This guy.
For long-time readers (I'm looking at you, Google bots. I know you're out there. It said so on the SiteMeter data), you're probably familiar with my well-documented respect for Josh Hamilton as a baseball player. For newbies, here's this wildly superlative account of the '08 HR Derby, and then this awed take on a singularly brilliant game he had against the Sox nearly 2 years ago (with some Brett Favre bashing thrown in for good measure) as proof.
Anyways, Hambino got off to an white-hot start this year. He's cooled down lately, but entered today's game against the A's (currently being played) hitting .343 with 21 homers and 58 RBIs. He was getting on base at a .400 clip and slugging an insane even .700. You know how many times somebody has ever slugged .700 or better over a full season? 32 times (3 happened in the strike-shortened season of 1994). Take out the seasons for the Steroid Era (like the users themselves, it's hard to define...but I'm going to take an educated stab and call it 1990-2007), and you're left with only 22 - the last of which was Ted Williams, who slugged .731 in 1957. If you're keeping track at home, that's 55 years ago.
Point is, Hamilton is clearly enjoying the beginning of what could be an historic season. Just how historic? Well, when I came up with the idea for this post, it was admittedly a lot more relevant - but even now, it's still a good talking point. So I'll roll with it anyways.
On May 26th, Hamilton swatted his 20th home run of the season in the Rangers' 47th game. It was the fastest anybody had reached the 20-homer mark since Albert Pujols got there in 42 games back in 2006, and the fastest an AL player had reached it since Ken Griffey Jr. walloped his 20th in Seattle's 44th game in 1997. At the time Hamilton reached that milestone, he was on pace to hit 69 home runs. Admittedly, this would not go into the official record books as the single-season mark, as Josh would've ended up 4 short of Barry Bonds' 73 dingers in 2001. But in most people's minds (at least mine), this would have set a new, clean record - mercifully whitewashing the staggering totals of Bonds and Mark McGwire (and yes, even Sammy Sosa) from memory. While we have to acknowledge that they did indeed hit mind-boggling amounts of home runs, we don't have to hold them in the same regard as Maris or Ruth (the Hall of Fame, however, is a story for another post).
It's now June 7th, and after the Rangers' 57th game last night, Hamilton was on pace for a still-monumental 60 home runs. Want to take a guess at how many 60-homer seasons there have been, excluding the Steroid Era? Yep, you got it - exactly 2. Babe Ruth with 60 in 1927, and Roger Maris with 61 in 1961.
But at the time of his 20th, Hamilton was looking poised to easily reach heights so far unattainable in the sport's history by non-steroid-addled hitters. So me, being numbers-oriented, wanted to take a look at how his pace compared to not only the record-breaking seasons, but also some of the more notable home run-hitting seasons of the past 15 years (admittedly during the Steroid Era, but that's when many of these seasons occurred). And what I found was that, given historical stats, Hamilton was on a very favorable trajectory - just not for the reasons you may expect.
Player/Year Game of 20th Pace at 20th 47 game-amount 47 game-pace Total
Hamilton '12 47 69 20 69 ?
Bautista '10 71 46 14 48 54
Howard '06 57 57 15 52 58
Pujols '06 42 77 23 79 49
Rodriguez '02 57 57 14 48 57
Bonds '01 42 77 25 86 73
Gonzalez '01 40 81 20 69 57
McGwire '98 43 75 23 79 70
Sosa '98 62 52 9 31 66
Griffey Jr. '97 44 74 21 72 56
Maris '61 55 59 15 52 61
Ruth '27 51 60 18 59 60
Looking at the raw data, it's easy to see that Hamilton found himself at a very good place after hitting his 20th home run. He was the 6th-fastest to 20 home runs, and had the 5th-highest projected amount after 47 games. Looking a little closer, I found that on average, the 11 players in the sample ended up with 1 fewer home run than their projected total after 47 games (throw out Pujols' disappearing act and Sosa's sudden explosion as outliers, and you're left with an average loss of 2 home runs). Great news for Josh, right? He'd still be looking to end up with around 67 home runs.
Well, if you go one level deeper, it gets a little hazier. I included only the seasons that had home runs equal to or greater than Hamilton's after 47 games (Pujols, Bonds, Gonzalez, McGwire, and Junior), and ran the numbers again. Perhaps not surprisingly, I found that all these guys ended up with a total significantly below their projected total - 15 fewer home runs, on average. So if history does indeed repeat itself, than it wouldn't be out of the question to expect Josh Hamilton to end up with about 54 home runs. While well short of either record, Maris' or Bonds', it would still be a staggering total, tied for the most non-Steroid Era (as defined by me) homers since - wow, look at that. It would tie Bautista for the most non-Steroid Era homers since Maris. So there wouldn't be a ton of luster lost off that amount.
Of course, there are several other things to factor into the equation. Hamilton's propensity to swing at just about any pitch thrown to him, regardless of whether it's in the strike zone or in the other batter's box (if he doesn't win the Triple Crown, batting average will likely be the reason why). His significant injury risks. The Jetstream at Arlington in the summer. If I were to make a prediction, I'd say Hamilton - barring a season-ending injury tomorrow or something like that - is a lock to hit 40, a significant threat to challenge 50, and an outside shot to *barely* crack 60.
And just because everything makes more sense when you can see it represented visually, here are a couple of graphs showing the home run paces through the first 47 games of everybody in the table above.
This first graph is Hamilton and the record-breaking seasons. Hamilton (smack in the middle) is dark blue, Bonds is red, Big Mac is green, Maris is purple, and the original Bambino is teal.
And then this graph is Hamilton and the other notable seasons. Hamilton (in the upper half this time) is again dark blue, Joey Bats is red, The Big Piece (apparently Howard's nickname) is green, El Hombre is purple, A-Rod is teal, Gonzo is orange, Sosa (doesn't deserve to be called by his nickname) is gray, and Junior is pink.
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