‘Twould be an understatement to say that Carlos Pena had a breakout season. I am tempted to establish a Carlos Pena Award and figure the Carlos Pena Trophy winner for every season since the invention of the trophy, but I’ve already used that shtick a couple of times, and if I do it again people are going to start making fun of me for it. So instead, I will content myself with figuring the 25 greatest Carlos Pena seasons of all time.
I was wondering if anyone had ever had a season quite this big coming from a career path quite this flat. It turns out the answer is “Yes, but there is usually an obvious explanation for it.” But first, a word of methodology.
I’ll base this on Season Scores. Carlos Pena’s best season prior to 2007 had a Season Score of 216. His 2007 season scores at 416—a new career high by a modest 200 points. Alex Rodriguez in 1996 had a season that scored at 534 after a previous career high of 25--+509 points—but obviously that’s not really the same thing; he was 20 years old (and incidentally would not exceed 534 until 2007). I looked for players who
a) were at least 27 years old,
b) had played at least 400 previous games in the major leagues, and
c) had a career best season by at least 150 points.
Carlos doesn’t just skate over these limits; he was 29 years old, had played 500+ major league games before 2007, and had a new career high by 200 points. I could have made it a group of players who were at least 29 years old, had played 500+ games and had a career high by at least 200 points, but I always think that’s cheating, defining the group so that our player just gets in by the skin of his teeth. That’s a way of making his season seem more remarkable than it really is.
Anyway, there are 57 seasons in baseball history which meet the three criteria I chose. I ranked those by the margin of the career high—Season Score, minus previous career best. These are the 25 most remarkable breakout seasons of all time:
1. Jim Hickman, 1970 If there was one player in baseball history who clearly and absolutely out-Pena’d Pena, it would be Jim Hickman in 1970. Hickman was an original Met, when the Mets lost 120 games in 1962. He had been a St. Louis Cardinal farmhand since 1956, usually hitting around .250, but he had a good year in the Texas League in 1961, and the Mets chose him in the National League’s first expansion draft.
He got three years as a regular for the Mets, trying to prove he belonged, but he never could, hitting .245, .229, and .257, hitting 17 homers one year, driving in 57 runs another year. Those were the highlights. He had a big swing with a big hitch. He lost his starting gig, drifted to the Dodgers and then the Cubs. He was a backup outfielder with the Cubs in ’69, hitting .152 in April, .114 in May, .188 in July, and batting less than 50 times a month.
Then, as the rest of the Cubs went into a historic swoon, Hickman got red hot, hitting .301 with 10 homers in August of 1969. He finished the season at .237 with 21 homers, 54 RBI in 338 at bats—and that was the best season he had ever had, season score of 110.
At the start of the 1970 campaign he wasn’t quite a regular, but he was playing more than he had played in years. He hit .300 in April. He hit .347 in May, with 8 homers, and he stayed hot. He wound up hitting .315 on the season, with 32 homers, 115 RBI. Season Score: 402. At the age of 33, he was 292 points better than his previous career high.
He hit .190 in April of 1971, and was never truly a regular after that season. For one year, he was a Hall of Famer. His batting average, slugging percentage and on base percentage that one year were near the career norms of Hank Greenberg and Manny Ramirez. The rest of his career, he was a .243 hitter.
The season is partially explained by the fact that the mound had been lowered in ’69, which helped the hitters, and it is partially explained by the fact that Wrigley Field was the best hitter’s park in the National League at that time. As good as Hickman was that year, another outfielder on the same team, Billy Williams, was quite a bit better. But really, there is no obvious explanation. Hickman hit .347 on the road, although most of his home runs were at home. He just had a year.
2. Ellis Burks, 1996 Ellis had a very good year in 1988, and was regarded at that time as a coming superstar. Knee troubles bothered him for most of the next seven seasons, and it looked as if he could be on the way out. Healthy in 1996, he had fantastic numbers across the board for the Rockies: 142 runs scored, 211 hits, 45 doubles, 40 homers, 128 RBI, 32 stolen bases, .344 average. It scores at 549—267 points better than his previous best.
Of course, Denver batting statistics pre-humidor were badly inflated. One of the things I love about the Jim Hickman season is that it is such a legitimate fluke, if this is not an oxymoron; it’s not like he was playing in Coors Field or using steroids. Hickman truly did hit baseball out of the blue, like Pena only more so.
