Baseball Notes

We could also label this post “Who can eventually break Barry Bonds’ career HR record?” or “Up with hope, down with dope,” or something like that, based on what I am going to try to examine. Sometime in June, unless pitchers just start walking him, Barry Lamar Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s all-time homerun record of 755. A lot has already been made all over the place about how the record isn’t legit, how Aaron won’t be there, Bonds should have an asterisk, and all sorts of other stuff I honestly don’t care about for this post. I care about numbers.

Bonds will break a record that has stood for more than 33 years, which was a record that stood for 54 years ever since Babe Ruth hit his 139th homerun in 1921 to pass Roger Conner for the most all-time. So the question becomes: inevitably, someone will break Bonds’ record, but are they playing now? Will we see it in this generation? In our lifetime?

Since we don’t know what 12-year-old on his Little League team will become the next great power hitter one day, we will just have to look at what we’ve got. And we’ve got a lot to look at.

So let’s set some parameters. For this study, we will look at every active major-leaguer who has at least 250 career homeruns. This should give us a good sample to work from and we won’t have to make guesses based on a rookie’s strong first season or anything like that.

As of May 17, there were 30 active players (excluding Bonds) with at least 250 career dingers:

Also, as a set of measurables, when we weed out the candidates who will obviously not be challenging the record, we can compare these active players to the three homerun kings and how many they had hit at certain ages; specifically age 25, 30, 35, and 40 (if applicable). Here are Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds at those ages:

Once we get down to a select few, we will look at individual homerun rates, attrition projections, etc.

Why don’t we start eliminating people now. First off, those that I am sure are too old and won’t play long enough to challenge the record (with their ages):

Thomas (39), Sheffield (38), Piazza (38), Edmonds (37), Kent (39), Gonzalez (39), Alou (40), Sanders (39), Finley (42), Biggio (41), Klesko (36), Giles (36).

Now we are left with 18 potential candidates.

Looking at the age chart above, and considering the decline a player typically experiences after age 35, let’s eliminate anyone who does not meet the qualification of matching Bonds’ number of 494 HR by age 35 (the lowest total of the three).

That eliminates Thome, Delgado, Jones, Giambi, and Ivan Rodriguez. While Man-Ram is currently 35, I am assuming he gets to at least 494 this year, so I will leave him on the the list for now.

So we are now left with 13 possible players.

This next one is going to be a judgment call on my part. I am going to cut the players who have either of two factors I call “decline contributors.” Those two factors are chronic injury problems or severe statistical decline that has been sustained for at least three years from their peak years. And I will leave Sosa and Griffey alone for now to make it interesting.

That eliminates Green, Rolen, Glaus, and Helton (if you don’t believe me on Helton, look at the decline in power numbers the past three years).

So now we have a manageable list of nine to work with. Those remaining:

Sammy Sosa
Ken Griffey, Jr.
Alex Rodriguez
Manny Ramirez
Andruw Jones
Vladimir Guerrero
Richie Sexson
Albert Pujols
Paul Konerko

Let’s look at our two closest competitors to the record, Sosa and Griffey, individually to determine their respective chances of reaching even 755, much less whatever number Bonds finishes with this year.

Sammy Sosa - Sosa has a number of factors working against him even as he closes in on being the 5th player ever with 600 homeruns. First of all, his age. Sosa will turn 39 next month and he is still more than 150 homers from catching Aaron’s number. Since the last time Sosa hit at least 40 homers, in 2003, his yearly homerun rates per at bat have been 7.3%, 3.7%, and 6.5% so far this year for an average of 5.8%. If Sosa averages 5.8% for 500 at bats per year, he will average 29 homeruns per year. That means he would need another five and a third seasons to reach just 755.

Interesting fact: Even if Sosa averaged a ridiculous 11.1% like he did when he hit 64 in 2001, he would still need three years at 500 at-bats to pass 755.

Attribute it to age, declining abilities, no longer being able to use steroids, or whatever you want, but I just don’t see Slammin’ Sammy playing until 2012. PECOTA at BP sees him out of baseball by 2009. So he’s out of the discussion.

Ken Griffey, Jr. - This is who I really want to have the all-time record; I just love that swing. And if we were having this conversation before the year 2001, I would have told you he was a shoo-in. By the time Griffey was 30 years old in 2000, he already had 438 homeruns! He would have broken the record long before he reached 40. But, the injuries started to set in.

Since 2001 (7 seasons), Griffey only has 133 homeruns, leaving him way off the pace to break the record. When he is healthy, Griffey’s average homerun rate since 2001 has been a respectable 6.4%. At that average rate, and with his current 571 homeruns, Junior would need almost six seasons to reach just 755. I also don’t think Griffey is going to play until 2012 or average the 32 homeruns a year it would take to get there.

PECOTA has him out of baseball after 2010. And that’s too bad - he should have had it.

So we are now left with seven.

From the “Interesting facts about the 500-HR club” file, did you know every member of that club has at least three seasons in which they hit 40 homeruns OR they played at least 20 seasons? In order to match one of those two criteria, Richie Sexson and Paul Konerko would each have to have another 40 homerun season, or each play at least nine more seasons. Personally, I don’t think either are happening; maybe the 40-HR seasons, but don’t bet the farm on it. And again, that is just to reach the 500 mark. So why are we even continuing this discussion? They’re not going to make it.

Down to five: A-Rod, Manny, Jones, Vladdy, and Pujols.

