Four Homers In A Game: Not Always A Star

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We don’t know where Josh Hamilton will end up in terms of career WAR, but after the jump you can see where the other guys who hit four homers in a game ended up.
Willie Mays 151.3
Lou Gehrig 107.1
Mike Schmidt 99.9
Mike Cameron 42.8
Rocky Colavito 41.9
Gil Hodges 41.0
Carlos Delgado 40.5
Chuck Klein 39.9
Shawn Green 30.9
Joe Adcock 29.6
Bob Horner 19.4
Mark Whiten 12.3
Pat Seerey 3.0

The WAR numbers are b-ref’s latest version. There’s a bit of a logjam on this list around 40 WAR. Josh Hamilton, mid-career but not having started his major league career until 26 as a result of his personal issues, is at 21.8 WAR.

As noted in the comments, I’ve left out of the list above the two 19th century four-homer-in-a-game guys:

Ed Delahanty: 66.2 WAR when he died while still active at 35, after a mental breakdown and the infamous fall or jump from a railroad bridge near Niagara Falls. Two of Big Ed’s homers on his four-homer day were inside-the-park jobs.

Bobby Lowe: 17.2 WAR, he had a long, solid career as a second baseman, not a slugger. A.D. Suehsdorf writes at BaseballLibrary.com of Lowe’s four-homer day that “The home runs came consecutively, in six at-bats, all over the 250-foot left-field wall of Boston’s Congress Street Grounds, the Beaneaters’ temporary home while their regular park was under repair.” http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=bobby_lowe_1868

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MrDave

11 years ago

For whatever reason, I always liked that Bob Horner was on this list. Maybe because he seemed somewhat underrated as a power hitter, but I always liked him growing up in the 1980’s.

11 years ago

Reply to MrDave

He should have never left to go to Japan. He was a pretty good hitter.

Mike L

11 years ago

Where’s Bobby Lowe, Ed Delahanty and Chuck Klein? I remember reading a story about Lowe how he ate a huge fish dinner before the game, and thought to duplicate it by stuffing his face on other occasions, but it never quite worked. 71 HR’s in 18 years..

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to Mike L

You read too quickly. Klein is there at 39.9 just below Delgado.

Mike L

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

must be the diet coke-thanks

bstar

11 years ago

birtelcom, I’m sure you had your reasons to leave off the two players from the 1890s to hit 4 HR in a game, Bobby Lowe in 1894 and Ed Delahanty in 1896. Lowe is the only 4-HR-in-a-game player to hit less than 100 career HR(71). Mark Whiten is second lowest with 105. Lowe and Delahanty’s WAR totals are 17.2 and 66.2, respectively.

Neil L.

11 years ago

Uh-huh. So, birtelcom, declare! Go out on a limb and say which player on your list you think Josh Hamilton will be closest to in terms of career WAR. I predict he will end up between Chuck Klein and Carlos Delgado. That may be optimistic. Park effects are probably not relevant to many players on your list because they may not have hit their four taters at home. A propos of nothing, I love the fact that there are three players on the four-homer list who played with the Toronto Blue Jays at some point in their career. Not a… Read more »

Howard

11 years ago

Reply to Neil L.

Five of them played for the Mets at some point: Hodges, Mays, Cameron, Delgado and Green.

Hartvig

11 years ago

The two the were most surprising in my life time were Mark “Hittin'” Whiten and Cameron and of those 2 I think Cameron was the bigger shock when he did it. While Whiten never actually lived up to the hype that surrounded him when he came up it stuck with him for a long time. Cameron was always known for his glove first and in spite of his being in the top 150 for career homers never really had a reputation as a power hitter. With Hamilton’s age and injury history I’d guess that he finishes somewhere between the groups… Read more »

Thomas Court

11 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

Didn’t Cameron do it early in his first season as Griffey’s replacement in center for the Mariners? I seem to remember a lot of hype about that. I thought at the time, “Easy fellas, it’s just one game.”

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Willie Mays and Pat Seerey are the only players to accumulate 15 or more total bases in a game more than once. They each did it twice, Mays on 5/13/58 and 4/30/61 and Seerey on 7/13/45 and 7/18/48.

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birtelcom

11 years ago

I’ve updated the post to include the 19th century guys. Thanks for the correction. I was too quick to rely on the PI.

Voomo Zanzibar

11 years ago

Those were Seerey’s only homers in a 21-game span.

