IN SEARCH OF/1: THE MOST HOMERS HIT BY A HITTER vs. AN OPPOSING TEAM

SOUNDS simple, doesn't it? But who knows the answer? 

The data is hidden away in the recesses of baseball archives...and we have to dig into the splits data of hitters in order to bring it to the surface.

So we will start showing the results of that "dig"--two hitters at a time. We'll begin with those folk who, if one thinks about it for a bit, can't be the answer to our question...

...because the nature of baseball's schedule has changed dramatically in the past six decades. Hitters face more teams than they ever did in the past, as will become obvious when we post "part two" of this series. 

And the more teams that hitters face in their careers, the less likely they are to cluster their homer hitting against any particular team.

So, as you can see in our first breakout (we'll start with the four hitters who've hit 700+ lifetime homers), Albert Pujols' highest total of HRs against any opponent is just sixty-two (the Houston Astros).

What these breakouts also provide, as you'll see, are homer rates against opponents--expressed in two separate ways: first, in HR/G, in a value that kinda sorta looks like a batting average (but, of course, isn't); and second, in a "percentage of plate appearances" value similar to what you'd find if you still had a copy of the original Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia. For Albert, you can see that he did manage to play games against all thirty teams (including the Cardinals and the Angels, the two that he primarily played for). 

And we've highlighted the teams where he had the highest HR/PA percentages--which, oddly, doesn't include the Astros, who due to a fluke in baseball history, became the team that Pujols played against far more than any other. (Remember that the Astros changed leagues in 2013, which coincides almost exactly with Albert's move to the AL with the Angels.

All of Albert's highest HR/PA are against NL teams, which shouldn't surprise us when we look at his OPS+ values for playing there (170) as opposed to the AL (108). Note also that Albert took good advantage of lesser teams, as his raw HR totals (400 vs. 303 against teams with .500+ WPCT) and his HR/PA rates demonstrate.

NOW let's move on to Barry Bonds, the man that many still would prefer to ignore as the all-time home run champ. 

Bonds' distribution is much more heavily stacked toward NL opponents, and his career occurred partially during the time before interleague play, so he has about half as many such games as is the case with Albert.

As you can see, the Padres are the team that Bonds took long--with 87 HRs, easily beating the Dodgers and Pirates, who finish a distant second. In terms of HR/PA, however, Barry did more damage in his games versus the Brewers and the A's (though both of these opponents faced Bonds in far fewer than 100 games--a situation that they're both probably still grateful for).

Note that despite playing in close to 3000 games, Bonds managed to miss Cleveland entirely. (We'll see a whole lot more blank spaces on these breakouts when we move on to players like Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig, and Mickey Mantle.)

Bonds also took advantage of lesser teams according to HR/PA, but his plate appearances actually shaded slightly toward .500+ teams over his career, as opposed to what we saw with Albert.

SO that gets us started--we'll be back with the other two 700+ HR hitters in the next installment. And we'll see which teams those two guys (you just might know who they are without us having to mention their names, n'est-ce pas?) victimized the most with the long ball. And we'll likely see the highest lifetime HR/PA value as well...or will we? Stay tuned...