But having said that, Burks’ season is pretty remarkable, even if he was playing in a park where Rick Moranis could hit 12 or 15 homers. Burks hit .390 with 23 homers in Colorado, but he hit .291 with 17 homers on the road, and .291 with 34 homers is a solid season. Even without the thin air effect, Burks would be somewhere on this list. He was a very talented player who was completely healthy that year for one of the few times in his long career.
3. Larry Walker, 1997 Walker, like Burks, had fantastic numbers far exceeding his previous career norms, in substantial part because of Coors Field. He hit .366 with 49 homers, 130 RBI.
4. George Sisler, 1920 Sisler, who came to the American League about the same time as Babe Ruth, and also as a pitcher, had a very fine season in 1919, the last year of the Dead Ball era, when he hit .352 with 10 homers. In 1920 baseball began keeping clean baseballs in play (that is, began throwing baseballs out of play when they got dirty.) The clean baseballs were much more lively that the old, dirty baseballs, and many players had huge statistical gains. Sisler hit .407 with 19 homers, 122 RBI and 257 hits—a major league record that stood until Ichiro.
5. Bret Boone, 2001 Boone in 2001 was 32 years old, and had been in the major leagues for nine years (before 2001) without hitting more than 24 homers, driving in more than 95 runs or hitting higher than .267 in a full season. He hit .331 that year with 37 homers, 141 RBI., a season score of 438, after a previous best of 210. He remained a serious power hitter for two seasons after that.
6. Tommy Holmes, 1945 Tommy Holmes’ 1945 season is an interesting fluke, in that it occurred in a time and place where most other hitters were struggling. It was the last year of the war, the baseballs were dead and the league batting totals were weak. Holmes had Joe DiMaggio numbers--.352 with 28 homers, 47 doubles, 224 hits, 117 RBI. He struck out only 9 times, and actually set several weird-ratio records that stand to this day. .. most homers by a guy with less than ten strikeouts, etc.
Holmes, who played right field for the Braves, was the most popular player in Boston at that time. He was nicknamed “The Judge”, I think as a reference to Boston’s other Judge Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the right field seats came to be called “The Jury Box”. When he first came up the Jury Box was hard on him, but during his monster season in ’45 they cheered everything he did. He never had another season remotely as good.
7. Derrek Lee, 2005 Lee reached the majors in 1997, struggled for a couple of years, but was very good from 2000 to 2004, having Season Scores from 2002 through 2004 of 286, 294 and 292—exceptional consistency at something just short of an all-star level.
In 2005, his second year with the Cubs, Lee was perhaps the best hitter in the majors, hitting .335 with 50 doubles and 46 homers (Season Score 518). He hasn’t come close to repeating that since. I’ll just mention, Craig Shipley told me in 2003 that Lee was going to have a monster year sometime.
8. Sammy Sosa, 1998 The year of the memorable battle with McGwire. He hit 66 homers that year after a previous career high of 40. .. .not really comparable to Hickman and Pena except in the raw magnitude of the improvement over previous career norms.
9. Carlos Guillen, 2004 Guillen, 28 years old in 2004, had been with Seattle since 1998 and had had the best season of his career every year except one, although the improvements were mostly tiny, and he had lost his hold on a starting job in 2003 despite hitting .276 with 7 homers, 52 RBI—his best season so far. Traded to Detroit that winter, he broke out in 2004 with 37 doubles, 10 triples, 20 home runs, 97 RBI and a .318 average. The season scores at 335, after a previous career best of 122.
10. John Vander Wal, 2000 Vander Wal, 34 years old in 2000, had been in the majors since 1991, never batting more than 246 times in a season, never hitting more than 6 home runs or driving in more than 41 runs. He hit .299 that year with 24 homers, 94 RBI in 384 at bats.
11. Charlie Hayes, 1993 Hayes, who was a brilliant defensive third baseman, had never hit higher than .258 through his first five seasons in the majors. He hit .305 in 1993 with 45 doubles, 25 homers, 98 RBI—a season score of 304, after a previous best of 95. Hayes was one of those guys who always had a bad buzz, and after that one really good year he went back to having a bad buzz again.
12. Rich Aurilia, 2001 .324 with 37 homers, 97 RBI. Season score of 383 after a previous career high of 179.
13. Sid Gordon, 1948 Gordon, 30 years old in 1948, had never hit more than 13 homers or driven in more than 63 runs before that season. He hit .299 with 30 homers, 107 RBI in 1948, then played at essentially the same level for four years after that.
