HOME RUNS (WHAT ELSE?)/2: SOME ADDITIONAL RECONDITE DISTRIBUTIONS...

SO let's start with the teaser left dangling at the end of Part One of this series (yes, now officially a series--check your local listings...) and note the active player leader list for home runs going into the 2024 season. Note also that, as is so often the case, our presentation is somewhat different than the usual one:

Our list takes you down into the depths of homer totals, if only to point out how certain young players (the two not-so-new "Juniors"--Guerrero and Tatis) have been hyped as superstars but are still a long, long way down this leader list.

But you get the idea. Giancarlo Stanton turns out to be the new leader, now that Miguel Cabrera has finally retired. (Given that Stanton has missed ~450 games over the course of his career due to injuries, one surmises that he'd be a lot closer to 500 than 400 at this point.)

And the two players who are likely to join the eleven active players with 300+ HRs alluded to earlier are: Andrew McCutchen (299) and Anthony Rizzo (295). 

Note also that the media has decided Shohei Ohtani is already a Hall of Famer, even before his current total of MLB homers climbed to 171 after his second MVP "double-duty" season. It is going to be very interesting to see what Showtime's final career numbers look like when the time comes: if he averages 35 HRs over the next seven seasons, he'll crack 400 HRs; will 3+ plus seasons of excellent pitching be his ticket to a first-round induction? 

The player most lost in the wilderness on this list is probably Kris Bryant, who had 94 HRs in his first three seasons (including 39 in his MVP year), but has hit only 88 in the next six years.

Here's the distribution of active players' HRs at the highest level of granularity:

400+: 1; 300-399: 10; 200-299: 19; 100-199: 92

That's a pretty steep distribution, actually. Check out the percentages in each of the four high-level categories:

400+: 0.8%; 300-399: 8.2% 200-299: 15.7%; 100-199: 75.3%

It's a bit tricky to get these for "active players" in past years from the query setup at Forman et soeur, but we'll try to look into this and see just how steep this is in comparison to past snapshots in time.

BUT let's return to the young sluggers of the present day and try to put that historical phenomenon into perspective. Since the "New Juniors" (Fernando Tatis and Vladimir Guerrero) have both just completed their age-24 seasons, let's use that "career moment" to look at how "young slugging" has become an integral part of the game.

We do it with a master list of the top 200 "young sluggers" which gives us a range from 190 (Eddie Mathews, the top "young slugger" if we measure by HRs) down to 53 (five guys, ranging from the non-slugger Buddy Lewis to Pete Alonso, who hit 53 HRs in his first season at age 24). The bottom end of the range has a few issues, but it allows us to look at an interesting historical distribution, which we'll get to shortly. First, however, we have a similar table of "young sluggers" in categories, taken down to those who hit 75 HRs by the end of their age-24 season.

It's pretty clear that "young slugging" highly correlates with overall slugging, when you look at the top ten guys--eight of the top ten HR hitters all hit 500+ HRs in their career (and #7 Mike Trout, despite his relentless injury siege in recent years, should still get there as well). Orlando Cepeda (#11) and Johnny Bench (#12) slowed down considerably after age 30 and are the guys who couldn't crack 400; we figure that Bryce Harper, #15 on the list and one of five active players in the top twenty, will easily get past that and has a solid shot at 500 as well.

BUT we were alluding to how "young slugging" has become the hallmark of baseball; the fact that it has done so is not really a recent phenomenon. As the next chart indicates, it got started in the 1950s and took the game by the throat in the next decade, setting a template that has pretty much held firm ever since. (Surprisingly, the only decade where young sluggers were less consistently present was the 1990s, when offense headed toward its peak: veteran sluggers were able to extend their efficiency in that time frame, which will bring the "rage against 'roids" folk out of the woodwork if we're not careful--or even if we are...)

