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ShareThisFewest ABs to reach 20+ homers
Daryle Ward (son of Gary) had a big hit for the Cubs today. Perusing his career stats, I noticed that he once hit 20 homers for the Astros, doing it in just 264 ABs. Got me to thinking about who's been able to reach 20 homers in a season with the fewest ABs:
Cnt Player **AB** HR Year Age Tm Lg G PA R H 2B 3B RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS Positions +----+-----------------+-------+--+----+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+ 1 Willie McCovey 229 20 1962 24 SFG NL 91 261 41 67 6 1 54 29 1 35 0 0 3 6 3 3 .293 .368 .590 .958 739 2 Art Shamsky 234 21 1966 24 CIN NL 96 271 41 54 5 0 47 32 1 45 0 3 2 5 0 2 .231 .321 .521 .842 79 3 Mark McGwire 236 32 2000 36 STL NL 89 321 60 72 8 0 73 76 12 78 7 0 2 5 1 0 .305 .483 .746 1.229 *3/467 4 Johnny Blanchard 243 21 1961 28 NYY AL 93 275 38 74 10 1 54 27 9 28 4 0 1 6 1 0 .305 .382 .613 .995 *2/79 5 Dave Ross 247 21 2006 29 CIN NL 90 296 37 63 15 1 52 37 7 75 3 4 5 4 0 0 .255 .353 .579 .932 *2 6 Glenallen Hill 253 20 1999 34 CHC NL 99 278 43 76 9 1 55 22 1 61 0 0 3 7 5 1 .300 .353 .581 .934 79/D 7 Kevin Maas 254 21 1990 25 NYY AL 79 300 42 64 9 0 41 43 10 76 3 0 0 2 1 2 .252 .367 .535 .902 *3D 8 Daryle Ward 264 20 2000 25 HOU NL 119 281 36 68 10 2 47 15 2 61 0 0 2 6 0 0 .258 .295 .538 .833 73/D9 9 Johnny Mize 274 25 1950 37 NYY AL 90 305 43 76 12 0 72 29 0 24 2 0 0 4 0 1 .277 .351 .595 .946 *3 10 Chris Duncan 280 22 2006 25 STL NL 90 314 60 82 11 3 43 30 0 69 2 0 2 4 0 0 .293 .363 .589 .952 *793/D
There's Ward at 8, but McGwire really sticks out, getting 32 homers in just 236 ABs.
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Season Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Regarding McGwire, he did have 321 PAs, due to a very large number of walks (24% of PAs). It's still impressive, a HR every 10 PAs.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I had to re-read this post a couple time to understand what you were going for - how many at-bats in a "full" season for a player - and how many HR they hit that year.
I think McGwire's 2000 becomes even more impressive when you realize he hit 21 HR in just April and May - over a measly 181 AB.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Right...I didn't mean quickest to 20 HR...there are ways to look at that with the PI but it's not so straightforward.
I just realized that this is the devil's post...#666! Heh.