Some impressions of Mark Trumbo

[Ohfan67]

Yeah that was strange, since the reason we traded him was to get a power hitter, the catcher Earl Williams, who never matched Davey's season with Atlanta. Another curious turn is that Johnson then went to Japan and could barely get over the Mendoza line.

Davey Johnson hit almost 32% of his career homers in that one season. I never realized just how strange his season was until this thread. For comparison, Brady Anderson's 50 HR season represents about 24% of his career HR's.

[Ohfan67]

Davey Johnson hit almost 32% of his career homers in that one season. I never realized just how strange his season was until this thread. For comparison, Brady Anderson's 50 HR season represents about 24% of his career HR's.

Just a quick search of baseball reference suggests that Johnson's one year increase in home runs dwarfs all of the suspected or known PED users (although that analyasis is a little wonky because they could have used for multiple years so the spikes are not as sharp). Pretty wild data!

[FlipTheBird]

It's quite possible.

Machado is on pace for 39 HR.

Davis is on pace for 40 HR.

And Trumbo of course already has 40 and is on pace for 50HR.

And there's plenty of baseball left, yes. But this is a good point to make for the folks that say "well if they all get there we'll probably finish the season strong."

The homers don't matter. They've been happening all season. This team needs a great final month of pitching if they want to stay in the race.

[Ruzious]

Davey Johnson hit almost 32% of his career homers in that one season. I never realized just how strange his season was until this thread. For comparison, Brady Anderson's 50 HR season represents about 24% of his career HR's.

Sheesh, I was just about to say that Davey hitting 40 was a bigger fluke than Brady hitting 50.

But as far as I know, nobody every accused Davey of using roids. I wasn't going to say that, so if somebody gets mad at me, I'll blame it on you.

[OFFNY]

19 teams in ML History (excluding the teams that have 3 players hitting 40HR) have had 2 players on the same team hit the 40HR mark in the same season. We'd be the 20th (Edit: We'd actually be the 23rd counting the 3 3 player 40 HR teams) and 1st Oriole team to do so... pretty cool!

Btw' date=' there's only been 3 teams in major league history with more than 2 players hitting the 40HR mark in the same season:

[u']

1973 Atlanta Braves[/u]

Hank Aaron 40

Darrell Evans 41

Davey Johnson 43

1996 Colorado Rockies

Ellis Burks 40

Vinny Castilla 40

Andres Galarraga 47

1997 Colorado Rockies

Vinny Castilla 40

Andres Galarraga 41

Larry Walker 49

The 2016 Orioles could conceivably become the first team in the history of MLB to have a 50-HR man and two 40-HR men.

If I had to bet, I would bet against it ........ but at this point, it's possible.

[Frobby]

And there's plenty of baseball left, yes. But this is a good point to make for the folks that say "well if they all get there we'll probably finish the season strong."

The homers don't matter. They've been happening all season. This team needs a great final month of pitching if they want to stay in the race.

The homers do matter. They're just not the only thing that matters.

The homers were record-setting in June, and we went 19-9 despite having our second-worst ERA month 4.85.

The homers were way down in July, and we went 12-14 despite posting a decent 4.27 ERA.

Homers are way up in August, but again we have a 12-14 record. Why? First, because the pitching has been largely awful (5.45 ERA for the month). Second, although the HR's are nearly matching our June output, the other elements of our offense (OBP and RISP hitting) haven't been as strong as they were in June. Our runs/game are way below what we scored in June.

There's lots of different combinations that could win games for us down the home stretch. I say, just find ways to score more runs than the other team.

[atomic]

Interesting it appears we are on pace to score fewer runs than last year. Unless my calculations are wrong it appears we are on a pace for 711 runs scored. Last year we had 713 runs scored. In 2013 we had 745 runs scored.

[DrungoHazewood]

Just a quick search of baseball reference suggests that Johnson's one year increase in home runs dwarfs all of the suspected or known PED users (although that analyasis is a little wonky because they could have used for multiple years so the spikes are not as sharp). Pretty wild data!

In somewhat similar veins:

John Jaha had 141 career homers, but single seasons of 34 and 35.

Bill Hall had 125 in his 11-year career, single season high of 35.

Willard Marshall played just after WWII, had a 36-homer season, no more than 17 in any other.

Jimmy Hall hit 33 homers as a rookie in 1963, and just steadily declined from there. His last year with regular playing time was 1969 where he hit three homers in 270 PAs.

Chuck Workman played during and just after WWII and had a 25-homer season in a 2000-PA, 50-homer career.

Norm Zauchin played for the Sox in the '50s, had a 27-homer 1955, total of 50 homers in 1197 PAs.

Sam Bowens was an Oriole, hit 22 homers as a rookie in 1964. Hit 45 homers in his 7-year career. I don't know the backstory but it looks like he just absolutely stopped hitting in 1965 and never got it back.

