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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1810889, member: 289"] [I]Sanity Returns to Baseball[/I] One trend I did really like that started in the early 90’s was that the Triple Crown became possible again. I grew up in an era when the top hitters in baseball hit for both average and power. It was a long era. Babe Ruth hit .342 lifetime with 714 home runs. Lou Gehrig hit .340 with 493 homers. Jimmie Foxx hit .325 with 534 homers. Those numbers were their baseball signature. Joe DiMaggio’s Signature was .325-361. Ted Williams was .344-521. Stan Musial was .331-475. Willie, Mickey and the Duke were .302-660 / .298-536 / .295-407. Henry Aaron was .305-755. Triple Crowns had been won by: Paul Hines in 1878, .358-4-50 Tip O’Neill in 1887, .435-14-123 Hugh Duffy in 1894, .440-18-145 Nap Lajoie in 1901, .426-14-145 Ty Cobb in 1909, .377-9-107 Rogers Hornsby in 1922, .401-42-152 Rogers Hornsby in 1925, .403-39-143 Jimmie Foxx in 1933, .356-48-163 Chuck Klein in 1933: .368-28-120 Lou Gehrig in 1934, .363-49-165 Joe Medwick in 1937, .374-31-154 Ted Williams in 1942, .356-36-137 Ted Williams in 1947, .343-32-114 Mickey Mantle in 1956, .353-52-130 Frank Robinson in 1966, .316-49-122 Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, .326-44-121 Then we entered an era when hitters were either hitters for average or hitters for power but not both. From 1969-1991 there were 46 batting titles. Three of them were won by batters with Triple Crown type-numbers: Billy Williams in 1972, .333-37-122; Dave Parker 1978, .338-30-117 and Fred Lynn 1979, .333-39-122, (none of whom won it). Twenty-two of the champions hit only single figures in home runs, including Rod Carew who in 1972 won a batting title without ever hitting a home run. Ten more batting champions hit home runs in the teens. The average number of home runs hit by the batting champs was 13 in this period. It was the era of the “banjo hitter” winning batting titles. There were 54 home run titlists over the same period, (because of ties). Thirteen of hem hit .300. Three of those hit .320- exactly: Willie McCovey in 1969, George Foster and Jim Rice in 1977. None won a batting title. Dave Kingman won a home run title with a .204 average In 1975 Mike Schmidt led the National League in homers while hitting.249 and Reggie Jackson led the AL while hitting .253 Kingman led the league in strike outs 3 times, Schmidt 4 times and Jackson 5 times. Willie Stargell, Dale Murphy, Jim Rice, Gorman Thomas, Tony Armas and Cecil Fielder all won both homerun and strikeout titles. The mean batting average for a home run titlist from 1969-1991 was .272. I recall Reggie Jackson being asked why he hit .357 lifetime in the World Series and .262 in the regular season. “Well it’s hard to maintain concentration throughout the regular season.” Really? Ted Williams did a pretty good job of it. A better explanation is that the attitude had crept into the game that if you can hit home runs, home runs are all that matters. Rob Deer, a lifetime .220 hitter who, per 162 games hit 32 home runs but struck out 198 times said “I could cut down on my swing and hit .270 but I’d hit 12 home runs and be out of the league.” It seemed to me that if Rob Deer, with his power, ever hit .270, he’d hit 50 home runs. If you’ve got natural home run power, you should be concentrating on maximizing the number of time you hit the ball solidly and that will produce the home runs. Violently swinging at anything you think you might be able to hit would only be necessary if you didn’t have great home run power and if you don’t have that, you shouldn’t be swinging for the fences anyway. In the 1990’s, sanity returned to baseball. A new generation of hitters managed to figure out that the key is how often you make good contact with the ball. Barry Bonds from 1986-89 hit .256 with a .345 on base percentage and a .458 slugging percentage. Per 162 games he averaged 81 walks with 104 strike outs. But it was OK because he had power and speed: 24 homers, 33 steals. He was a classic offensive talent of the 1970’s and 80’s. Then he became a classic offensive talent of the 1990’s. From 1990-94 he hit .310, got on base 43.2% of the time and slugged .604. He averaged 119 walks and 79 strikeouts per 162 games. And he averaged 40 home runs and 44 steals because he was making better contact with the ball and getting on base more so he would have more opportunities to steal bases. I don’t know if everybody looked at him the way batters began to look at Babe Ruth back in the 20’s and wonder if they could play the game the same way, (if it was then maybe we should look at the 90’s and 2000s as the Barry Bonds era, just as that was the Babe Ruth era). But for whatever reason, suddenly old fashioned sluggers popped up everywhere. Frank Thomas came up in the second half of the 1990 season for the White Sox and hit .330 with 7 homers and 44 walks in 60 games. In his first seven and a half seasons, before injuries and personal problems caught up with him, Thomas averaged an astounding .330BA .452OBP .600SP. In 1990 Ryne Sandberg hit .306 with 40 homers and 100 RBIs. In 1991, Cal Ripken hit .323-34-114 RBIs, Danny Tartabull hit .316-31-100 and Will Clark hit .301-29-116. In 1992, Gary Sheffield hit .330-33-100. And Ken Griffey Jr. hit .308-27-108. In 1993, Griffey was .309-45-109, Thomas .317-41-128, Bonds .336-46-123, Juan Gonzalez .310-46-118 and Mike Piazza .318-35-112. And the real explosion hadn’t even started yet. Somewhere, Ted Williams and Hank Aaron were smiling. Batters knew how to hit again. [/QUOTE]

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