DiMaggio hit only 41% of his HRs at home in his career while Williams hit 72%. So it is likely the case that DiMaggio would rank first, and probably by a wide margin, if HRs were park adjusted. Ted Williams hit less than 50% of his HRs at home.
The next table shows which players had the lowest relative strikeout rates among guys who hit 40+ HRs. Again, no pikers here. In 2004, Bonds had only 41 strikeouts while the average player would have had 100. I am so proud to see the demonstration of Polish power with 3 for Ted Kluszewski and 1 for Carl Yastrzemski (whose 1970 season ranks 27th). Don't forget Stan Musial is 13th on the above list.
3 comments:
I'm curious about how these numbers compare with walk rates. It seems to me there are two reasons a player strikes out:
1. Because he swings and misses a lot
2. Because he takes a lot of pitches for strikes.
The former should relate to home-runs on the assumption there is a trade-off between power and precision in a player's swing. The latter, it seems, would relate to walks.
Drew
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. My guess is that HR hitters swing alot and/or wait for their pitch to hit a long way. But also, pitchers may not want to groove one to big HR hitters, so they walk those guys more often. You might be interested in my post called
"Which Players Had The Most Surprising Walk Rates? (Part 2)"
which is at
http://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2009/06/which-players-had-most-surprising-walk.html
It does relate to power, but I did not include strikeout rates.
Cyril
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