Yes, I'm still alive and so, apparently, is the good 'ol Baseblogg. That's why I wanted to make my comeback post about "The Kid," Ken Griffey Jr. and his pursuit of 600 career homeruns.
Here's a guy who, in an era where seemingly everybody is tainted by steroid suspicion, has been remarkably productive and remarkably free from controversy. Yes, he was Mr. Glass from 2001 to 2006, missing an average of 70 games a season. There's no question that lost time has kept him from joining an even more elite class of players, a class he was seemingly destined for in the 90s. Based on his career averages, he lost about 100 dingers to those injuries, meaning, if healthy, he would be one away from 700, not 600.
Either way, when you look at the players who have made it close to, or surpassed 600 recently (Bonds, Sosa, and Palmeiro), it'll be nice to have an undeniably legit one in the group. I just hope it's soon.
I don't know if you were watching Game 2 of the NLDS this afternoon, but I was when Ryan Howard hit a solo shot in the 6th against Colorado. This is a picture of him launching it right here. But what you don't see in the photo is how Howard absolutely pimped it after he hit it.
Congratulations Ryan, now you're only losing ten to four. Way to show us how awesome you are with a meaningless Han Solo shot. How about doing it with a couple of guys on when it friggin' matters? Maybe then you can stand at home plate and stare at it and not look like a complete fool.
I thought the Rockies might throw at him in his next at-bat. But then I realized winning the series is much better revenge.
Last night, A-Rod became the first hitter in baseball this year to hit 40 homeruns, but Prince Fielder isn't far behind him, after launching number 39 himself. Aside from those two guys, only Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard are even to 30 homeruns right now and they're the only two projected to make it to 40, so it's looking like a down-year for big flies to say the least.
It's actually been 12 years (1995) since baseball had just 4 players hit 40 or more homeruns (Albert Belle, Dante Bichette, Frank Thomas, Jay Buhner). In the 11 seasons since then, there have been at least 10 players in the 40-club 8 times with a high of 17 in 1996 (Mark McGwire, Brady Anderson, Ken Griffey, Albert Belle, Andreas Gallaraga, Juan Gonzalez, Jay Buhner, Mo Vaughn, Gary Sheffield, Greg Vaughn, Todd Hundley, Frank Thomas, Sammy Sosa, Ellis Burks, Vinny Castilla, and Ken Caminiti). In the three seasons that didn't have at least 10 players hit 40 (2005, 2004, 2002), they came awfully close (9, 9, 8).
And while we're talking about 40, let's talk about 41- the number of consecutive hitters Bobby Jenks had retired before giving up a lead-off single to Joey Gathright last night. Jenks tied the record, but didn't break it, and probably would have if he didn't have an 8 day lay-off between appearances (which happened to coincide with the Sox 8 game losing-streak).
"I messed that one up myself," Jenks said after the game. He apparently shook off his catcher on the pitch that ended up being a base-hit. That may be, Bobby, but your team sure didn't do you any favors either.
To me, this is a sad day for baseball...not because it's Barry Bonds who's broken one of the game's most revered records. No, we knew that was going to happen eventually and Bonds is unquestionably a Hall-of-Famer. To me, the reason this is a sad day is because baseball and its fans are either grossly over-celebrating this achievement, or grossly under-celebrating it, and we may never know which is the case.
One of two things happened here. Either Barry Bonds did use illegal performance-enhancing drugs to enjoy freakish success in his late 30s and 40s and broke records he otherwise wouldn't have come close to breaking, or he didn't do anything wrong other than enjoying unprecedented late-career potency thanks to a rigorous workout regimen and a health-conscious diet. It's sad we don't have an answer to that yet.
Bonds insisted his record is "taint-free," again last night during a post-game press conference. I appreciate that, but with all due respect to Bonds, I'd like to hear high ranking baseball officials corroborate his story. And considering the fact that Bud Selig didn't even want his picture taken with Bonds, I wouldn't expect that any time soon. It's sad that every single story or discussion in the days and weeks to come will include the words "suspicion," "allegations," "knowingly," "cheat," "taint," "leaked grand jury testimony" and "steroids." It's sad because the game deserves better, and so does Bonds if he's actually clean.
It's sad that some people might try to turn this into a racial issue, which it simply is not. I bet you'll be able to find more Barry Bonds fans right now than Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro fans, and probably more Hank Aaron fans than the other three combined.
And it's sad that some people are not celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime achievement with the same zeal as, say, Ripken's 2131, or McGwire's 62nd back before this whole mess started. That's not to say that I blame them, it's just sad that there's any doubt.
I'm curious to know what people think here. What's the more impressive achievement- Barry Bonds and his proverbial "cloud of suspicion," hitting his 755th (and soon enough 756th) career homerun, or Alex Rodriguez hitting his 500th career homerun at 32 years and 8 days of age?
In other words, is Bonds' longevity and sustained power a more admirable feat than the youthful age at which Rodriguez reached a milestone that was once, and may still be, considered a fail-safe measure of a truly elite power hitter?
Once Bonds does reach 756, he and A-Rod will be in completely unchartered territory. Nobody will have hit more homeruns in a single career, and nobody has reached 500 at a younger age.
