Joe DiMaggio Has the Highest Career Home Run to Strikeout Ratio in Road Games and It Is By a Wide Margin (he was born 11-25-1914)

Originally posted in 2022.

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.

The Yankees had a .398 OPS differential in Game 5, the highest ever for a losing team in The World Series (and by a wide margin)

I called up all the team games with runs greater than or equal to zero using Stathead's game finder for World Series games.

Then after getting the data arranged I calculated the OPS differential for all the losing teams. The Yankees had the greatest OPS differential ever for a losing team in a World Series game.

Click here to see the search results.

The Yankees had a .959 OPS in Game 5. The Dodgers had .561. That .398 differential is the highest ever in a World Series game for a team that lost.

The previous record was .325 by the White Sox in game 3 of the 1959 World Series. They lost 3-1 but beat the Dodgers in OPS .789-.464.

So the Yankees beat the old record by .073.

Here is the top 10:

Year	Game	Loser	Winner	LOPS	WOPS	Diff
2024	5	Yankees	Dodgers	0.959	0.561	0.398
1959	3	White Sox	Dodgers	0.789	0.464	0.325
1986	6	Red Sox	Mets	0.824	0.515	0.309
1980	5	Royals	Phillies	0.877	0.569	0.308
1979	4	Pirates	Orioles	1.129	0.837	0.292
1949	3	Dodgers	Yankees	0.729	0.438	0.291
1954	2	Indians	Giants	0.732	0.45	0.282
1947	4	Yankees	Dodgers	0.658	0.382	0.276
1926	7	Yankees	Cardinals	0.743	0.471	0.272
1944	1	Cardinals	Browns	0.587	0.329	0.258

LOPS is the OPS for the losing team and WOPS is the OPS for the winning team.