Let's look at the charts and we'll try to explain the truly baroque color-coding on display here:

The chart on the left sums up the homers hit up through age-24 seasons for the hitters in that top 200 we mentioned earlier. The color coding is initially straightforward--nothing for a yearly total under 100, cool colors for totals in the 100s and 200s, then warmer in 300 on up. The warmer colors also capture the years in which the Top 20 "young sluggers" reach their totals, often accompanied by other, lesser young sluggers. The reason why 1956 is colored most darkly of all is because it's the year where Eddie Mathews (#1) and Mickey Mantle (#5) tag-team the game and create the unshakable aura of the "young slugger" that will be burned into the collective consciousness of the media, the fans, and the insiders in a way that is irrevocable. (Note that the total of HRs hit these two by age 24, if tallied together at that moment in time, would have been the seventh highest total hit by anyone in the history of baseball. It remains the top 1-2 punch of any exactly contemporaneous pair of "young sluggers")

The half-decade totals tell the tale: 1955-59 had eight "young sluggers," tied with 1935-39, but things would rev up from then on: the 60s half-decades had 13 each. 1970-74 pushed past that to 14 "young sluggers." The early 80s had a bit of a lull, but 1985-89 is back to 13. It's only in the throes of the offensive explosion where we see a significant slowdown (just seven in 1995-99).

Slugging replaced hitting in the 2000s, which eventually slowed down offense, but not "young slugging," which was in place to stay. Even with a downturn in offense in the first part of the 2010s, the launching pad for "launch angle" pyrotechnics was jumpstarted in 2014, leading to the six most plentiful consecutive years of young sluggers (a total of 22, the most ever--a total that was matched by 2018-23).

The last ten years have seen 36 "young sluggers" make their mark in the game, easily the highest ten-year total ever. That group has hit over 3000 HRs in that time frame, reinforcing the notion that the premium requirement for the game is to seek and develop long-ball prodigies.

AND yes, there's more to come in terms of the great flood of homers--we'll present more of it soon enough--even though doing so makes us long for the plan we outlined awhile ago for four leagues, in which one of them was carefully engineered to look more like the game prior to the 1950s--before the aura of the "young slugger" became baseball's siren call. The chances of baseball's Ivy League "brain trust" of actually doing that, however, is minuscule, given that they are the type of "wise folk" who treat the symptoms and not the disease. But fear not: we'll keep plugging away, hoping against hope for some kind of inexplicable, miraculous intervention...meanwhile, naturally, we'll still feed your habit and provide you with even more recondite distributions about "the big fly", "the bomb", "the tater"--the bete noire of these increasingly w(h)acky times in which we find ourselves coerced to live...

HOME RUNS (WHAT ELSE?)/1: SOME BASIC BUT OBSCURE FACTS FOR THOSE WHO'VE LEARNED TO LOVE "THE BOMB"...

Spring training is almost upon us...the start of the baseball season is just about six weeks away. (Actually, sooner than that, given that there will be a gimmicky two-game series in Korea about ten days before the official start of the 2024 season...but, as the folks who donate to the Republican National Committee have taken to saying: "Who's counting?"

OF COURSE, we are--but we're counting something different. It may seem to you this triples-loving establishment is selling out to those who've crammed "the big fly" down our throats since 2017, but bear with us--we're going to take a different tack with looking at home runs. 

(After all, doing something different is what this place is all about...but we'll try not be as dementedly "different" as Slim Pickens, who was fifty years ahead of the "launch angle lotharios" in loving "the bomb" a bit too enthusiastically..,

SO what are we going to show you about home runs that you've not seen before? We're going to mosey (hmm, looks as though ol' Slim has rubbed off on us...) into a patch of data that we hope won't take you for the wrong kind of ride. Let's begin by asking a series of questions related to the home run...

First, how many hitters have hit 700 or more homers in their career? 

Then...how many have hit six hundred but less than 700? And 500-to-599? 400 to 499? 300 to 399? 200 to 299? And finally, how many have hit 100 or more homers but less than 200?

All of that summary data is available for view in the table at right, along with the number of hitters in each category who've been elected to the Hall of Fame. The frequency of occurrence multiplies dramatically when we get past the 400-HR threshold: there are 58 hitters who've now hit 400+ HRs in their careers, and 940 who've hit at least 100 HRs but no more than 399.

