Return of the Mayor

With Joey Votto recovering from surgery, and the Reds in need of some offense, and especially some left-handed-hitting offense, there's been talk around town (well, on 700 WLW, mainly) of the Reds signing Sean Casey.  A lifetime .302 hitter, Casey was the Reds' starting first baseman from 1998-2005, and following stints with the Pirates, Tigers, and Red Sox, retired after the 2008 season at age 34.  The beloved Casey has since been working as a broadcaster, and is a 2012 inductee into the Reds Hall of Fame.  Although I doubt the sincerity of the radio personalities who are pining for his return (Tracy Jones especially), the so-called justification for believing Casey could still contribute is Jim Thome (who blocked Casey at first base on the Cleveland Indians, before Casey was traded to Cincy for Dave Burba the day before the start of the '98 season).  Thome, of course, is 41 (42 in five weeks) and is still getting it done.  Since the start of the 2011 season, he has been to the plate 453 times, and is batting .256 with 22 homeruns, 70 rbi, and a .358 on-base percentage.  Casey, meanwhile, just turned 38 on July 2.

Casey has been out of the game for four years now, and any talk of him returning is probably just that. Still, I thought it would be fun to try and project what Casey's numbers would be if he did return to action in 2012. And the basis for this experiment will be the prototype for aging first basemen: Mr. Thome himself. Leaving out Casey's cup of coffee with the '97 Indians, where he went 2-for-10, here are Casey's career numbers:

Years     Ages  G    AB   R   H    2B  3B HR  RBI SB
1998-2008 23-33 1399 5056 689 1529 322 12 130 734 18

BA   OBP  SLG  OPS  GDP
.302 .367 .448 .815 156

Casey's playing days lasted from the age of 23 to age 33. Here are Jim Thome's numbers at the same age range:

Years     Ages  G    AB   R    H    2B  3B HR  RBI  SB
1994-2004 23-33 1565 5357 1082 1535 299 21 413 1120 13

BA   OBP  SLG  OPS  GDP
.287 .415 .581 .997 91

Sean Casey's baseball age this year is 37 (your baseball age is your age on June 30). Here is how Thome performed at age 37:

Year Age G   AB  R  H   2B 3B HR RBI SB BA   OBP  SLG  OPS  GDP
2008 37  149 503 93 123 28  0 34  90  1 .245 .362 .503 .865  17

It follows then, in this simple experiment, that if we divide Casey's career numbers by Thome's, and multiply it by Thome's numbers at age 37, that we should be able to extrapolate 2012 statistics for Sean Casey. Well I did just that:

Year Age G   AB  R  H   2B 3B HR RBI SB BA   OBP  SLG  OPS  GDP
2012 37  133 475 59 123 30  0 11  59  1 .258 .318 .388 .705  29

Remember, this projection assumes that Sean Casey is in shape and been playing every season, not retired since 2008. That aside, if a tuned-up Casey were to play in 133 games this season, these numbers seem fairly realistic to me. Especially the 29 double plays.

Koreans Kill Reds

...As my friend Billy says whenever Shin-Soo Choo dominates a series in the Battle of Ohio (he's 5-for-9 with two doubles and a homerun in the first two games of the current Reds/Indians series).  But do Koreans as a whole hit better against the Cincinnati Reds?  There have been 13 players native to South Korea in major league history: 11 pitchers, former Cubs/Marlins/Dodgers first baseman Hee-Seop Choi, and current Indians' rightfielder Shin-Soo Choo.  Koreans have had 237 plate appearances against the Reds.  Here is what their numbers SHOULD be, if they hit for their career norms against the Reds:

BA   OBP  SLG  HR RBI
.245 .338 .409  6  25


Here is what Koreans have actually done against the Reds:


BA   OBP  SLG  HR RBI
.281 .380 .573 14  32


Choi, a career .240 hitter, hit .306 with 7 homeruns in 72 at bats against the Reds.  Choo, a .289 hitter, increased his average to .344 against Cincinnati, with 7 homeruns in 90 at bats.  Those two players account for 195 of the 237 Korean plate appearances against Reds pitching.  So it's really just two players, but Koreans do indeed kill Reds.

