Slug this
Sometimes the weirdest questions get stuck in my head. Sometimes the most random queries just won’t leave me alone, like an itch that needs to be scratched, or a hungry belly that needs feeding.
So when Paul Konerko steps to the plate, I’m just not that impressed. Oh sure, he hit 40 home runs, good for 5th in the AL. But his SLG of .534 was 9th in the league. Not really impressive in my mind. And I start wondering just how normal it is for a 40-homer guy to slug less than .600. Turns out, once I start digging around, not that out of the ordinary.
Just then Konerko bruises the first offering from Chad Qualls, sending it into the left field seats – a dramatic grand slam that gives the Sox the lead.
So who has the lowest SLG of any hitter with 40 home runs?
The answer to that [ed: insert as-yet-unnamed USSM sponsor here] trivia question would be the Mariners’ own Jay Buhner in 1997.
Buhner hit 40 home runs and slugged .506. His 131 hits are sixth fewest among those with 40 homers, and his 60 XBH are 5th fewest.
Comments
55 Responses to “Slug this”
How about this: who has the lowest SLG for a guy who hit 50 or more HR in a season? I’m pretty sure Andruw Jones is at or near the top of that list.
You’d be right.
Dave, perhaps the most interesting thing about his idea of moving Johnson to CF is that Ryan Langerhans and Jeff Francoeur(2/3 of his “dream” lineup) could both handle CF at a better rate than Kelly could.
As to where he think’s we are getting the offense to replace Andruw…uhh…at least its cheaper?
The only SLG lower than Andruw Jones’s .575 I could find with a comparable number of HR was in 1964 – Harmon Killebrew hit 49 HR with a SLG of .548
#42: Bill James’s (please pardon any misattribution) “RC/27” (Runs Created per 27 Outs) was a pioneering attempt at such an Offense Per Out type of stat. Advantages are that it addresses the critical issue in offense, that the task is to score as much as possible in as few outs as possible; also the resulting number looks just like a team Runs/Game number, so it provides a guess as to what a lineup of nine identical players would score in a 9-inning game. Disadvantages are a lack of park adjustments, although that’s since been added to other similar stats, and the RC formula has been improved upon by many other approaches in the last 20 years or so.
You’re right to emphasize outs. Probably the best thing for someone with a lot of exposure to traditional batting stats to grasp is the out rates for hitters. Since it’s the denominator for the Offense/Out rate, it has a large impact on performance. Unfortunately, broadcasters still don’t show OBP enough to really demonstrate the out rates of different players to the typical fan.
Wow, Killebrew in 1964…49 homers, but just 11 doubles and a triple (to go with 95 singles). That was the year *before* the Twins won their first pennant since they were the Senators (when they rode Killer, Carew, Jim Kaat and MVP Zoilo Versalles to the World Series). Couldn’t get past Koufax and Claude Osteen in the WS though…
But OBP/SLG tells a million times more than OPS in my opinion. OPS isn’t even a real number; OBP and SLG have different denominators, so adding them doesn’t yield anything meaningful. OBP and SLG are much better.