Monday
Four-homer games are fun. Seeing someone absolutely catch fire on a given day and blast four bombs into the seats is an undeniably exciting, fun event. But it doesn’t really tell us anything about the players who did it. It’s been done 18 times* in major league history, and the players to do it ranged from all-time greats like Willie Mays to random guys named Scooter, and everything in between.
(*Sadly, we don’t have enough game data yet for the Negro Leagues to know how many times it was done in those leagues.)
One of those times happened 65 years ago Monday, when Rocky Colavito hit four homers for the Indians in an 11-8 win over the Orioles. He isn’t one of the six Hall of Famers who managed to do it, but he was a great four-homer candidate. He hit 42 homers that year to lead the league. It was one of three seasons when he had at least 40 homers, and one of seven seasons when he hit at least 30. He had 374 career homers, a total that included 32 multi-homer games. The surprise level of Colavito hitting four in a game was comparatively low.
Ignoring the two times it happened in the nineteenth century, when home runs were a much less prominent part of the game, here’s how I would rank the shock level of each four-homer game, from least surprising to most.
Mike Schmidt, April 17, 1976: Not surprising at all given that it was Schmidt, the two-time defending National League home run champ at the time he did it, and it was played in Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out. The game ended as a 10-inning, 18-16 slugfest won by the Phillies. Schmidt had a .653 career slugging percentage in Wrigley, the highest mark he had in any park during his career.
Lou Gehrig, June 3, 1932: Gehrig had led the league in homers the year before, the game was played in his favorite month to hit (career June slugging percentage of .739), and he had a .667 career slugging percentage at Shibe Park, 47 points higher than he had at Yankee Stadium.
Willie Mays, April 30, 1961: Not surprising because it was Willie Mays in his prime.
Bob Horner, July 6, 1986: Horner slugged .570 at home during his career. He slugged .582 in Fulton County Stadium. He slugged .598 in July. He slugged .539 against the Expos, and .529 in day games. Well, this was a July day game played at his home park, Fulton County Stadium, against the Expos. The only surprise is that it happened in 1986 instead of earlier in his career.
Gil Hodges, August 31, 1950: Not yet quite the established star he would become, Hodges was still a great candidate because he hit better in hot weather, and absolutely loved hitting in Ebbets Field, where he had a .528 career slugging percentage.
Rocky Colavito, June 10, 1959: When you are in the prime years of a career that produced 32 multi-homer games, it’s simply not too surprising that one of them produced four homers.
Carlos Delgado, September 25, 2003: Delgado was in the midst of his third 40-homer season, his seventh consecutive season with 30+ homers, and would end up leading the league in RBI and finishing second in MVP voting. He was playing against Tampa, whose pitching staff surrendered the third-most homers in the league that year, and he crushed Tampa pitching his entire career (.603 slugging percentage).
Josh Hamilton, May 8, 2012: While Hamilton’s career was up, down, and all over the place at times, in 2012 he was at his peak as a home run hitter. He blasted 43 that year, a career high, and had already established his credentials as someone who could hit home runs in bunches after his record-setting performance in the 2008 Home Run Derby.
Chuck Klein, July 10, 1936: This one was somewhat surprising, because Klein wasn’t the same player he’d been a few years earlier in his career. By 1936 he was no longer the guy who led the league in homers four times in five years, and wasn’t a Triple Crown threat. In fact, he’d been traded just a few weeks earlier after starting the season with the Cubs. Plus, this game wasn’t played in the Baker Bowl, where he was a notorious menace (.705 career slugging percentage).
Shawn Green, May 23, 2002: Like Delgado, Green was in the midst of his third 40-homer season, and the game was played in Miller Park where he had a career slugging percentage of .816, so this should have been lower on the surprise scale. Still, I think Green flew under the radar for much of his career, so this one was pretty shocking to a lot of folks.
J.D. Martinez, September 4, 2017: This wasn’t Martinez’s first big home run year because he hit 38 for Detroit in 2015, but he wasn’t taken too seriously yet since his other full seasons to that point had produced just 23 and 22 homers, respectively. He was also on his third team in five years when Arizona traded for him that July. Still, he immediately hit remarkably well with the Diamondbacks, blasting 5 homers in his 9 games in July, and had 13 homers in 37 games by the end of August. He was on a hot streak, which removed some of the surprise, but I still don’t think many people saw this coming.
Joe Adcock, July 31, 1954: Adcock hadn’t hit more than 18 homers in a season before 1954. He only hit 23 that year, with his career high season of 38 homers still being two years away. He was having a good year to that point, hitting .314/.371/.518, but with just 15 homers, and he was facing the Don Newcombe and the defending National Champion Dodgers on their home field. Conditions weren’t ripe for a four-homer game, clearly, but he did it anyway.
