Baseball musing this morning. Although the focus for the last few days has been on Palmeiro's breaking 500 home runs, A-Rod has managed to set the record for a major leaguer for most home runs by the age of 28.
A-Rod has 309 homers as of yesterday. The prior record holder was Mel Ott, with 306 dingers, with Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron close behind at 299 and 298 respectively. Here's the best part: A-Rod is NOT yet 28, in fact in terms of baseball age he won't be 28 until next season.
Some of this is certainly due to the juiced ball, lack of pitchers, or bandbox ballparks, depending on which reason you believe has caused the sudden upsurge in home runs in the majors over the last decade. But how can we adjust for this?
Fortunately, there is a
reference source which contains every baseball statistic since 1871 in Microsoft Access format, so you can create your own queries. I decided to take a look at the home run rate in Aaron's time versus that which applies today. Aaron played from 1954-1976; during that time hitters (excluding American League pitchers, who have not been hitting in A-Rod's time), averaged 1 homer for every 45.6 plate appearances. A-Rod has played since 1994; during that time hitters averaged 1 homer for every 35.1 plate appearances. This indicates that about 23% of A-Rod's homers are due to current conditions, which would be about 69 homers entering the 2003 season, knocking him down quite a bit from the top at age 28. Still all he has to do to get it back would be to hit 75 homers over the balance of this season and the next, a task which he seems quite capable of achieving.
Note: I am not really suggesting that we do this sort of adjustment for everybody's stats like this; God knows if we did Roger Connor would probably rank as the greatest home run hitter ever. Just pointing out that even if you do make these adjustments, A-Rod still ranks up there near the top. It's not all an illusion, just some of it.
