Postseason Homeruns

Before I get started on the meat of this post I want to do a bit of housekeeping. In my second post I credited Sean Forman for the database I downloaded from Baseball Databank. While Sean Forman does maintain Baseball Databank, the database is supplied and maintained by Sean Lahman who runs Sean Lahman's Baseball Archive. I will correct this mistake in my earlier post. Also it appears that when I retrieved the event files from Retrosheet I didn't do my due diligence by scrolling to the end of the page. It turns out that the event files from years prior to 1974 have missing games. My last post could have gone south quick if Lou Brock had stolen a base in one of those games (though I got lucky with the example I picked and really got to explore the database). However, Retrosheet provides box scores files from 1920 to 1973 and a smattering of years before. While these files provide less data than event files, they fill in the gaps of the missing games and extend our reach into history by 30 years. I will be adding this data to my database in the coming days.

Okay then. Last night while I was watching the Giants/Phillies game they mentioned that Jayson Werth is tied for the lead in postseason homeruns in the National League with 13. They showed who he was tied with and of course it was all players from the wild card era. Just using a total ignores all the great postseason sluggers. However it is worth noting that Babe Ruth (an American League player his entire career) had 15 postseason homeruns and didn't have division series and league championship series to play in. So this got me thinking. Who has the lowest at bat to homerun ratio in the postseason?

First let's start out with the top ten in raw postseason homeruns (this is through 2009):

select m.nameFirst, m.nameLast, sum(b.HR) as hrTotal
from master m, battingpost b
where b.playerID = m.playerID
group by b.playerID
order by hrTotal desc
limit 10;

+-----------+-----------+---------+
| nameFirst | nameLast  | hrTotal |
+-----------+-----------+---------+
| Manny     | Ramirez   |      29 |
| Bernie    | Williams  |      22 |
| Derek     | Jeter     |      20 |
| Reggie    | Jackson   |      18 |
| Mickey    | Mantle    |      18 |
| Jim       | Thome     |      17 |
| Babe      | Ruth      |      15 |
| David     | Justice   |      14 |
| Alex      | Rodriguez |      13 |
| Chipper   | Jones     |      13 |
+-----------+-----------+---------+
10 rows in set (0.24 sec)

Now let's see how these guys fare when we take into account the number of at bats it took them to amass these totals. I'm a bit torn about using at bats, because I don't really think it accurately captures "homerun chances", but neither does plate appearances (intentional walks get in the way there, we are talking about homerun hitters after all). For now I will use at bats. Maybe when I have enough time I'll come up with my own metric, or maybe a better one already exists.

select m.nameFirst, m.nameLast, sum(b.AB) / sum(b.HR) as abPerHR
from master m, battingpost b
where b.playerID = m.playerID
and b.HR > 0
group by b.playerID
order by abPerHR
limit 10;
+-----------+----------+---------+
| nameFirst | nameLast | abPerHR |
+-----------+----------+---------+
| Jim       | Mason    |  1.0000 |
| Bobby     | Kielty   |  1.0000 |
| Greg      | Myers    |  1.0000 |
| Geoff     | Blum     |  1.0000 |
| Matt      | Stairs   |  1.0000 |
| Tom       | Wilson   |  1.0000 |
| George    | Shuba    |  1.0000 |
| Chuck     | Essegian |  1.5000 |
| Ed        | Sprague  |  2.0000 |
| So        | Taguchi  |  2.0000 |
+-----------+----------+---------+
10 rows in set (0.05 sec)

Well that isn't what we are looking for. Obviously we need to put some sort of lower limit on the number of homeruns hit. Let's try five.

select m.nameFirst, m.nameLast, sum(b.AB) / sum(b.HR) as abPerHR, sum(b.HR) HR
from master m, battingpost b
where b.playerID = m.playerID
and (select sum(HR)
   from battingpost b_sub
   where b_sub.playerID = b.playerID) > 5
group by b.playerID
order by abPerHR
limit 10;

+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
| nameFirst | nameLast  | abPerHR | HR   |
+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
| Carlos    | Beltran   |  7.4545 |   11 |
| Jim       | Leyritz   |  7.6250 |    8 |
| Juan      | Gonzalez  |  7.7500 |    8 |
| Troy      | Glaus     |  8.2222 |    9 |
| Babe      | Ruth      |  8.6000 |   15 |
| Bob       | Robertson |  8.8333 |    6 |
| Gary      | Matthews  |  9.2857 |    7 |
| B.J.      | Upton     |  9.4286 |    7 |
| Matt      | Holliday  |  9.5000 |    6 |
| Ken       | Caminiti  |  9.8750 |    8 |
+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
10 rows in set (0.74 sec)

Impressive work by Carlo Beltran, and from our first list Babe Ruth isn't too far behind. Let's up our cutoff to thirteen so we get everyone from the original list.

select m.nameFirst, m.nameLast, sum(b.AB) / sum(b.HR) as abPerHR, sum(b.HR) HR
from master m, battingpost b
where b.playerID = m.playerID
and (select sum(HR)
   from battingpost b_sub
   where b_sub.playerID = b.playerID) >= 13
group by b.playerID
order by abPerHR;

+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
| nameFirst | nameLast  | abPerHR | HR   |
+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
| Babe      | Ruth      |  8.6000 |   15 |
| Jim       | Thome     | 12.1765 |   17 |
| Mickey    | Mantle    | 12.7778 |   18 |
| Manny     | Ramirez   | 14.1379 |   29 |
| Alex      | Rodriguez | 15.3077 |   13 |
| Albert    | Pujols    | 15.3077 |   13 |
| Reggie    | Jackson   | 15.6111 |   18 |
| Jim       | Edmonds   | 17.6923 |   13 |
| Bernie    | Williams  | 21.1364 |   22 |
| Chipper   | Jones     | 25.6154 |   13 |
| Derek     | Jeter     | 27.9500 |   20 |
| David     | Justice   | 28.4286 |   14 |
+-----------+-----------+---------+------+
12 rows in set (0.71 sec)

Babe Ruth is on top as is to be expected. I no longer limited the list to 10, so we see that Derek Jeter and David Justice fall to the bottom of the list and Jim Edmonds and Albert Pujols break into the mix. But wait, what about Jayson Werth? This data is from 2009, so his 2 homeruns this year haven't been added yet. Werth has 13 homeruns in 153 at bats, which comes to 11.7692 at bats per homerun. That's good enough for second on this list, but well behind Carlos Beltran. By the way, Jeter had 0 homeruns in 30 at bats this postseason, A-Rod had 0 in 32, and Jim Thome had 0 in 10. So their stock all fell.

So who is the best postseason homerun hitter? Manny's 29 has to be respected and Carlos Beltran's 7.5 at bats per homerun with a total of 11 is extremely impressive, but in my opinion Babe Ruth's consistent power takes the cake.