Can A-Rod Do It?

September 10th, 2008
Filed under: MLB Season 2008, Stat Trends — Cyrus Wadia @ 12:54 am

Last week I was scanning the HR leaders and Alex  Rodriguez, the perennial HR competitor leading the A.L. with 54 in 2007 was not on the list. What? Could the reality be catching up to the hype.

Say what you will about the end of the steroid era (see our post on if the Steroid Era really happened..) or the probability of an off year or the weakest Yankee batting order since the short and painful Garry Sheffield era… I know all these thoughts are going through your mind.

To address the most prestigious and recently tainted crowning achievement in all of sports, the HR record, we have to talk about pace.

Here is what I did. I plotted HRs/AB as the critical pace metric for Bonds, Aaron, A-Rod, and Pujols  - why not, right?

Take a look and draw your own conclusions. I want to hear what you think. Is A-Rod on track?

HR per AB

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Posted in MLB Season 2008, Stat Trends




Viewing 1 Comment

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    It would appear that the question with A-Rod is really one of longevity. If he can stay in the league for another 10 years and maintain a HR/AB productivity level of ~.07, he probably has a chance. He's probably not going to see a huge spike, like Bonds (there's the steroids argument..), so what we need to see out of him is a huge focus on health. Maybe we should take a look at the average number of games played per year with these same players? This season was the first time I can remember him missing a significant amount of games - if that's the tip of the iceberg and he gets injured a lot more often, he's probably done for.
 

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