By Voros McCracken

Ben Heller wrote an interesting article about aberrant offensive seasons post-strike. I thought about this and decided to do some amateur stat crunching. The idea is to look at the career home run rates per at bat since 1920 (the consensus year the live ball started) and compare them to seasons which differ by significant amounts. Here's the details: look at all players with 500+ career at bats since 1920. Then look at all seasons of 200 at bats or more and look for the players with the highest difference in standard deviations from what would be expected based on their career rates. This will generally tell us how unlikely the season was. There are explanations for some, but all were varying degrees of fluky.

20. Lu Blue, 1928 - A switch hitting first baseman who had a nice long career through the 20s and into the early 30s. With 44 career home runs in 5904 at bats, Blue wasn't much of a power hitter, even for his time. His 14 homers in 1928 don't seem like much, but that's 10 more than you'd expect from his career rate.

19. Sparky Adams, 1923 - A middle infielder who got a late start, he managed to play all the way until he was 39. After hitting 4 homers in 311 at bats his rookie year, he'd only hit 5 more in his next 5246.

18. Terry Steinbach, 1996 - An All-Star catcher with a fine career and 162 career home runs, he hit 35 in 1996.

17. Tommy Holmes, 1945 - An All-Star outfielder in the 1940s, Holmes led the National League in home runs in 1945 with 28. He'd only hit 60 more in 4000+ Major League At Bats. The war explains a lot of this, but probably not all. Still fluky.

16. Bob Bailey, 1970 - A third baseman and part time outfielder, Bailey hit 28 homers in only 352 at bats in 1970, 17 more than you'd expect from his career rate.

15. Roger Maris, 1961 - You might be familiar with this one.

14. Jeff Reed, 1997 - The lefty hitting catcher hit 61 home runs in 3101 at bats. He hit 17 of them in just 256 at bats in 1997. While 8 of those homers came on the road, it's nevertheless quite possible Coors played a hand in his season.

13. Joe Kuhel, 1940 - A long forgotten first baseman from the 30s and 40s who on occassion would pick up MVP votes, but was never an All-Star. He hit 27 homers in 1940 for the White Sox, 17 more than expected from his career rate. He did play part of his career in a terrible home run park in Washington, so that explains some of the difference. But he never hit that many again in several seasons in Chicago.

12. Goose Goslin, 1930 - The Hall of Fame outfielder hit 7 home runs for the Senators in the first third of 1930 before a trade brought him to Detroit. These numbers are from what he did since moving to Detroit: hitting 30 in 396 at bats. The 37 topped his previous season high by 19. The explanation here was again the terrible home run park Goslin played in during his peak.

11. Eddie Stanky, 1951 - Eddie was a small middle infielder known for drawing walks. The year Bobby Thomson won the pennant, Stanky hit nearly half of his career homers. Up until then he had hit 15 homers in 3700 at bats. He hit 14 in 515 that year. It would be his last season as a regular.

10. Barry Larkin, 1996 - After winning the MVP in 1995, Larkin enjoyed possibly his best offensive season, slugging 33 homers in 517 at bats. This was 20 more than expected from his career rate.

9. Jay Bell, 1999 - The long time infielder amazingly hit 38 home runs in 589 at bats at 33, besting his career high by 17. Bell played part of his career before offense spiked in 1993-1994 so that explains a little of it.

8. Wally Moses, 1937 - The outfielder played over 2000 games and racked up 7300+ at bats. He hit 25 homers in 649 at bats in 1937. It was the only season he ever cracked double figures.

7. Barry Bonds, 2001 - One of the things about Barry is that he never hit 50+ homers in any other season, unlike McGwire and Sosa who both did so 4 times.

6. Wade Boggs, 1987 - 1987 was an infamous home run year. It appears Boggs made an effort to hit home runs that year and it would be the only time he topped 20 in his career.

5. Greg Gross, 1977 - My personal favorite. Greg Gross was a long time pinch hitter who hit 5 home runs in 1977 in 239 at bats. Not impressive you say? Well in his other 3500 major league at bats he only hit 2. In one stretch, he racked up 1300 or so at bats in three seasons without homering.

4. Luis Gonzalez, 2001 - The year Barry hit 73, Gonzo hit 57. Gonzalez started hitting for power in 1998 and was more or less a consistent 20-30 home run guy for a while, except for this season.

3. Davey Johnson, 1973 - A famous one. Johnson's career high otherwise was 18, but he slugged 43 in 1973 (one of three Braves to hit 40 that year). The park in Atlanta helped, but Johnson did hit 17 on the road that year as well.

2. Bert Campaneris, 1970 - Campaneris had 13 consecutive seasons of 500+ at bats. Here's his home run totals those years: 6, 5, 3, 4, 2, 22, 5, 8, 4, 2, 4, 1 and 5.

1. Brady Anderson, 1996 - While Brady had many seasons of double digit homers, there was nothing before or after even close to the 50 hit knocked out in 1996. Brady therefore tops this list. If you're paying attention, this is the third time 1996 has made the list.