Quiz – Sluggers (stumped, sort of) |

There have been many prolific power hitters in baseball history, but only these eight have a particular career accomplishment. What is it?

Rk	Name
1	Albert Pujols
2	Lou Gehrig
3	David Ortiz
4	Todd Helton
5	Albert Belle
6	Hank Greenberg
7	Chuck Klein
8	Babe Ruth

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 10/20/2014.

Hint: the active players shown here are not in danger of dropping off this list by the time they retire.

This one stumped everyone but Sir Richard who elected to let others have a go. The answer is that only these players have multiple seasons of 40 doubles and 40 home runs. Those seasons are after the jump.

Rk	Name	Yrs	From	To	Age
1	Albert Pujols	3	2003	2009	23-29	Ind. Seasons
2	Lou Gehrig	3	1927	1934	24-31	Ind. Seasons
3	David Ortiz	2	2004	2005	28-29	Ind. Seasons
4	Todd Helton	2	2000	2001	26-27	Ind. Seasons
5	Albert Belle	2	1995	1998	28-31	Ind. Seasons
6	Hank Greenberg	2	1937	1940	26-29	Ind. Seasons
7	Chuck Klein	2	1929	1930	24-25	Ind. Seasons
8	Babe Ruth	2	1921	1923	26-28	Ind. Seasons

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 10/21/2014.

Possibly you may be surprised that there are so few players to do this. But, when you think about having to pound out 80+ extra-base hits, it starts to make more sense.

Active players with a shot to join this group include Chris Davis and Miguel Cabrera. Alfonso Soriano and Mark Teixeira also have one of these seasons, but it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t be having another. Between the second of Hank Greenberg’s seasons and Albert Belle’s first, there were 54 seasons during which there was only one 40/40 season – by Willie Stargell in 1973.

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Richard Chester

9 years ago

I have the answer but I’ll give others a chance to work on it.

paget

I doubt this has anything to do with it, but I see Chuck Klein, Hank Greenberg, and Todd Helton all on the same short list of sluggers and my mind instantly turns to some pretty epic Home/Road splits. (In order, 122/77, 119/80, 119/80.)

The other fellas on the list don’t share that characteristic though (indeed, Gehrig has a 95/104 split. Go figure?).

Reply to paget

My favorite year in the Chuck Klein (Baker Bowl) canon: 1933. Check out the Home/Road breakdown of his Triple Crown Season:
Home .467/.516/.789
Away .280/.338/.436

tOPS+ 153/52

Has anyone ever had a more lopsided year in the history of the game?

ReliefMan

King Felix, 2011: 366 tOPS+ at home (thanks to an interleague HTBF game where he had to bat and went 1 for 3), -100 tOPS on the road. Obviously, small sample size disclaimer.

I found 5 players with a more lop-sided split (502 PA min.) than Klein.

160/43….1990….Tom Brunansky
157/42….2002….Michael Tucker
157/50….2012….Kevin Youkilis
154/48….1932….Eric McNair
154/42….1977….Garry Matthews

mosc

Reply to Richard Chester

I know Fenway is a funny park and all but Youk was a patient right handed power hitter with serious pull tendencies. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d have a split like that. He walked nearly twice as often at home (wtf does that have to do with park?). This is a hitter in 2010 who was better on the road than in Fenway! He even switched home parks during the season, something that seems to only have INCREASED his split. Definitely one of the oddities of baseball. You have to wonder if the Yankees considered how odd 2012… Read more »

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Doug

Nothing to do with home/road splits.

But, good observation. You could add in Ortiz (107/93) as well.

MikeD

Now that we know the answer to the question, I wonder if those epic home/road splits actually helped them make this list. Balls that were sailing out of the park for HRs at home were falling for doubles on the road. Then again, in Helton’s case, they were probably flying out of the park and falling for doubles at a high rate at Coors.

koma

if the active players are not in sanger to drop off this list, it must have something to do with a special timeframe or something like: most of../highest rate of.. compiled whil under age…

Reply to koma

Not really. Not much discussion on this post, so I’ll reveal the answer.

The quiz players are the only ones with multiple seasons of 40 doubles plus 40 home runs.

Dr. Doom

Reply to Doug

I actually thought about doubles and home runs! The thing is, sometimes the line between “career” accomplishment and “season” accomplishment is a fuzzy one. Arch. I wish I would’ve looked at this more closely. But I was stuck on the cumulative numbers, rather than the individual seasons. Now to resume kicking myselfm

bells

Gah! I actually thought of this very thing as the only thing I thought of when looking at the numbers, but thought ‘that’s too simple, I don’t have time to look more’ and just left it. Lesson to self – say something next time.