Sunday, September 27, 2015

Yogi Berra's Amazing HR-To-Strikeout Rate

He hit 358 HRs while the league average player would have hit 175 (358/175 = 2.04, which is multiplied by 100 to get the HR rate in the table below). He had 414 strikeouts while the league average player would have had 844. That gets us the 49 in the table below.

If we then do HR Rate/SO Rate we get 204/49 = 4.16. That leaves Berra 4th all-time. All data from the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia.


Rank Player HR Rate HR SO RATE SO HR/SO
1 Ken Williams 370 190 75 237 4.93
2 Joe DiMaggio 277 361 59 369 4.69
3 Tris Speaker 145 72 33 104 4.39
4 Yogi Berra 204 358 49 414 4.16
5 Ernie Lombardi 222 190 54 262 4.11
6 Frank McCormick 151 128 39 189 3.87
7 Tommy Holmes 103 88 27 122 3.81
8 Albert Pujols 207 492 57 835 3.63
9 Ted Williams 286 521 79 709 3.62
10 Johnny Mize 306 359 86 524 3.56
11 Bill Dickey 185 202 55 289 3.36
12 Babe Ruth 622 665 189 1146 3.29
13 Stan Musial 174 475 55 696 3.16
14 Ted Kluszewski 176 279 56 365 3.14
15 Lou Gehrig 369 493 118 790 3.13
16 Mel Ott 327 511 106 896 3.08
17 Hank Aaron 237 755 77 1383 3.08
18 Barry Bonds 237 762 78 1539 3.04
19 Don Mattingly 120 222 40 444 3.00
20 Rogers Hornsby 322 274 109 492 2.95
21 Chuck Klein 291 300 99 521 2.94
22 Mickey Cochrane 147 119 52 217 2.83
23 Vladimir Guerrero 176 449 65 985 2.71
24 Gary Sheffield 176 509 67 1171 2.63
25 Billy Williams 191 426 74 1046 2.58

Now Berra did hit 210 HRs at home in Yankee Stadium, which was a great park for HR hitting if you were a lefty. But if we double his road total of 148 we get 296. If we divide that 296 by the league average of 175, we get a HR rate of 169. If that is divided by his SO rate of 49, we get 3.44. That would still leave him 11th.

Maybe Yankee stadium also cut down on his strikeouts. I don't know if it helped batters in that way. I also could have given him more than 296 HRs, since players usually hit more at home no matter what.

If we adjusted DiMaggio, who hit 213 of his HRs on the road (Yankee Stadium was tough on righties), his ratio would rise to 5.56, putting him ahead of Ken Williams.

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.

See Should Joe DiMaggio's Offensive Value Be Estimated Upwards Because Of Yankee Stadium?

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