The Year Babe Ruth hit .402 with 61 Homeruns, and other Year-long Hot Streaks

On May 10, 1920, Babe Ruth was 20 games into his first season with the New York Yankees.  He had played in 18 of those games, and was batting .210 with 2 homeruns.  On May 11 in Chicago, he went 3-3 with a triple and two homeruns, kicking off arguably the greatest hot streak in baseball history, over the course of which he would become the most famous athlete in the history of American sports.  His 1920 season totals are enough for it to be ranked among the greatest seasons in baseball history: a .376 average, 54 homeruns (breaking the previous record of 29, set by Ruth the year before), an .847 slugging percentage (the record until 2001).  But from May 11 on, he batted .403 with a .924 slugging percentage.  Ruth was arguably even better in 1921, because unlike in 1920, he started the season hot, busting nine homeruns in his first 18 games.  Over the 365-day period beginning May 11, 1920, the Babe put up these outrageous numbers:

 Babe Ruth (May 11, 1920 to May 10, 1921)

G   AB  R   H   2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO  SB CS BA   OBP  SLG  OPS

142 463 169 186 37  9 61 146 154  74 13 14 .402 .553 .916 1.469

Ruth never actually hit .400 in any one season; he topped out at .393 in 1923.  Rogers Hornsby, however, accomplished the feat three times ... in fact, he hit .402 over the course of an entire five-year span (1921-1925).  Halfway through the 1924 season, Hornsby was having an okay year - he was hitting .389.  But then he decided to kick it up a notch.  He finished the season hitting .424 ... the highest batting average of the liveball era.  He continued his outrageous hitting into the following season, 1925, and cruised to his second triple crown, hitting .403 with 39 homers and 143 rbi.  Here's what he did from the second half of the 1924 season through the first half of '25:

Rogers Hornsby (July 1, 1924 to June 30, 1925)

G   AB  R   H   2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO  SB CS BA   OBP  SLG  OPS

144 524 146 230 43  9 38 129 101  29  3  6 .439 .530 .773 1.303

No one has hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941, and it is likely that no one ever will again; but for twelve months in the 1920s, Rogers Hornsby hit damn near .440, and with power too.  Speaking of players we may never again see the likes of: in the 1980s Eric Davis was supposed to be the second coming of Willie Mays.  And once he actually got into the regular line-up in June of 1986, for a year or so he was Willie Mays, only with more speed.

Eric Davis (June 15, 1986 to June 14, 1987)

G   AB  R   H   2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO  SB CS BA   OBP  SLG  OPS

148 517 132 154 24  3 43 114  87 133 91 10 .298 .398 .605 1.003

Only four players in baseball history have reached the 40-40 club in homeruns and stolen bases.  But over a one-year period in 1986 and '87, Eric the Red was a 40-90 player.  It's mind-boggling how good he was before injuries took their toll on his game.

In 1998 Sammy Sosa hit 66 homeruns for the Cubs...yet he was second among Chicago outfielders in slugging percentage.  Albert Belle quietly had a spectacular season for the White Sox; he was overshadowed by Sosa and Mark McGwire as they both broke Roger Maris's 37-year-old homerun record.  But three years earlier, Belle was the most feared hitter in baseball, and the favorite to break Maris's record.  In 1995, he became the first (and still only) player to hit 50 doubles and 50 homeruns in the same season, and did so despite playing a shortened 144-game schedule.  He started well in 1995, then went on a tear beginning around the end of May, and continued his torrid hitting through the start of the '96 season.  The result is a year that Belle never actually had in any one season; he was Sammy Sosa from a few years later, but with more hits and doubles and half the strikeouts:

Albert Belle (May 31, 1995 to May 27, 1996)

G   AB  R   H   2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO  SB CS BA   OBP  SLG  OPS

162 608 143 203 51  2 65 159  89  88  5  2 .334 .420 .745 1.165

I cut Belle off a little early because he actually played 165 games for the year beginning May 31, 1995.  And speaking of the homerun record, we come full-circle to the man who holds both the single-season and career marks.  Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001, but if not for a bad first week, he might have hit several more.  He went 3-for-29 in the Giants' first seven games, got benched in game 8, then basically went on an unprecedented tear that lasted through the rest of that season and all of the next three.  Here's what he did in that first year, from early in the 2001 season through the first week of 2002:

Barry Bonds (April 12, 2001 to April 11, 2002)

G   AB  R   H   2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO  SB CS BA   OBP  SLG  OPS

154 470 136 162 33  2 77 148 185  88 14  3 .345 .535 .915 1.449

This is the highest level of dominance displayed by any player since Babe Ruth, eighty years before.  And for all the differences in the eras they played in - Ruth in day games in big ballparks against white-only competition, Bonds in small parks under the lights with PEDs against the best players in the world - their slugging percentages are nearly identical: .916 for Ruth, .915 for Bonds.  These are the two players who, more than anyone else who's ever played the game, reached the pinnacle of prowess for an entire year.


Coming sooner or later: all-generation teams, the (non?)importance of hitting with runners in scoring position, and converting stars of old to the modern era by comparing them to the average superstar.