Steven

11 years ago

Happy Belated Birthday to Willie Mays, who turned 81 on May 6.

leatherman

11 years ago

Gil Hodges and Mark Whiten are the only players (other than Hamilton) to NOT hit a solo HR in their 4 HR game. Hodges drove in Carl Furillo on all four, Mark Whiten drove in Gerald Perry on all four (and Todd Zeile on the first three), and Hamilton drove in Elvis Andrus on all four. Hamilton’s game is the second game this season with 15+ total bases (Ryan Braun is the other). There are only 6 other seasons where there were multiple players with a 15+ total base game, including 2003 which had three (the only time it has… Read more »

wlcmlc

11 years ago

Is a 4 home run game considered the “perfect game” for a batter. If not, then what would be?

# of perfect games 21
# of 4 HR games 16

leatherman

11 years ago

Reply to wlcmlc

I would say it would have to be a HR in every plate appearance would be a “perfect game” for a batter. Carlos Delgado is the only player who has done that.

leatherman

11 years ago

Reply to leatherman

Correction: That is the only player with a perfect FOUR HOME RUN game. There are three others where a player hit home runs in all of their plate appearance, who both started and finished the game:

Andre Thornton on May 6, 1986 (rain shortened, 2 PA)
Frank Duffy on June 30, 1977 (rain shortened, 2 PA)
Del Wilber on August 27, 1951 (3 PA, 3 solo HRs, home team in a 9 inning complete game)

Editor

John Autin

11 years ago

Reply to leatherman

Wow, I didn’t know about Del Wilber! http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI195108272.shtml – Never had a 2-HR game, but had one with 3 HRs. – Hit all 3 off Ken Raffensberger, whose seems to keep popping up around here. – Phillies starter Ken Johnson (that’s Kenneth Wandersee Johnson, of course) tossed his 3rd shutout of the year and 2nd vs. Cincy. He won just 5 games total that season, and this was the last win of his career. BTW, Wilber’s 0.281 WPA for hitting 3 HRs in a 3-0 game just doesn’t seem right. I know, I know — WPA is not a judge… Read more »

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Del Wilber’s WPA in this game was +.12 for the first homer, +.11 for the second homer and +.06 for the third homer. The Win Expectancy Finder (here: http://gregstoll.dyndns.org/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.php?team=H&inning=7&outs=1&runners=1&scorediff=1) suggests that if Del had hit that 7th inning homer in a 0-0 game, as a pinch-hitter hitting his first homer of the game in his first PA of the game, his WPA for that 7th inning homer would have been around +.26 or +.27 instead of +.06. But of course then he would have been without his earlier +.12 and +.11. Bottom line is his game WPA would have not… Read more »

Editor

John Autin

11 years ago

Reply to John Autin

birtelcom, many thanks for that leg work. However, I’m not comfortable with the phrase “as valuable” in your conclusion, because I don’t think it’s right to equate WPA with value. It would defy common sense and any reasonable meaning of the word “value” to say that Wilber’s actual 3-for-3 with 3 HRs was not significantly more valuable, even within the narrow context of that specific game, than an alternative in which he hits only the last HR. I would go even farther: Wilber definitely would have had a higher WPA had he hit a pinch-HR with 2 out in the… Read more »

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to John Autin

John: Granted that the I used word “value” there as a casual stand-in for the more technical “increase in win probability”. The use of the word “value”, as you suggest, itself over-“valuing” WPA as a stat. One issue with WPA is that it is based on performance above or below average rather than above or below replacement level. You get a positive WPA if you perform better, given the leverage of the situation, than the average player would have, or a negative WPA if you perform below average. The comparison to average is inherent in the system because it looks… Read more »

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Consider these two games: The Yankees are playing the Red Sox at the Stadium. Going into the bottom of the first the score is 0-0 and Jeter leads off with a HR. He accumulates a WPA of +0.113. It turns out that that is the only run scored in the game. Jeter later leads off the 3rd, 5th and 7th innings and makes out all three times accumulating a WPA of -0.048. His overall WPA is +0.065. Second game: The score is 0-0 going into the bottom of the 9th. Jeter has led off the 1st, 3rd and 6th innings… Read more »

Editor

John Autin

11 years ago

Reply to leatherman

leatherman, is your moniker connected with this fellow?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherman_(vagabond)

leatherman

11 years ago

Reply to John Autin

No connection at all, although that was quite an interesting read. I am the leather buyer for a furniture manufacturer, and everyone introduces me as “the leather guy.” When I was pondering a handle for message boards years ago, leatherman was always available and sounded better than leatherguy. Leatherguy sounds like a reference to South Park’s Mr. Slave.

LJF

11 years ago

Reply to leatherman

And leatherman brings to mind a handy multi tool. A much better choice.

no statistician but

11 years ago

Chuck Klein’s 4-HR game is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) it came two years after the leg injury that derailed his career and turned him into an ordinary player, not during the 6 years he was a powerhouse at the Baker Bowl and for half a year at Wrigley. 2) It was played not at the Baker Bowl but in Pittsburgh at Forbes Field, arguably the worst home run park in the NL at the time.