To be quite honest, I really don't know which one I find more impressive here, which I suppose speaks to the fact that, like many fans, I'm not sure if Bonds reached the record by completely pure methods. Otherwise, I think you have to give the nod to Bonds, hands down. But with A-Rod, so far, free of the performance-enhancing-taint that will no-doubt dog Bonds no matter what investigators find (or don't find), his feats, when compared to Bonds', match up more favorably than they otherwise would.
So, what do you think?
Last night, Ryan Howard became the fastest player in history to hit reach the 100 homerun mark, taking just 325 games to do it. Ralph Kiner had held the old record of 385 games, for 59 years (he hit 369 total homeruns).
For his career, Howard is now averaging a remarkable 50 homers every 162 games, but that doesn't mean Aaron, Bonds, Ruth, A-Rod, or anybody else should be worried. Here's why. While he's the fastest to get to 100, he's by no means the youngest to reach 100, and when you talk about all time-taters, that's a much more important number.
Howard turns 28 in November. That's not young, especially when you consider the fact that Albert Pujols turns 28 in January and already has 266 homeruns. Miguel Cabrera, who is by no means as prolific a homerun hitter as Howard, doesn't turn 28 until April 18, 2011! He's already sitting on 121 career dingers.
Ken Griffey Jr. was 23 when he hit his 100th back in 1993. So was Alex Rodriguez when he hit his 100th in 1998. Believe it or not, Junior and A-Rod rank eighth and fourth respectively on the all-time "youngest to 100" list. If you're curious, Mel Ott is number one. He hit his 100th when he was 22 years, 132 days old and ended up with 511 for his career. Ott is also the fastest to 200 (25 years, 144 days) but it gets interesting after that. A-Rod is far and away the youngest ever to get to 300 (27 years, 249 days), and 400 (29 years, 316 days). And if he can hit 8 more before June 28, 2008 (exactly one year from today) he'll also be the fastest to 500. At that point, people can begin to talk seriously about 800.
Now back to Howard. Assuming he stays healthy, and assuming he's, somehow, able to keep up the absurd "50 in every 162" pace he's currently on, he will hit another 26 this year, giving him 44 for the year and 126 for his career. After that, he would need another seven and a half seasons at 50 per to reach 500. If all that happens, he would hit his 500th at about this time, in the year 2015, at about age 35 and a half. A-Rod, on the other hand, can play in 27 more games before turning 32 and he's sitting on 492 career homeruns. This means A-Rod will likely reach the 500 mark at an age three and a half years younger than Howard would, assuming Howard can sustain his torrid pace for 8 more seasons.
That, friends, is some prolific pop from the man some Yankee fans still love to hate.
I'd be willing to bet I wasn't the only person who thought Sammy Sosa's 600th homerun last night was somewhat anti-climactic. I was even watching it live on ESPN during one of their cut-ins and I must say it just didn't resonate with me as being a remarkable achievement, which it really is.
In very basic terms, 600 homeruns is the equivalent of hitting 30 a season for 20 years, or 40 a season for 15 years. That is truly remarkable power, sustained over a long period of time, especially considering no current player owns an active streak of even 5 straight years of 40 homeruns (Albert Pujols is going for his 5th straight this year and David Ortiz and Adam Dunn are going for their 4th).
So to hit 600 in a career, you need to play for a long time. And you need to be, either a consistently very good power hitter, or have a few years where you just go berserk. Even though he did have a streak of 6 straight 40 homerun seasons, I think you have to classify Sosa in the latter category considering he hit 40.5% of his career dingers in a four-year-stretch ('98-'01). During that four-year-stretch we saw players post homerun totals of 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, and 63. Before that, it had been 37 years since somebody hit 60, and nobody's done it since.
The other guys in the 600 homerun club are Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays.
Aaron led the league in homers once in 23 seasons, and never hit more than 45. But he had a 17-year stretch where he hit fewer than 30 just one time. That, to me, places him in the "consistently very good" category.
Bonds is sort of a hybrid of the two classifications. Like Aaron, he had a 15-year stretch where he hit fewer than 30 just once. But like Sosa, 28% of his 748 homeruns came in 5-year stretch ('00-'04).
Ruth is also a hybrid, but a different type than Bonds. He had a 13-year stretch where he hit at least 30 every year but one, and he also had a 14-year stretch where he led the league in homeruns 11 times. The best way to describe his power-hitting career might be "consistently excellent." He didn't have a short spurt where he was off the wall like Bonds and Sosa. His whole career was off the wall. He hit 60 once, 50 3 times, and 40 7 times. And his two most powerful seasons were 6 years apart (59 bombs in '21 and 60 in '27).
As for Mays, he's more of an Aaron type. He led the league just 3 times, his career high in a season was 52, but for 13 years he hit over 30 a total of 11 times.
Maybe it's the fact that Sosa is being overshadowed this year by Bonds' pursuit of Aaron, maybe it's because he came out of retirement presumably just to hit his 600th homerun, maybe it's because Ken Griffey Jr., Manny Ramirez, A-Rod and possibly Jim Thome all have a decent shot at 600 as well, or maybe it's because 2 out of every 5 of Sosa's career homeruns were hit during the so-called steroid era. Either way, this achievement just doesn't resonate with me the way it should.
Yes, I'm still alive and so, apparently, is the good 'ol Baseblogg. That's why I wanted to make my comeback post about "The Kid," Ken Griffey Jr. and his pursuit of 600 career homeruns.
