I used Stathead to find all the players who hit at least career 50 HRs in road games and then found their ratios (971 players). Here is the top 25:
|
Rank |
Player |
HR |
SO |
Ratio |
|
1 |
Joe DiMaggio |
213 |
209 |
1.02 |
|
2 |
Ernie Lombardi |
106 |
144 |
0.74 |
|
3 |
Yogi Berra |
148 |
208 |
0.71 |
|
4 |
Ted Williams |
273 |
388 |
0.70 |
|
5 |
Sid Gordon |
120 |
180 |
0.67 |
|
6 |
Stan Musial |
223 |
360 |
0.62 |
|
7 |
Ted Kluszewski |
117 |
197 |
0.59 |
|
8 |
Frank McCormick |
66 |
112 |
0.59 |
|
9 |
Lou Gehrig |
242 |
415 |
0.58 |
|
10 |
Johnny Mize |
147 |
260 |
0.57 |
|
11 |
Walker Cooper |
102 |
184 |
0.55 |
|
12 |
Zeke Bonura |
52 |
99 |
0.53 |
|
13 |
Babe Ruth |
367 |
717 |
0.51 |
|
14 |
Henry Aaron |
370 |
729 |
0.51 |
|
15 |
Goose Goslin |
156 |
311 |
0.50 |
|
16 |
Eddie Robinson |
92 |
185 |
0.50 |
|
17 |
Albert Pujols |
370 |
756 |
0.49 |
|
18 |
Barry Bonds |
383 |
785 |
0.49 |
|
19 |
Smoky Burgess |
59 |
121 |
0.49 |
|
20 |
Monte Irvin |
56 |
116 |
0.48 |
|
21 |
Andy Pafko |
115 |
245 |
0.47 |
|
22 |
Charlie Gehringer |
92 |
197 |
0.47 |
|
23 |
Stan Spence |
65 |
140 |
0.46 |
|
24 |
Mickey Cochrane |
57 |
125 |
0.46 |
|
25 |
Irish Meusel |
50 |
110 |
0.45 |
DiMaggio is about 38% higher than the next highest guy, Lombardi. Now DiMaggio did play in an era without alot of great strikeout pitchers and maybe batters tried alot harder back then just to make contact with two strikes. But to be so far ahead of the second place guy is amazing.
DiMaggio only hit 148 HRs in home games. In his time, left center field in Yankee Stadium was something like 467 feet from home plate. I did a post several years ago that looked at HR/K ratios adjusted for the league average and DiMaggio came in second, with only Ken Williams ahead of him. That did not take park affects into account. Most likely if I could do that, DiMaggio would move up to first (it was only 297 down the line in RF and 344 in the RF power alley in Yankee Stadium, so it helped lefties and DiMaggio batted right handed). See Which Players Had The Best HR-To-Strikeout Ratios?
Just for comparison purposes, Babe Ruth had the highest career slugging percentage which was 8.8% higher than the .634 of second place Ted Williams. Ty Cobb had a .366 career batting average while second place Rogers Hornsby is close behind at .358 (only 2.2% higher). My guess is that there is no other rate stat where the difference between first and second comes close to 38%.
I also looked at all the players with 500+ hits in road games and found their hit to strikeout ratios (1253 players). The highest was Willie Keeler at 14.458 (that only includes games from 1901 on). Joe Sewell is 2nd with 14.131. So Keeler is only 2.3% higher.
Nellie Fox is 3rd with 11.744. If we compare Sewell to Fox so that we have two guys for whom we have all their career data, Sewell is 20% ahead of Fox. Pretty good, but far short of the 38% lead DiMaggio has.