Mike Cameron, May 2, 2002: Cameron hit 278 career home runs, so he had a respectable amount of pop, but that certainly wasn’t his reputation. His career high in homers was 25 to that point, and he was known far more for his excellent defense. Still, he loved hitting against the White Sox (career .600 slugging percentage), and starter Jon Rauch had nothing that day. Rauch faced nine hitters in the first inning and gave up six hits and eight runs, including two homers, one by Cameron. He was pulled for lefty Jim Parque, he gave up two more runs that inning, including Cameron’s second homer. Then he gave up another homer to Cameron in the third inning, and yet another to him in the fifth. Those three at-bats were the only times Cameron faced Parque in his career, and he homered all three times. Coming to bat in the seventh, Cameron was 4-for-4 with 4 solo homers, so obviously he was hit by a pitch. He had one more chance to hit a record-breaking fifth homer, but lined out to deep right field in the ninth. Needless to say, I don’t think this game was on many bingo cards.
Mark Whiten, September 7, 1993: Whiten had never hit more than 9 homers in a season before 1993. He was having his best year to date, but when he started the second game of a doubleheader against the Reds on September 7, he still only had 18 homers for the season. He was 1-for-3 to that point in his career against Reds starter Larry Luebbers, so of course he homered against him in his first at-bat that day. He’d never faced Reds’ reliever Mike Anderson before that day, and promptly homered in both the sixth and seventh innings against him, the only two times he would face him in his career. In the ninth he faced Rob Dibble, the Reds’ closer, for just the second time in his career. (He drew a walk in that first appearance.) Whiten homered against him, too, and also never faced him again. He would finish the year with a career-high 25 homers, and would have only 105 homers and a .415 slugging percentage for his career, so his awesome nickname, “Hard Hittin’ Mark Whiten,” was a pretty big misnomer. His four-homer game was shocking.
Pat Seerey, July 18, 1948: Pat Seerey’s big league career only lasted parts of seven seasons. He led the league in strikeouts in four of them, including 1948, his final full season in the major leagues. He’d never hit more than 26 homers in a season, hit only 86 in his career, slugged just .412, and had already been traded that season, from Cleveland to the White Sox. Coming into the game he was hitting .231 with a .396 slugging percentage and just 7 homers. So of course he blasted four homers off three different A’s pitchers, including the game-winner in the top of the eleventh inning. A year later he was cut, bounced between four different minor league teams, and never played in the majors again. So yeah, this one was a surprise.
Scooter Gennett, June 6, 2017: In reality, Gennett’s four-homer game probably wasn’t as surprising as Seerey’s. He was more in the prime of his career, had a bit better slugging percentage (.420) before the season started, and was in the midst of a two-year run that saw him hit 50 homers and make an All-Star team. Still, his name was Scooter. No one expects a guy named Scooter to hit four homers in a week, let alone in one game. Maybe he was inspired by the camouflage uniforms the Reds were wearing that day to commemorate the anniversary of D-Day. Whatever the reason, I’m giving Gennett the top spot as most surprising four-homer game ever.
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Tuesday
Okay, that was a lot longer than I expected when I started it, so the rest of these are going to be quick-hitters.
Tuesday was the anniversary of Jim Konstanty’s death in 1976. I just wrote about his remarkable 1950 season that left the him with an unlikely MVP Award and the Phillies with just their second pennant ever.
Tuesday also marked the anniversary of Red Sox catcher Sammy White hitting a walk-off grand slam off Satchel Paige in 1952. I will take every opportunity to mention either Satchel Paige or Sammy White, because I write about the Negro Leagues a lot, I have a son named after Sammy White, and I share a birthday with both of them. This event gives me a chance to mention both, so you can expect to see this mentioned in all future iterations of Friday Stuff that include the anniversary of this awesome event.
Wednesday
Since Wednesday was the anniversary of the Baseball Hall of Fame being formally opened and dedicated in 1939, allow me to take the opportunity to note remind everyone that my book, COOPERSTOWN’S BACK DOOR: A HISTORY OF NEGRO LEAGUERS IN THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, is schedule for release this October.
It’s available for pre-order pretty much anyplace you buy books, including:
Bookshop for those of you who like supporting local bookstores.
This concludes our weekly moment of crass commercialism. Now back to the baseball stuff.
Thursday
Thursday was Hideki Matsui’s 50th birthday, and we should probably take a moment to recognize his remarkable career. While it’s true that we can’t look at statistics from Japan and give them all the weight we would give statistics from the major leagues, it is fair to note that we’ve seen less and less drop off for the main Japanese stars in recent years when they’ve come to playing in the United States. In some cases, they’ve even gotten better.
Ichiro Suzuki batted .353 in nine seasons in Japan, and hit .331 in his first ten seasons in the big leagues.
