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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1810931, member: 289"] In 1990 JUAN GONZALEZ led the American Association with 29 home runs. This was considered significant because that was the highest total in the minor leagues that year. It had been decades since nobody in the minors had hit 30 home runs. I remember columns being written wondering if the demise of power hitting was upon us with the new ballparks, new pitches, etc. They needn’t have worried. Baseball Reference.com lists “Juan Gone” as being 6-3 175. That must have been when he was first signed back in 1986. Their “bullpen” page has it right, saying he was 210-230 pounds. Gonzalez was one of the first group of players to transform himself into someone looking like a cartoon superhero, with bulging muscles all over the place. I used to have book called “Ted Williams Hit List” which discussed “modern” hitters, (from the 1990’s) and Ted was in awe of Juan Gonzalez’s muscular body and wondered how he got it that way. He was one of the players Jose Canseco said was taking steroids in his book “Juiced”. He was a teammate of Gonzalez in the early 90’s. Gonzalez has denied taking steroids. He has also not come close to being elected to the Hall of Fame, despite some impressive numbers. Bill Jenkinson, in his book “Baseball’s Ultimate Power, barely mentions Gonzalez, ranking him the 79th best “Tape Measure Slugger” in the game’s history. Bill James rates him the 52nd best right fielder ever but his only comments are they none of the Texas Rangers players deserve MVP awards because their park helps them too much, that manager Johnny Oates used a ‘traditional’ line-up that “creates a large number of RBI opportunities in the middle of the order” and that sportswriters over-rate RBIs when they should be looking at other stats. Maybe if they stopped determining who wins games by totaling up the runs, sportswriters will come around to Bill’s point of view. Juan certainly did like to drive in runs: "I concentrate more when I see men on base." He concentrated enough that in 1998 he had 101 RBIs at the All-Star break the first player to do that since Hank Greenberg in 1938, (and no one has done it since). Juan Gone hit .318 that season with 50 doubles and 45 home runs and drove in 157 runs. This went well with 1992 when he hit 43 homers and had 109RBI, 1993, when he hit 46 homers and had 118 RBI. 1996 when he hit 47 homers and had 144 RBI and 1997 when he hit 42 homers and had 131 RBIs. He never hit 40 home runs after 1998 but he had 39 with 128 RBI in 1999 and in 2001 he hit 35 homers with 140 RBI. The numbers may be deceiving but they are impressive and they all counted. Gonzalez came apart after that, playing only `186 games in his last four seasons. People wondered if adding on all that muscle was too much for his frame to handle. But he did fine with it while it was still attached. Somehow, I always associated ANDRES GALARRAGA with Juan Gonzalez. They weren’t related or teammates. Gonzalez was from Puerto Tico, Galarraga from Venezuela. But they had similar names and similar sizes and put up some similar numbers- eventually. Galarraga was 6-3 235 but he was that size from when he first showed up. He didn’t look like a cartoon character. His muscles were smooth and rounded. He was never accused of taking steroids. Galarraga was a much superior fielder. He was a two time Gold Glove winner at first base and his nickname was El Gato, “The Big Cat” for the way he moved. He had his first good year in his second full season: 1987, when he hit .305 and had 90 RBIs. But the big man managed only 13 home runs. The next year he improved to .302-29-99, substantial numbers in 1988. Like Gonzalez, he always had a lousy walk-to-strikeout ratio and led the league in the latter category in 1989 with 158 while slumping to .257-23-85. He had basically the same season the next year and then completely fell apart in 1991, hitting only .219-9-33 in 107 games. He was traded to St. Louis where he wasn’t much better. A promising career seemed to have fizzled out. But the St. Louis batting coach, Don Baylor was impr4essed with him and when n Baylor became the manager at Colorado, he requested management get him The Big Cat. A mile up, Galarraga became a new player. His batting average improved by an astounding 127 points to .370, beating out Tony Gwynn for the batting title, which didn’t happen often. But he still didn’t hit a lot of homers for such a big powerful man: 22 with 98 RBIs. But Baylor taught him to swing for the fences and the next year he hit .319 with 31 homers in only 103 games, (it was the year of the strike and also of a broken hand just before it started). He had 85 RBIs, including a record 30 in the month of April. Two years later he was putting up number indistinguishable from Gonzalez: .304-47-150, .318-41-140, .305-44-121 in consecutive years. People always wonder about Colorado players- what would they do at sea level? But that last season was as an Atlanta Brave. He had to be brave in 1999. “On his second lumbar vertebra in his lower back he had a tumor known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of lymphatic cancer. He missed the entire 1999 season receiving cancer chemotherapy.” (Wikipedia) It worked he came back the next year to hit .328-28-100. Pretty good for a 39 year old cancer survivor. He never reached that level again but he did manage to play on for parts of another four seasons, capping a remarkable 19 year career at age 42. Jenkinson rates him the #31 home run hitter and credits him with hitting two 500+ foot blasts, both the year he turned age 36, as well as a 480 foot blast in San Francisco in 2001, the third longest home run ever by a player over the age of 40, (the two longest being Babe Ruth’s 713th and 714th home runs in Pittsburgh on 5/25/35). Bill James rates him the game’s 42nd best 1st baseman, honoring him for having his three best years in a row at ages 35-37 and for trying a comeback after cancer, (the book was written in 2000 before he succeeded). In their careers, Gonzalez hit .295 with 434 homers. Galarraga hit .288 with 399 homers. Here are their numbers per 162 games: JG: 186H 44W 122SKO 37D 2T 42HR 2SB 135RBI 102RS 399 bases 195 runs AG: 167H 42W 144SKO 32D 2T 29HR 9SB 102RBI 86RS 341 bases 159 runs. I wonder what they might have accomplished if they hadn’t done the pitchers such a big favor by swinging so wildly. And 135 RBIs per 162 games may be over rated but I sure wish my Mets had somebody like Juan Gone right about now. [/QUOTE]

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