14. Dante Bichette, 1993 Bichette, a right fielder with a very strong throwing arm and Juan Uribe’s strikeout to walk ratio, had an offensive outburst in 1993 when he joined the Mile High Stadium Club. But, in fairness to Bichette, he would continue to move his numbers way up from where they were in ’93. He hit .310 with 21 homers, 89 RBI in ’93, would push those numbers up in ’94, then would drive in 118 to 141 runs a year from 1995 through 1999.
15. Melvin Mora, 2004 Mora, 32 years old in 2004, had reached the majors very late and had struggled through his first five seasons, hitting .233 the only time he had more than 450 at bats. In 2004 he hit .340 with 27 homers, 104 RBI—still by far the best season of his career.
16. Brian Downing, 1979 Downing, who came to the majors as a pudgy, near-sighted catcher, had been in the majors since 1973, and his best season was 1974, when he hit .225 with 10 homers, 39 RBI. He got into strength training, moved to the outfield, and hit .326 in 1979, with 12 homers, 75 RBI. He would have even better seasons later on.
17. Carlos Pena, 2007 Carlos’ previous best season was as a teammate of Carlos Guillen (#9) in Detroit in 2004, hitting just .241 but with 27 homers, 82 RBI.
18. Tom Herr, 1985 Tom Herr, in the majors since 1979, had never driven in more than 49 runs in a season until 1985, when he drove in 110. In part the RBI count was explained by Vince Coleman’s stolen bases, but Herr also had career highs by wide margins in doubles, walks and total bases.
19. Tino Martinez, 1995 Martinez, like Pena, was a left-handed hitting first baseman. He had never had a season score higher than 141 until 1995, when he clocked in at 334 points (.293, 31 homers, 111 RBI). But Martinez was not really comparable to Pena because he was two years younger and was always perceived as having star ability; he just took a little longer than expected to start to produce. He had bigger years later.
20. Lew Fonseca, 1929 Fonseca’s was a similar player to Pete Runnels, which won’t do much for those of you who missed the Baby Boom. He was a second baseman who could hit .320 but it was mostly singles and his defense wasn’t very good; I suppose he would be closer to Jose Vidro than anybody else recent. Julio Franco, but without the freaky age thing. Anyway, Fonseca got a chance to play first base for Cleveland in 1929, when George Burns grew old, and (Fonseca) won the batting title with a .369 average, 103 RBI on only 6 homers. Injuries derailed him in 1930.
Fonseca was a go-getter, a motivated individual. By the mid-1930s he had started a company to make films of major league baseball games, and for many years he held the license to film the World Series. Almost all the films you see of World Series games from then up to the late 1950s were made by Fonseca or his company. He also coached intermittently. I met him at a SABR convention in the 1970s.
21. Riggs Stephenson, 1927 Stephenson was a very similar story to Fonseca; I didn’t put the two of them together, that just happened. The Indians got Fonseca to play second base in ’27 when they gave up on Stephenson being able to play the position at an acceptable level. Stephenson had been a star football player at Alabama, but had separated his shoulder playing football and couldn’t throw. Joe McCarthy, then managing the Cubs, said “Screw it, I’ll put him in left field and live with the throwing arm.” That’s not a quote; that’s an interpretation. Stephenson hit .344 that year, and would have an even better season in 1929.
22. Brady Anderson, 1996 Brady hit 50 homers in 1996, after a previous career high of 21 in 1992. He never hit more than 24 again, so he hit more in 1996 than in any other two seasons of his fifteen-year major league career.
23. Steve Evans, 1914 The Federal League was a start-up league, a rival to the American and National Leagues that lasted two years (as a major league, also played 1913 as a minor league.) Evans, a veteran National Leaguer, jumped to the Federal League and put up career-best numbers in a suspect league.
24. Luis Gonzalez, 1999 The s-word will not be mentioned here. This was not the 57-homer season; that was a later breakthrough. This was the year he hit .336, after coming into the season with a career average of .268.
25. Ray Powell, 1921 Powell, a 32-year-old center fielder, had hit .213, .236 and .225 the previous three years before breaking loose with a .306 season, 114 runs scored, 191 hits in 1921. As was true of Sisler, the beginning of the lively ball era emphasized his gains.
A little less than one-half of the players who were sprinkled with Pena dust were able to sustain their gains in following seasons, while a narrow majority never played at the same level again. But of those who did, several then moved on to even higher levels of production.
(My appreciation to Retrosheet for data used in this article.)