And all of the 1884 Chicago White Stockings look like they were on the craziest 'roids of all time, until you figure out that they played in a park that had 200' signs on the fences. Prior to the Babe there were eight 20+ homer seasons in history, five of them '84 White Stockings. Ned Williamson was great, played 13 years, but had 27 of his 64 homers that season. Cap Anson had 3800 MLB PAs and five homers prior to 1884, and he hit 21 homers that year. 20 at home.

[LA2]

Oriole Larry Sheets hit 31 of his 94 career homers (33%) in one season: 1987. He had other seasons of 18, 17, and 10 twice.

[Frobby]

Interesting it appears we are on pace to score fewer runs than last year. Unless my calculations are wrong it appears we are on a pace for 711 runs scored. Last year we had 713 runs scored. In 2013 we had 745 runs scored.

I think your calculations are wrong. We have scored 615 runs in 130 games, 4.73 runs per game, on pace for 766 runs scored. It should be noted that the league average is up over last year by 0.14 runs/game (about 23 runs over 162 games).

[El Gordo]

In somewhat similar veins:

John Jaha had 141 career homers, but single seasons of 34 and 35.

Bill Hall had 125 in his 11-year career, single season high of 35.

Willard Marshall played just after WWII, had a 36-homer season, no more than 17 in any other.

Jimmy Hall hit 33 homers as a rookie in 1963, and just steadily declined from there. His last year with regular playing time was 1969 where he hit three homers in 270 PAs.

Chuck Workman played during and just after WWII and had a 25-homer season in a 2000-PA, 50-homer career.

Norm Zauchin played for the Sox in the '50s, had a 27-homer 1955, total of 50 homers in 1197 PAs.

Sam Bowens was an Oriole, hit 22 homers as a rookie in 1964. Hit 45 homers in his 7-year career. I don't know the backstory but it looks like he just absolutely stopped hitting in 1965 and never got it back.

And all of the 1884 Chicago White Stockings look like they were on the craziest 'roids of all time, until you figure out that they played in a park that had 200' signs on the fences. Prior to the Babe there were eight 20+ homer seasons in history, five of them '84 White Stockings. Ned Williamson was great, played 13 years, but had 27 of his 64 homers that season. Cap Anson had 3800 MLB PAs and five homers prior to 1884, and he hit 21 homers that year. 20 at home.

Look no further than Roger Maris: 275 career HR, had seasons of 39, 61, and 33. Otherwise never more than 28.

[Ohfan67]

In somewhat similar veins:

John Jaha had 141 career homers, but single seasons of 34 and 35.

Bill Hall had 125 in his 11-year career, single season high of 35.

Willard Marshall played just after WWII, had a 36-homer season, no more than 17 in any other.

Jimmy Hall hit 33 homers as a rookie in 1963, and just steadily declined from there. His last year with regular playing time was 1969 where he hit three homers in 270 PAs.

Chuck Workman played during and just after WWII and had a 25-homer season in a 2000-PA, 50-homer career.

Norm Zauchin played for the Sox in the '50s, had a 27-homer 1955, total of 50 homers in 1197 PAs.

Sam Bowens was an Oriole, hit 22 homers as a rookie in 1964. Hit 45 homers in his 7-year career. I don't know the backstory but it looks like he just absolutely stopped hitting in 1965 and never got it back.

And all of the 1884 Chicago White Stockings look like they were on the craziest 'roids of all time, until you figure out that they played in a park that had 200' signs on the fences. Prior to the Babe there were eight 20+ homer seasons in history, five of them '84 White Stockings. Ned Williamson was great, played 13 years, but had 27 of his 64 homers that season. Cap Anson had 3800 MLB PAs and five homers prior to 1884, and he hit 21 homers that year. 20 at home.

Very fun info. I was hoping you would chime in with some historical relevance. By the way, I wasn't trying to imply that Davey or even Brady used PED's. While I believe PED's helped a lot of hitters hit more home runs, I also know that there have been enough MLB hitter seasons to generate a tremendous number of outliers like Davey's season and the examples you posted.

[atomic]

I think your calculations are wrong. We have scored 615 runs in 130 games, 4.73 runs per game, on pace for 766 runs scored. It should be noted that the league average is up over last year by 0.14 runs/game (about 23 runs over 162 games).

You are right.

[DrungoHazewood]

Very fun info. I was hoping you would chime in with some historical relevance. By the way, I wasn't trying to imply that Davey or even Brady used PED's. While I believe PED's helped a lot of hitters hit more home runs, I also know that there have been enough MLB hitter seasons to generate a tremendous number of outliers like Davey's season and the examples you posted.

I am generally a PED agnostic - for most players I have no actionable information relevant to the discussion, and we don't know degrees of impact in any case. I firmly believe that you cannot tease out steroid or other PED use from playing records. Too many other factors at play.

Except David Ortiz. He's guilty as sin.

[Redskins Rick]

I am generally a PED agnostic - for most players I have no actionable information relevant to the discussion, and we don't know degrees of impact in any case. I firmly believe that you cannot tease out steroid or other PED use from playing records. Too many other factors at play.

Except David Ortiz. He's guilty as sin.

Very good post.

I think there probably in reality, a very small percent of the MLB players, that abused steroids.

But, thats my own opinion.