Manny Ramirez. I love him and hate him at the same time. BP’s PECOTA projections predict he will hit 139 more homeruns the rest of this year and the next four years combined. That would give Man-Ram 615 career HR’s by the time he is almost 40. PECOTA is sometimes criticized as being too conservative, so let’s ramp it up a little bit by bumping up their projections by 50%, or another 70 homeruns. This puts Ramirez at 685 homeruns at 40, at least 23 behind the pace of Ruth, Aaron, or Bonds.

Since 1995, Manny has averaged 38 homeruns per year. If he hits 38 this year, and averages 38 a year, he would need 6.5 more years after 2007 to reach just 755, when he would be almost 42 years old.

I don’t put it past Manny to try and go for this, but realistically I put the chances at very slim that he reaches it. His bad knees and just general lack of caring sometimes also don’t work in his favor.

Four more to go. Definitely our four best candidates. My odds of them breaking the record will be after each analysis.

Guerrero is an interesting player. Think about how long he has been around….or how long it seems he has been around - he started in 1996!. For as long as he has played, and for how many homeruns he has hit, he is still not even halfway to 700! Since 2002, Guerrero’s homerun rate is a remarkably repetitive 6.3, 6.3, 6.3, 6.2, and 5.4 in 2006. We will hypothetically give him the benefit of the doubt and bump him up to 6.3 last year since he had absolutely no protection in that Angel’s lineup. If we do that, he now has 343 homeruns coming into this season. At 6.3% of at bats being homeruns, and at even 550 at bats per season, Guerrero would need 11.8 more seasons to get to 755. He would be almost 43.

After two years of over 40 homeruns, Guerrero has settled into a 33-39 homers per year guy, concentrating more on average, on base percentage, and contact than on hitting 50 bombs a year. This approach, while giving him MVP-like numbers every year (including a career .325 average), probably killed his chances at the record. Another pure guess of mine is that after age 35 or so, those golf club and eye-level swings he uses to hit pitches out won’t be quite as effective anymore. When Guerrero loses his bat speed, expect a quick decline.

ODDS: 25 t0 1

Andruw Jones is, in a lot of ways, the same player as Vladimir Guerrero. They came up the same year, they have the same number of homers and roughly the same number of RBI. Vladimir has a serious cushion in the Avg. and OBP department, while Jones kills Guerrero on defense and with the Gold Gloves.

Jones is one year younger, coming up at age 19, so he does have that going for him. He has never shown any signs of slowing down and has never been hurt for an extended period of time. Here are the dates Jones would reach 755 if you used some of his current numbers and cumulative averages:

Average homeruns per year = 34
Date and age to reach 755 averaging 34 a year = 2019 and 42 years old

Average at bats that are hit as homeruns = 5.8%
Date and age to reach 755 assuming 550 at bats per year = 2020 and 43 years old

Andruw is already in the top 100 all-time for number of strikeouts, and he will probably be in the top 60 or so (right there with Jim Rice and others) by the end of this season. While Jones’ average K% for his career is 21.7%, the highest single percentage Ruth, Aaron, or Bonds ever had in one full season was 19.7% (1922 by Ruth). Too many strikeouts equals not enough contact to get the needed homeruns.

Still, he has youth and no injury history on his side, so he is not eliminated.

ODDS: 20 to 1

By the young age of 25, Fat Albert Pujols already had hit 201 homeruns, seventh most by anyone in history at that age, only losing out to the likes of Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, and Frank Robinson amongst others. 201 homeruns leaves the numbers of Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds in the dust. No one is within 22 of Pujols at that point when considering those three. By the age of 26, he had moved up to fourth on that same list with 250 HR. At the end of this year, we will just have to see where he ends up.

Just for the sake of knowing, at Albert’s current pace of 42 homers a year, he would break 755 in just 12 seasons or at age 39. Amazing.

But, when looking into Pujols’ future, there are two factors that must be considered before you just declare that he will eventually be the all-time homerun king:

The first of those is age and injury. In that list of top HR hitters at 25, why did guys like Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Matthews, Mel Ott, Mickey Mantle, and Frank Robinson (all ahead of Pujols) fall off? Because they were unable to sustain a high level of power and health in their last years. I don’t know if Pujols’ nagging injuries will ever lead to anything more serious, but it is at least something to consider.

The second reason just has to do with his circumstances. It is my opinion that when Pujols is chasing an all-time homerun record, it will not be Aaron’s 755 or Bonds’ 770-780 or whatever he ends up with, but a bigger number. Rather, barring something unexpected happen, it will be a number of someone who has already broken both of those…..

ODDS: 13 to 1

….and that would be the record of Alex Rodriguez. You see, at Alex’s current pace of 42 homers per full season played, if he plays until he is 40, he will have collected around 884 homeruns.

Even if you say that once he reaches 35, he will drop that down to only 25 homeruns a season instead of 42, A-Rod still approaches 800 homeruns by age 40. Both Aaron and Bonds would barely be visible in his rear view mirror at that point.

Rodriguez has all the factors working for him I can think of: he started early at age 18, the power came at 20 and never left, he plays in a hitter’s park, he has great lineup protection, he has no injury history, over 40% of his total hits are fly balls, and his HR/FB ratio is 24% for his career (he has been in the top 20 in MLB every year in that category for at least the past six seasons).

ODDS: 9 to 5

So when we start talking about how a Guerrero or a Jones or a Pujols will be chasing a record, barring something tragic happen, they will be chasing A-Rod’s. And it will more likely be a number over 800 that they are reaching for.

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Some younger players to watch with less than 250 homeruns?

Adam Dunn - 209 HR at age 27
Mark Teixeira - 146 HR at age 27
Miguel Cabrera - 112 HR at age 24
David Wright - 71 HR at age 24
Prince Fielder - 40 HR at age 23