Shohei Ohtani hit .284/.356/.498 in five seasons in Japan, but has hit .278/.368/.559 since coming to the major leagues.
Seiya Suzuki hit .309/.402/.541 in Japan and .274/.345/.464 so far in three seasons for the Cubs.
Overall, you should probably discount Japanese stats by about 10% to see what they would equate to in the United States. If we do that for Matsui, his numbers in ten seasons in Japan would equate to 1,251 hits, 811 runs, 221 doubles, 299 homers, 800 RBI, 760 walks, and a batting line of about .274/.378/.524. Now add that to what he actually did in ten additional seasons in the major leagues and you get this:
2,504 hits
1,467 runs
470 doubles
26 triples
474 homers
1,560 RBI
1,307 walks
A batting line of .278/.370/.493
That’s pretty much Fred McGriff’s actual career, and he’s in the Hall of Fame. I know that’s not how it works, and we can’t presume Matsui would have produced at that level had he spent his entire career in the U.S., but it was a remarkable career nonetheless, and I don’t think it gets the credit it deserve since it was split between the two countries.
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Friday
Finally, Friday marked the anniversary of Steve Finley hitting his 300th career home run, which made him just the sixth player ever to hit 300 homers and steal 300 bases in his career. At the time, only Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonds, Andre Dawson, and Reggie Sanders had done it before him. Since then only two more players have done it, Álex Rodríguez and Carlos Beltrán.
Put together, that’s a pretty impressive group. But it’s also a great example of how arbitrary cut off points can be used to make some players look better than they actually were.
Of that group, Finley hit the fewest home runs and had the second fewest steals. If we’d made the cutoff 305 homers and 305 steals, Finley wouldn’t have made the list but all of the others would still be on it. Similarly, if we drop to cutoff to 295 homers and 295 steals, we get Finley back on the list but also add Rickey Henderson.
Does a five-homer swing in either direction really matter when evaluating a player’s entire career worth? Of course not. There isn’t a baseball fan on Earth who would trade Steve Finley’s career for Rickey Henderson’s despite the fact that Finley managed to cross the 300-homer mark with Henderson fell three homers short. Even among the players who did surpass both 300 homers and 300 steals, Finley obviously only compares somewhat favorably to Sanders, and owes that more to longevity than anything else. Season-for-season and game-for-game, I’d probably take Sanders, and everyone else on the list isn’t just better than Finely but obviously, significantly better.
So congratulations to him on the anniversary of his big homer, but it’s a bit unfortunate that it puts him on a list where he probably doesn’t belong.
This Week’s Editions
Monday: So, About That Double Play Watch…
Tuesday: A Good Ballplayer and Better Man
Wednesday: Educating Twitter: Dale Murphy’s Hall of Fame Case
Thursday: Late Bloomers: Luke Easter
I was around for Bob Horner's 4-HR game, but Whiten's was the first I really remember, and it definitely affected how I viewed him then and now. Since it's easily the first thing I think of whenever his name comes up (which, admittedly, isn't often), I've always viewed him in retrospect as a big time slugger. As you point out, however, that wasn't really the case.
What's the best argument for integrating Negro League stats into the MLB rulebook but excluding Japanese stats? I keep getting hung up on this and I figured you could provide a good answer. I understand why Negro League stats are now MLB stats, though I struggle with the smaller sample sizes, given the lack of available statistics we have. Gibson is now the career all-time BA leader with 2,255 at bats, whereas Cobb had over 11,000 career at bats. Given that reality, shouldn't we start to consider incorporating Japan League stats into MLB, given the disparity in play hasn't been all that large since at least the 2000s, as evidenced by Ichiro's performance, Matsui's performance, and the various successes of many big league pitchers (including one of my Yankee favorites, the underrated Kuroda)?
Is the argument, chiefly, the Negro Leagues were based in the U.S. and the competition there was higher than in the Japanese leagues? Maybe so. But just as MLB pre-1947 didn't have the highest level of competition because Black players were excluded, the Negro Leagues couldn't feature the elite white players, for obvious reasons. Finally, there's a historical point here that does trouble me a bit, and it's something Joe Posnanski alluded to when mentioning Buck O'Neill recently: does the full incorporation of Negro League stats into the full MLB record book start to whitewash the heinousness of segregation? Does it allow some younger fans, less historically aware, to *forget* that there were baseball leagues separated by race? Does it make this all a bit too gauzy? My father, who passed away at 83 not too long ago, was always quick to remind me that Brown v. Board of Education and Jackie Robinson's debut occurred within his lifetime. He'd like to say that "de facto" slavery didn't end until the birth of the Civil Rights movement and attendant laws in the 60s. I know I've roved quite a bit from my point about Japanese stats, but I've had a lot of different thoughts on this.