Baseball Reference Blog

The 1934 season was Babe Ruth's last productive year in baseball as a player.  Then, the Big Bam was 39-years old - and truly on his last legs.  But, he managed to come to the plate 471 times and post an OPS+ of 161.  This got me wondering as to what modern players have put together a season like Babe Ruth's last good season - so, I went to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder and set it for: "For single seasons, From 1996 to 2007, (requiring OPSp>=160, PA>=450, PA<=499, and OPSp<=170), sorted by name" and this is what I got:

  Cnt                       OPS+  PA Year Age Tm  Lg  G   AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions 

+----+-----------------+---+----+---+----+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+ 

    1 Javy Lopez             169 495 2003  32 ATL NL 129 457  89 150 29  3 43 109  33   5  90   4   0   1  10   0  1  .328  .378  .687 1.065 *2/D 

    2 Ellis Burks            163 458 2000  35 SFG NL 122 393  74 135 21  5 24  96  56   5  49   1   0   8  10   5  1  .344  .419  .606 1.025 *9/D 

    3 Barry Bonds            170 477 2007  42 SFG NL 126 340  75  94 14  0 28  66 132  43  54   3   0   2  13   5  0  .276  .480  .565 1.045 *7/D 

  

I had a feeling that Barry would show up on this list - somehow.  But, Javy Lopez and Ellis Burks, well, I did not expect to see them here.  I wonder, during 2000, for Ellis, and 2003, for Javy, what if someone had yelled out to them "Hey, you're playing like Babe Ruth on his last legs!" - would they have thought that was a bad thing?

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