Ron Gant is one of just 6 guys to have multiple seasons with 30 HR but no more than 85 RBI:

                   From  To   Ages Seasons Link to Individual Seasons
+-----------------+----+----+-----+-------+------------------------------+
 Frank Robinson    1956 1960 20-24       3 Ind. Seasons
 Barry Bonds       1994 1999 29-34       2 Ind. Seasons
 Mickey Tettleton  1992 1995 31-34       2 Ind. Seasons
 Ron Gant          1990 1996 25-31       2 Ind. Seasons
 Tom Brunansky     1984 1987 23-26       2 Ind. Seasons
 Willie Stargell   1970 1979 30-39       2 Ind. Seasons

I don't know what to make of this. I always felt that Gant was not a very productive player and that his HR totals made him seem more valuable than he actually was. I sort of always wondered if he produced fewer non-HR RBI than other guys with similar HR totals.

Here's what I'm talking about.

First let's start with a snippet of the career HR list:

I'm going to ignore Albert Pujols since he's still active (and so his HR total doesn't reflect a career effort.) I'm also going to ignore Hank Greenberg and Roy Sievers because they played some before 1956 and I can't get their entire career breakdowns.

So that leaves us with this comparison group: Green, Vaughn, Horton, Carter, Parrish, Gant, Castilla, and Fielder.

These 8 guys all had basically the same number of career homers.

Careeer RBI: Carter 1225, Horton 1163, Castilla 1105, Parrish 1070, Green 1070, Vaughn 1064, Fielder 1008, Gant 1008

Career strikeouts: Parrish 1527, Vaugh 1429, Gant 1411, Fielder 1316, Green 1315, Horton 1313, Castilla 1069, Carter 997

A few notes: clearly Gary Carter is the best player in this group, with the most homers and fewest strikeouts. Gant ties with Fielder for fewest RBI despite the fact that Gant played in 362 more games than Fielder (remember that Fielder played in Japan for a stretch.) Gant is towards the front of the pack in strikeouts

But these totals are a tough gauge since we care more about rate statistics and RBI totals have a lot to do with the strength of the teams that these guys played on.

Here's what I really want to know, though.

Check out Ron Gant's HR log. Right under the main box, you can see that he had 489 RBI on his 321 career HR. That means he had 519 RBI during plate appearances that results in something other than HR. So, 48.5% of his career RBI came on homers.

Let's see what the percentages are for the other 7 players (I checked each of their career HR logs and made the above calculation.)

Carter 42.5%, Castilla 44.9%, Horton 47.4%, Parrish 47.8%, Green 47.9%, Gant 48.5%, Vaughn 50.5%, Fielder 53.8%

So remember, these numbers mean the percentage of that player's career RBI that came on homers. The implication is that the higher the number, the fewer other run-scoring hits or sacrifice flies the player had. I think that Gant and Fielder are pretty similar here--not terribly great hitters who swung for the fences a lot. They struck out a lot, hit a lot of homers, and got fewer RBIs in their non-HR plate appearances. Mo Vaughn is kind of a weird case, I think because his career ended early when he was forced to retire early due to injury. Vaughn missed his age 33 season and had only 79 AB after his age 34 season. Had he been able to play until age 38 or so, he would have finished with something more like 400 career HR and wouldn't be in this comparison group.

I'm not sure what this all means. I would really like to see a full list of career "RBI by homer" numbers for all players. I think it would reveal that Gant had a tendency toward more one-dimensionality of HR hitting. (NOTE I am not calling Gant one-dimensional...)

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