11 years ago

Seerey had 86 career homers and not only had a 4 homer game but a 3 homer game too.

11 years ago

Cameron had a higher war than Socco Rocco, would have never thunk it…

BryanM

11 years ago

Reply to PP

PP Bref has Cameron’s dWar at +9.7, Rocco’s At -4.7 , so RC had about 10 more Batting WAR than Mike, so maybe your instincts were not that far off – Don’t know if Colavito’s appearances as a pitcher affected anything…

Artie Z

11 years ago

Is Josh Hamilton the “reverse Darryl Strawberry”? By that I mean Strawberry was basically done due to personal problems by the time he was 30 (Straw had 280 HRs through his age 29 season, and only 55 after despite hanging around the majors until age 37), while Hamilton didn’t get going until his late 20s due to personal problems. Both are (probably were in Straw’s case now since he’s 50) immensely talented ballplayers who have/had substance abuse problems which will cause them to miss probably half of their careers (maybe a little less – like 35%-40% or so). Strawberry’s name… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

It’s weird to think that, since about 1995, hitting four home runs in a game has become far rarer historically than pitching a perfect game, and that’s in spite of the age of the instant slugger—just add steroids, HGH, or Flintstone Vitamins and stir.

One more reason for me to feel funny about all the no hitters and perfect games we’re seeing.

e pluribus munu

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

NSB, I’m no statistician either (as this comment will probebly demonstrate), but I wonder whether the way to think about the increase in perfect games (which is probably so small an absolute number that its significance is not statistical but . . .) is not by thinking about fine pitching performances, but the less romantic angle of perfectly bad batting performances. The recent decrease in position player roster spots (as I understand it) increases the odds of all team hitters simultaneously having a cold day, both by decreasing pinch-hitter options and by the increased stress on the regulars. With the… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

By saying that, EPM, you’re implicitly going against the bigger-better-stronger-faster school that argues that modern players are superior to those of the past, that Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson wouldn’t excel against the competition of later eras, etc. Bill James believes this, or said he did in the later Historical Baseball Abstract, not about Wagner or Johnson, but players in general. I tend to think that given an even playing field—modern training, equipment, advanced insight into the game, and a few other things—players of earlier eras would fare about the same later as they did in their own times. They… Read more »

e pluribus munu

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

Your points are well taken. I liked James’s assertion when he made it and I believe that training and knowledge of the game have continued to improve performance standards in most areas (perhaps not in screwball technique). But I’m not certain the issue applies here, since pitching and batting are both part of that dynamic, and we can see their relative balance in long term statistical trends, such as league ERA. These exceptional games are outlier events – and I don’t see anything in overall trends that would suggest they should be affected by the scale of variation in the… Read more »

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

and remember, one perfect game was lost due to a bad call by the ump

BryanM

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

It seems to me that both 4 homer games and Perfect Games are so far out on the probability curve of who-knows-what distribution, that we should attribute any variation in the small absolute numbers to random variation, and resist the temptation to find meaning in a particular distribution of the tea leaves in the bottom of the cup. Having said that, my human instinct to find patterns is as strong as anyone else’s , and if there is a cause , it’s the increase in strikeouts. K’s are at an all time high, and someone (was it Voros McCracken?) has… Read more »

bstar

11 years ago

Reply to BryanM

Yeah, I still think it’s more random variation than anything. I don’t know how many actual games have been played in MLB history, but for 4-HR games to only have happened 16 times and perfect games 21 makes the odds, as BryanM says, so impossibly remote that I think any evaluation on why they are occurring more often recently is basically much ado about nothing.

e pluribus munu

11 years ago

Reply to BryanM

Fair enough BryanM & bstar. But if the next $100K increment in salary level or an average addition of one more roster-pitcher is followed by a downpour of perfectos, NSB and I will look to you for our Nobel nominations.

BryanM

11 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

OK EPM — It could be salary, too many pitchers, sunspots , Ks or chicken and beer in the clubhouse or nothing at all. Adding pitchers has definitely added Ks , so maybe we’re looking at 2 sides of the same coin — also, it has decreased the importance of defense at shortstop , helping extend Derek Jeter’s Career

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to BryanM

Here’s a can of worms for anyone who wants to open it: How much of the apparently accelerating increase in strikeouts is due to changes in pitching—greater use of middle relievers and closers, and anything else that occurs to anyone—and how much is due to batting factors, such as the decline of the stigma attached to striking out, the desire of so many players to wait for their pitch in the hopes of driving it, all or nothing at all, the leftover mentality of the steroid era, and/or fill-in-the blank? Or are pitchers just getting the upper hand? (red herring… Read more »

Tmckelv

11 years ago

I love Bob Horner. My brother predicted (in 1979) he would someday become the all-time home run king. I wasn’t about to argue with it either.

