players, but it made me wonder. In the 1980s, I guess it might have been possible to see such trends with native Latino players since most of them were developed in their home countries and trends in teaching baseball and player development might have been different. However I'd have a hard time imagining that the same is true today, the way information travels so much more easily to all places.
Interesting point.
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Olivo has 96 career HRs & 98 career BBs
2004 was the last time he had more BBs than HRs in a season.
& I think the saying in the Dominican Republic is "You don't walk off the island"
January 26th, 2010 at 10:00 am
I dub this the "Two True Outcomes" list!
Oh, and DoubleDiamond, I believe the saying is "Nobody walks of the island!"
January 28th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
charityslave : Yours might not be the actual quote, but it suer is more clever that way! I like the double entendre. (Though I seem to remember the quote more like the way DoubleDiamond wrote it.)
January 29th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
The saying is definitely "Nobody walks off the island."
Not to be confused with "Braindead Caribbeans, swinging at slop" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/10/KNBR.TMP