Jedd Gyorko and the Least Productive Home Runs
This post was inspired by Jedd Gyorko. Jedd Gyorko is not a player I would have thought would be the basis for one of my first posts, but sometimes the universe takes the decision making process right out of your hands. Regardless, don’t get your hopes up that this will be a Gyorko-centric blog going forward. Apologies in advance, Mr. and Mrs. Gyorko.
I was watching some of the Sunday night Cardinals/Cubs game and during that game, Gyorko came up to bat. His 2016 stat line flashed on the screen and something seemed peculiar. Not his 30 home runs, which, while crazy, I knew that he was at least somewhere in that vicinity. The thing that caught my eye was that paired with those 30 home runs were just 59 RBI, which instinctively seemed low. It got me to thinking, what are the lowest RBI totals for hitters that hit 30+ homers?
The very next day, in fact just a mere few hours ago, with the Mets opening their season at home against Atlanta, Curtis Granderson came up to bat and his stat line from 2016 flashed up on the screen: 30 home runs and 59 RBI. Weird, I thought. Maybe the Gyorko line wasn’t as uncommon as I thought. So using Fangraphs amazing splits leaderboard tool, I looked up all 30+ home run player seasons since 1920 with the intention of dividing RBI by HR to figure out which hitters did the least amount of damage with their homers. Well I guess that splits tool only includes seasons since 2002, so consider this your asterisk. We can say, in the last 15 years, it’s a two-way tie between (you guessed it) Curtis Granderson and Jedd Gyorko at 1.97 RBI per home run. Next on the list? You have to go all the way back to Barry Bonds’ 2003 season in which he hit 45 home runs and yet ended up with a measly 90 RBI (presumably because pitchers would rather commit seppuku than pitch to Barry with runners on base), and Hanley Ramirez’ 2008 season, where he drove in 67 after parking 33. Here’s the top ten:
I’m not sure what the big takeaway is on this. I guess my hunch that those RBI totals seemed low was right? It’s just kind of a statistical anomaly that the two least productive home run seasons of the last 15 years came in 2016, and both had identical home run and RBI totals. I guess those guys just aren’t Run Producers™, unlike Miguel Tejada who in 2004 plated 150 RBI with just 34 homers.
I was watching some of the Sunday night Cardinals/Cubs game and during that game, Gyorko came up to bat. His 2016 stat line flashed on the screen and something seemed peculiar. Not his 30 home runs, which, while crazy, I knew that he was at least somewhere in that vicinity. The thing that caught my eye was that paired with those 30 home runs were just 59 RBI, which instinctively seemed low. It got me to thinking, what are the lowest RBI totals for hitters that hit 30+ homers?
The very next day, in fact just a mere few hours ago, with the Mets opening their season at home against Atlanta, Curtis Granderson came up to bat and his stat line from 2016 flashed up on the screen: 30 home runs and 59 RBI. Weird, I thought. Maybe the Gyorko line wasn’t as uncommon as I thought. So using Fangraphs amazing splits leaderboard tool, I looked up all 30+ home run player seasons since 1920 with the intention of dividing RBI by HR to figure out which hitters did the least amount of damage with their homers. Well I guess that splits tool only includes seasons since 2002, so consider this your asterisk. We can say, in the last 15 years, it’s a two-way tie between (you guessed it) Curtis Granderson and Jedd Gyorko at 1.97 RBI per home run. Next on the list? You have to go all the way back to Barry Bonds’ 2003 season in which he hit 45 home runs and yet ended up with a measly 90 RBI (presumably because pitchers would rather commit seppuku than pitch to Barry with runners on base), and Hanley Ramirez’ 2008 season, where he drove in 67 after parking 33. Here’s the top ten:
Season
|
Name
|
HR
|
RBI
|
RBI PER HR
|
2016
|
Curtis Granderson
|
30
|
59
|
1.967
|
2016
|
Jedd Gyorko
|
30
|
59
|
1.967
|
2003
|
Barry Bonds
|
45
|
90
|
2.000
|
2008
|
Hanley Ramirez
|
33
|
67
|
2.030
|
2006
|
Alfonso Soriano
|
46
|
95
|
2.065
|
2004
|
Brad Wilkerson
|
32
|
67
|
2.094
|
2015
|
Nelson Cruz
|
44
|
93
|
2.114
|
2007
|
Alfonso Soriano
|
33
|
70
|
2.121
|
2007
|
Chris Young
|
32
|
68
|
2.125
|
2015
|
Mike Trout
|
41
|
90
|
2.195
|
I’m not sure what the big takeaway is on this. I guess my hunch that those RBI totals seemed low was right? It’s just kind of a statistical anomaly that the two least productive home run seasons of the last 15 years came in 2016, and both had identical home run and RBI totals. I guess those guys just aren’t Run Producers™, unlike Miguel Tejada who in 2004 plated 150 RBI with just 34 homers.
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