Lawrence Azrin

11 years ago

# 40/no statistician but – I’d venture that it’s in large part the great decline in the stigma of striking out. Many players are striking out at levels that 40/50 years ago would get them sent back to the minors with an edict to “learn the strike zone”, and of course “don’t strike out as much”. If there were a strong positive correlation between not striking out and being a better hitter, I’d imagine natural selection would favor the low-K guys and discriminate against the high-K guys. But numerous studies have showed that the cost of striking out is relatively… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Thanks, Lawrence Azrin, for the incisive reply.

For one guy on a team, 8 runs per 100 K’s may be acceptable, but when it’s the whole lineup? Eight runs here, eight runs there, and pretty soon you start to loose some games.

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

Actually “lose” some games, although the games might get pretty loose with that many strikeouts.

Lawrence Azrin

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

In 2011, the spread from most K’s to least K’s was (1323-930) = 393. That’s a theoretical difference of about 30 runs from best to worst teams due to KO’s. But does this show up in team offensive performance? I don’t think so, because 9 of the 16 below-average striking-out teams had an above-average rate of runs/game, while 7 of the 14 above-average striking-out teams had an below-average rate of runs/game. Sorry, but I don’t see any correlation between striking out less, and scoring more runs. You also have to factor in the positive value of a strikeout in avoiding… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Hey, Lawrence, “loosen” up a little. My remark was an attempt at humor, with an echo of the famous quip once made by Senator Everett Dirksen about government spending, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Obviously, when all teams are whiffing at high rates, all bets are off, and there are too many other factors to consider anyway. Speaking of which, as far as the GIDP thing is concerned, the % of opportunities to GIDP vs actually doing so can’t be all that huge, can it? The other alternatives being: no man… Read more »

Editor

John Autin

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

For some reason, I thought of John Riggins’s rather forward remark to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at a formal dinner: “Loosen up, Sandy baby.” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/01/quoted_123.html (I don’t mean anything by that, by the way.) Anyway, NSB — I do think you’ve named some of the major factors in the rise in SO rate. For example, last year, the SO/9 was 6.9 for starting pitchers, but 8.0 for relievers. Both numbers are higher than, say, 1977 (5.0/5.5), but today’s spread is much bigger, and RPs are pitching far more innings than they did then. Speaking more broadly about strikeouts,… Read more »

bstar

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

It’s for reasons like this that I’ve always felt strikeouts have been overrated as a statistic to measure pitcher performance. It always seemed to me that Greg Maddux inducing a batter to hit a three-hopper right back to him on the first pitch of the at-bat was more impressive than an eight-pitch strikeout.

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

To JA:

Glad we’re on the same page this time.

Here’s a poem about the difference I perceive.:

Three strikes make a definite out,
But a BIP leaves the matter in doubt.

A rare instance of uncertainty being better than certainty.
In my opinion.

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

There is very little difference in the cost for the batter’s team of a strikeout as compared to an out on a ball in play. The advantages of the occasional runner moved up a base (especially when offset by the possibility of a double play ball) aren’t very large. But the cost of a strikeout for the batter’s team as compared to putting the ball in play, such that between 25% and 35% of the time it will fall in for a hit, is much higher. For a batter choosing strategies (more power but at the cost of more Ks,… Read more »

Thomas Court

11 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

One thing that gets forgotten in a lot of these discussions is pitch counts. The player that is going for increased power at the expense of more strikeouts is going to require more pitches per at bat on average. A few players like this in a lineup is going to put a lot more strain on the arms of an opposing teams staff. A hypothetical: Runner on first, 1-1 count, batter flies out on pitch #3 to right and the runner does not advance. Same scenario, the hitter swings and misses on the 1-1 count (causing a nice gentle breeze)… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

Running up pitch counts is nothing new, One of the masters at doing so was the grand champion at NOT striking out, Joe Sewell. So you CAN have it both ways. It isn’t either-or, Shawon Dunston or Adam Dunn.

And you CAN drive that pitch you’ve waited for down the line for a double instead of going for the fence and falling short. Long fly balls caught on the warning track give the play-by-play announcers palpitations but they give me a pain.

BryanM

11 years ago

NSB– I’m with you in thinking that a K is a failure on the part of the batter, it may not be proven to be statistically more damaging than any other out, but of course it is worse than a ball in play. Fewest Ks in the NL last year? the Cardinals. Second fewest ? the 102 game-winning Phils (just sayin’)