Paul Konerko‘s 400th HR was a game-tying shot in the 9th inning on the first pitch from Grant Balfour.
It’s the 12th time a Konerko HR in the 9th inning or later has won or tied the game or put his team in front. That’s 3.0% of his career HRs.
What’s your gut feeling on how Konerko’s rate compares to those of contemporary sluggers? The answer is below the jump.
For all players with 300+ who were active in 2011, here is the percentage of their career HRs that came in the 9th inning or later and were winning, tying or go-ahead (“W/T/G”):
[table id=43 /]
Notes:
Believe it or not: Mark Teixeira has never hit a game-ending HR, and Lance Berkman has just one. Teix has just 4 game-ending RBI in his career; since he joined the Yanks in 2009, they’ve had 23 game-ending RBI, just one by Teixeira.
During his Cardinals career, Albert Pujols hit 10 of the team’s 29 game-winning HRs, including 7 of their 15 in extra innings. Pujols and David Ortiz share the MLB lead with 10 game-winning HRs since 2001.
Once or twice a year, based on 30+ HR seasons. That seems about right.
John A. Are we looking to start the “clutch” discussion again?
Mike L — 🙂 No, I wouldn’t say that. I’m just trying to go with the pitch. The combination of the milestone and the situation led me to check Konerko’s record, and when I saw the numbers it seemed like a low percentage. The rest is obsessive-compulsive history.
None of these were walk-off shots but, on two occasions in 2001, Barry Bonds hit a tying or go-ahead HR in the 7th inning or later in consecutive games.
Apr 17-18 against the Dodgers.
– Bonds HR was the winning tally in two one-run games.
May 18-19 against the Braves.
– In first game, after Giants went ahead on Bonds HR, Braves pulled it out on a 9th inning rally culminating in a walk-off wild pitch.
– In second game, Bonds HR pulled the Giants even, before adding additional runs in a 6-3 win.
Hank Blalock also had late game-tying or go-ahead HR in consecutive games in 2008.
Sep 22 – game-tying shot in bottom of 9th, but Texas lost in 11
Sep 23 – go-ahead 2-run HR in 7th, providing winning margin
On a lark, I was looking at Bo Diaz’ career with the Phillies, as I remember Pete Rose hilariously touting him for MVP of the NL in ’83 for his clutch hitting, and here’s the main reason why, a down-by-3 grand slam in the bottom of the ninth against the Mets:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI198304130.shtml
This gave Diaz a .910 WPA for that feat. I assume a grand slam down by three in the bottom of the ninth has to be the most powerful WPA event a batter can accomplish, no? My question is, since it was already a 9-6 game before Diaz’ HR, would his WPA possibly have been more if the run environment in the game had been lower(the score was 3-0)? It makes sense to me that had Diaz hit his salami in a 16-15 wind-blowing-out slugfest in Wrigley Field his WPA may not have been as high.
Here’s the same play by Travis Hafner from last year, with a lower score (4-1) and a lower WPA (0.8). Difference, presumably is there was only one out instead of two for the Diaz game.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE201107070.shtml
Yes, I neglected the 2-out situation for Diaz. Brooks Conrad hit a similar 1-out grand slam in 2010 for the Braves against the Reds, for a 0.805 WPA. Hafner’s, taken from his HR log, was 0.804. Here’s the Conrad game, in which the Braves were down 9-6:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL201005200.shtml
I’m pretty sure that run environment for this purpose is the league average adjusted by the park factor. The score of the individual games would not matter. Astrodome 1968 vs Coors 1999 would make a big difference.
This isn’t a rundown Konerko post is it?
Timmy, you know me better than that! 🙂 I guess I don’t have much of a point here; I just wanted to show the range of late-and-close HRs among top contemporary longballers.
(Besides, if I was knocking ‘Nerks, you know I’d work my around to a dig on his foot speed.)
JA, it doesn’t speak to the main point of your post, but I’m very interested in the mechanics of how you created your list from the Play Index.
Neil — There might have been a more efficient way, but all I did was first find the active players with 300+ HRs, and then used their individual Event Finders to round up the particular class of HRs I wanted.
I tried doing an Event Finder covering all of MLB for the past 20 years, but it timed out, so I just went with a brutish method that I knew I could get done.
Just to finish up … I created the actual table used above by simply typing my findings into Excel, where I calculated the percentages.
Neil, a way more brutish way to do it was my method when I checked Ryan Howard’s #’s(he came out about average, 3.8%). I just used the HR log on each player page and eye-scanned them. It doesn’t take as long as you think, and it gives the inning, the score at the time, etc. It also gives the WPA for every particular homer.
Surprised that Tex has never had one…but there was this in the postseason: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=7035851&c_id=mlb
Good point, James. I should have mentioned that the Event Finder does not cover postseason games. I’m not really sure why, since the Batter-vs-Pitcher tool does include them, and the concepts are similar. But that’s the way it is.
In the words of “Tex”,”there are hits-and then there are big hits”. Spoken on the rare occasion of a post-season game winning hit struck off his own instrument of employment. Please feel free to pause mid sentence to add dramatic effect….
It’s pretty bad when you make $22,000,000/year and they rave about your fielding at 1B. But, I don’t intend to start a “clutch” discussion
Don’t forget, of course, some guys don’t get pitched to as much in late innings when there could be a switch in who is winning. Not sure if that’s true of Tex, but at least a few of them have to have fewer times they face that scenario.
Goof, that’s a good point in general. But I can’t imagine that it would be the case with Teixeira, who has been in good lineups virtually his whole career.
I’m guessing this number would be influenced by the team they play for. We know that really good teams and really bad teams play more blowout games, which probably have less 9th inning heroics. I would hypothesize that the leaders here played the majority of their time for .500ish teams.