As for election to the HOF, we have the steroid boys to contend with at the top of the list: there are 28 hitters who've hit 500+ HRs, but at this moment only 19 of them have been inducted at Cooperstown. That's just a little bit over two-thirds: we have folks like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro here, looking at doors with "Keep Out!" signs (and they'll likely be joined by Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez on the outside looking in). 

Still the percentages for induction at 400-499 HRs (50%) is not too bad, given how common HRs have gotten to be in the last seven seasons. For players who hit fewer than 300 HRs in a career, their current chance of being inducted in the HOF is in single digits (it rounds up to just eight percent. With 300 or more HRs in a career,  the induction more than quadruple, to 35%.

But those numbers are a bit too abstract to stand alone (and by now all of you should know that you need a mess of help to stand alone...) so what we'll do to close out this first toe-dip into the world of "the living, loving bomb" is to show you all of the hitters both in and out of the HOF who've hit at least 300 HRs in their major league career. 

The folks in red are the active playera on the list; the folks in green are players who didn't play firsr base or the outfield. That last subtype is carried over to this list by underlining the active players who aren't outfielders or first sackers.

With the retirement of Miguel Cabrera, the active HR leader going into the 2024 season is Giancarlo Stanton (402). He is joined by nine others who have 300-399 HRs and who are expected to play in 2024. (Note: the "Carter" on the "not in HOF" list is Joe Carter, and is wrongly identified as being a catcher; HOFer Gary Carter is wrongly shown as an outfielder/first baseman, when of course he was primarily a catcher...we always have at least one goof-up like this.)

THAT will get you started on our "big fly road to ruin." There is much more in this vein, and we'll be strip-mining it in subsequent installments. Let's conclude by noting that the next hitters to crack 100 HRs in their career will bring the grand total of such players to an even one thousand--an occurrence that is certain to take place within a few days of the start of the 2024 season. 

We'll leave you with a question to ponder: who are the next hitters to follow in the footsteps of Carlos Santana, who just slipped into the 300+ HR club last season (now with 301 lifetime)? See if you can figure it out without cheating the way we did (by looking it up). Stay tuned...

OAKLAND META-FARCE CONTINUES UNABATED...

What does John Fisher have on MLB? It must be something gigantic, because the pathetic and reprehensible events that continue to occur regarding the embattled Oakland A's franchise have devolved past mere painfulness though "cruel & unusual" and are now approaching "genocidal" in nature. 

The MLB owners' ostensible willingness to let Fisher implode his franchise via a crackpot relocation scheme to Las Vegas is just the tip of the "iceberg of shame" that is circling the game as cracks in its business façade grow larger and more visible. 

Worst of all is the absurd brinksmanship that has to come to pass regarding the A's whereabouts in 2025, which threatens to make the team into the permanent laughingstock of professional sports. Rob Manfred, baseball's version of the Emperor Nero, keeps fiddling with the zipper on his trousers (nothing to see there, folks!) while a franchise burns to the ground for no good reason...

...except for what Fisher must be holding over the heads of his billionaire brethren.

We will be joining what we expect will be a large contingent of activists and A's fans whose plans for 2024 call for a strategic series of "anti-boycotts" geared to remind MLB that a relatively benign owner in charge of the A's could still salvage this lunatic turn of events. Imagine 25,000 people night after night coming to the Oakland Mausoleum, their garb of protest concealed while entering Ground Zero, then unleashing a green sea of "Sell the Team" shirts in the fifth inning of each game while chanting "SELL THE TEAM" at the top of their lungs.

Fisher would take the extra $$ and run, of course, but the point would be made: Oakland is still a viable major league venue for baseball, and the scurrilous nonsense that has been visited upon the team and the city is nothing more that the rat-poisoned behavior of robber-baron billionaires who are nothing more of less than ruthless corporate predators.

This is the time for unabashed activism in Oakland and around MLB. Demonstrations echoing the "SELL THE TEAM!" performances should be scheduled to occur at all of the A's road games in 2024, to drive the point home that this is a national issue, not just a regional squabble. 

It is time for the public to rise up and do its utmost to remove John Fisher from MLB once and for all. It might not succeed, but the effort must be made. Baseball should be saved for Oakland and the citizens of Las Vegas should be spared from taking on a team whose owner is a veritable pariah.