Are lots of big boppers a good thing?
Raul Ibanez hit his 29th and 30th home runs last night. Now the Phils have four guys with 30 HRs. Not too shabby.
No team has ever had more than four guys with 30 HR. The teams that did have four 30 HR guys were:
1977 Dodgers
1995 Colorado
1996 Colorado
1997 Dodgers
1997 Colorado
1998 Atlanta
1999 Colorado
2000 Toronto
2000 Angels
2004 Cubs
2006 White Sox
You know how many of those teams won the World Series? None. That’s not to say this year’s Phils won’t repeat. After all, the Phils had three guys with 30 HR last season, and the only difference between last year’s championship team and this year’s team, at least offensively, is the Phils have swapped Pat Burrell (and his 33 home runs in 2008) for Raul Ibanez, and they’re getting bigger contribution from Werth.
So there’s really no good reason to think that a team with four 30-home-run guys can’t win it all, except that it’s never been done.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I still remember when the Dodgers did this back in 1997. I think they just scraped by when Todd Zeile hit a homer on the last day of the season or something.
I remember it seemed like a really huge deal back at the time, because it had only been done three times before, and two of those were the pre-humidor Coors Field Rockies, which is pretty easily discounted.
But then the steroids era got going in earnest, and tiny, band-box parks like Citizens and Great American got built, and now lo, 8 more teams have done it in just over 10 years.
It’s still weird to me though, that two of the first five teams were the Dodgers, and the other three were Rockies. I mean, by all available evidence, Dodger Stadium is not, and has never been, a very home run friendly ballpark.
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September 11th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I wonder if that’s more a factor of teams spending money on offense rather than pitching or defense or other factors. Or the rest of their lineups being shit.
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