Future History

Dave Paisley

Before we get to this week's main event, a few notes are in order. The logjam of post-season moves is starting to break up and no doubt we’ll get swamped with player moves during the next few weeks. It seems like there are always a couple of free agents each year who the baseball world looks to for guidance on where the market is headed, and this year those guys are Jim Thome and Tom Glavine. Well, Thome finally landed in Philly and Glavine will apparently make his mind up by the end of the week, so we can expect the other dominos to start falling rapidly after that.

But I’m not here to talk about the Koch for Foulke deal (yawn, White Sox get rooked again…) or the Karros and Grudzielanek for Hundley deal (double yawn, overpriced underachievers for overpriced underachiever) No, it’s time for the annual Home Run History Weigh-In.

About five years ago I started taking an annual look at the career home run race, focusing particularly on Ken Griffey Jr., as he was chasing Jimmie Foxx for the fastest ever to 300 home runs title. He didn’t quite make it, but his pace and increasing home run power at the mid stage of his career and the likelihood of a much more productive late career than Foxx’s certainly put him well within Ruth and Aaron territory. As we’ll see in a moment, that dream is fading.

However, just as Griffey was hitting his stride, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa raised the bar on home run production. Then, shortly after, Barry Bonds hit his late career surge and Alex Rodriguez blossomed as expected.

This wide variety of early promise and late blooming gives us a lot of intriguing possibilities regarding the historic home run records both in the next couple of years and also a few more years down the road.

As always, I like to see things pictorially, so here’s the career home run picture as of the end of this past season. Note that active players have square symbols, while retired players are indicated by the smaller diamond symbols.

This year I added Willie Mays to the retiree list, as one of the big stories of next season will be if (ha!) and when Barry Bonds passes his godfather in career home runs. It promises to be a tight race, actually. If Bonds matches this year’s total of 46, he will end the season one short of Mays. If he has another season like 2001, he’ll probably pass him by the All-Star break. Either way, it will be an historic chase, and well worth the price of admission next season.

Next up, let’s take a look at the mysterious Frank Thomas. Even in his prime MVP years, Thomas wasn’t a prodigious home run hitter. He was also older when he started, which really hurts in the long haul to Hank Aaron. But he did show promise, and in fact until his erratic last four years or so, he has been on the Barry Bonds track, by which I mean a late starter but steady. In fact if you look at the chart, five of the guys (Aaron, Mays, Foxx, Griffey and Rodriguez) are what I’d call early starters, while five (Ruth, McGwire, Thomas, Bonds and Sosa) are late starters. It’s not really until age 35 that the groups really start to coalesce as the late starters catch up and the early starters falter a little (or a lot in Foxx’s case.)

Even with all the problems of the last few years, Thomas is only about 70 home runs behind Barry Bonds at the same age. Sure, he’ll have to have to return to MVP form and have a few more seasons at that level to catch up to the Barry Bonds of today, but it could happen. I hope for his sake he gets the heck out of Chicago — the change of scenery might just provide the kick he needs.

Moving on to Griffey, his chart has "DANGER!!!" written all over it. It has that nasty flat part rearing its ugly head. Now, we all know that at age 32 he’s not exactly washed up, and he’s not in Jimmie Foxx alcoholic territory, but his nagging injuries may be just as deadly to his career. That said, he’s still ahead of everybody but Foxx for his age, and with a decent conditioning regimen and maybe surgery on his hamstring, he could kick it into gear again. But the career home run race is all about durability, and that spells disaster for Griffey’s chances at Aaron-like totals.

Next up — Sammy Sosa. Wow, what a career Sammy is building in the home run category. As spectacular has Bonds has been, Sammy is almost 100 home runs ahead of him at age 33. With fifty homers in 2003, Sammy will become the all time leader in career homers at age 34. With 50 a season for the next four seasons, he’ll be sitting pretty at 700 at age 37 — two years ahead of Aaron and Ruth. Say what you will about Sammy and his relentless self-promotion, there’s no denying he’s a personable guy. He's much better liked by the media than Bonds and so the hoopla will start to build. Barring catastrophic injury, of course.

Finally, there’s Alex Rodriguez. Check out that age 26 number… Sure, he’s playing in an insane offensive era. Well, so did Jimmie Foxx. Still, doing what he’s doing is historic. When you factor in the rate he’s going and that he’s about to enter his prime power years, he could be 100 home runs ahead of the competition at age 30. Again, barring catastrophic injury, he should be the quickest ever to 400 and 500 homers. And all this from the shortstop position.

I just figure that he’ll get his handful of MVP awards someday, just probably not in a Texas uniform...

about the author

Got any arthritis tips for Alex Rodriguez so he can avoid Albert Belle Syndrome? Send them to Dave Paisley at drdjp@strikethree.com and he'll make sure Alex gets the message.