Nelson Cruz led the majors this year with 40 homers.  I always think of 40 as the league-leading standard for home runs; I always think that if you hit 40 homers, you should lead the league.   Historically, I know that this isn’t true; most players in my lifetime who have hit 40 homers have NOT led the league, and most years, 40 homers won’t lead the league—but in my mind, it should.   This goes back to 1960.   I basically became a baseball fan in the spring of 1961.   In 1960 Mickey Mantle led the American League in homers, with 40, and Ernie Banks led the National League with 41, so when I was trying to figure out what these numbers meant, back in the spring of 1961, I thought that 40 homers was the standard league-leading figure.   So 2014 seems normal.

Square Players

I got interested in the question of players who have almost-equal numbers of runs scored, RBI, strikeouts and walks. There is no player in baseball history who has identical totals in all four categories with totals above six.  Phil Rizzuto in 1956 and Red Worthington in 1934 had 6 runs scored, 6 RBI, 6 strikeouts and 6 walks, and Peanuts Lowrey in 1942 and Luis Olmo in 1951 had 4 each.

But in terms of playing time. . .well, I made up a formula: The average of the four categories, minus the standard deviation of the four categories, divided by the average of the four categories. If the four numbers are the same, that figures out to 100%; if they’re not exactly the same, then the closer they are to the same, the higher the percentage.    The highest percentage ever was by Roy Smalley in 1980:  64 runs scored, 63 RBI, 65 walks, 63 strikeouts.  These are the top ten:

                Two of my favorite Kansas City players there—Darrell Porter in 1978 and Norm Siebern in ’63. These are the top ten among players with an average of 80 or more:

                Basically, those are all favorite players of mine; I just love those kind of guys.  In basketball they say that the fill up the scoresheet.  Here’s the top ten with a "100" average.. .OK, eleven:

                Never cared for Palmeiro; otherwise, those are my kind of guys.  Anybody can hit cleanup, anybody can lead off.

                I think of those as "square" players; if you think about the four sides of a quadrangle being 105, 104, 110 and 107 feet on a side, that’s Dolph Camilli in 1939. The least square player ever, since 1900 at least, was Tommie Agee in 1968:

                If you think about that, you realize you can’t draw that one as a quadrangle; it’s impossible. The four "least square" players ever are all like Agee. . .no walks, no production, just lots of strikeouts:

                Agee is the only player who has a negative score—a standard deviation larger than the average.  After the top four, though, you start to get a few players who have a different combination:

                Second Emil Verban reference of the month. The "most square" players in baseball history, careers:

90% of Henry Aaron

                OK, here’s a second similarly stupid and useless statistical exercise.   Let’s take Henry Aaron in his best season, which I consider to be 1959 (although one Henry Aaron season is very much like another Henry Aaron season):

                That’s a remarkable season, but what would 90% of the same season be?   To solve that puzzle I used a combination of Season Scores and Similarity Scores.   Henry Aaron’s Season Score in 1959 was 508, so 90% of that would be 457.   Then I identified the 100 seasons in baseball history (by hitters) which had season scores closest to 457, and for each of those 100 seasons, I measured their similarity to this season, to Henry Aaron in 1959.   The winner was Ripper Collins in 1934:

                A really good match, isn’t it?    More or less the same everything as Henry Aaron; just a little bit less of it in most categories.  Then, to get 80% of Henry Aaron, I used 80% of Aaron’s season score (406), and similarity to Ripper Collins, 1934.   The winner of that one is Cal Ripken in 1991:

                You could use 80% of Henry Aaron and similarity to Henry Aaron, but for technical reasons that does not work as well; it would be a lot easier, but it doesn’t work as well.  Anyway, in this way we can get 90% of Henry Aaron, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%, etc.:

                Conclusions:   60% of Henry Aaron is a hell of a player.   60% of Henry Aaron, 1959, is Bill White, 1962, and Bill White in 1962 has 199 hits, 93 runs scored and 102 RBI, a .386 on base percentage.     Then you drop down to Robinson Cano, 2014—still a terrific hitter—and then Victor Martinez, 2013, who is still very, very good.  I love the way that the OPS goes down in almost regular steps:  1.037, 1.008, .940, .926, .868, .836, .785, .724, .720, and .688.  Home runs never go up; some of the categories tick up a little bit as they head generally down.  The process works really well until you get down to 30%; then the 20% (Jim Davenport) and the 10% (Jim Spencer) seem a little bit arbitrary, because the percentage declines are larger down there.

                This is 90% (and 80%, and 70%) of A-Rod, 2007:

                Nelson Cruz on the list; second Nelson Cruz reference of the article.  The most similar player to A-Rod is A-Rod; that almost happens to Aaron several times, too.   There are several times that another Aaron season almost registers as most similar to the target.   Here’s a favorite of mine:  90% of Joe Morgan, 1976:

                For that one, because the skill set is so unique, I had to use 150 players in the test range, rather than 100. . ..but it still works.   In this group it even works down to 10%; Vic Harris, although certainly not an impact player in the Rickey Henderson/Joe Morgan mold, still has some recognizable faint image of their skills. 

                Again. . .it’s stupid, but I love it.   Another way to diminish Henry Aaron in stages is to

a)      Take the entire universe of player/seasons,

b)      Eliminate everybody who is better than Aaron in any category,

c)       Take the best seasons remaining, and

d)      Repeat the process.

When you do that, the quality of the seasons diminishes much more rapidly, but you get a longer "tail" of low-quality qualifying seasons.   Since I didn’t know whether I should use strikeouts to eliminate all players with MORE strikeouts or all players with FEWER strikeouts, I just ignored strikeouts (and caught stealing):

That’s kind of fun, but it’s not as much fun as the other approach.   The other system works better because an individual column can go up a little bit as well as down; in the Joe Morgan example stolen bases go up from 60 to 65 to 67.   Here nothing can go up, which causes things to ratchet toward zero much more rapidly.

Triple Crown Scores

In 2012, as Miguel Cabrera was closing in on the first Triple Crown season since Whitey Ford retired, I developed a system of "Triple Crown Scores".  The Triple Crown Score was a way of putting Home Runs, RBI and Batting Average into one column, such that, if there was a Triple Crown contender, he would be 100% certain to lead the league in Triple Crown Score, but the fact that Chris Davis was hitting 53 homers in 2013 would not make Miguel Cabrera’s 2013 season (44 HR, 137 RBI, .348 average) less impressive than his 2012 season (44, 139, .330). 

Anyway, since I dropped the Triple Crown system on you in August, 2012, I haven’t said anything about it.  Here’s a list of the top Triple Crown Seasons of 2012, 2013 and 2014:

So the "Triple Crown Leaders" for the last three years are Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun (2012), Miguel Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt (2013), and Victor Martinez and Giancarlo Stanton (2014).