Home » Sports » Baseball » Where Have All the Sluggers Gone?

Where Have All the Sluggers Gone?

© Harold Friend

At the end of the twentieth century, only five players had a lifetime slugging percentage above .600. The five were Babe Ruth (.690), Ted Williams (.634), Lou Gehrig (.633), Jimmie Foxx (.609) and Hank Greenberg (.605). Since then, Todd Helton (.616) and Barry Bonds (.611) have joined the group.

Slugging average is an interesting statistic that is calculated by multiplying a batter's home runs by four, triples by three, doubles by two, singles by one, adding them together and then dividing that sum by the batter's official plate appearances.

A player who has one home run, one triple, one double and one single in twenty official plate appearances has a .250 batting average but a .500 slugging average. One home run equals 4 total bases, one triple equal 3 total bases, one double equal 2 total bases, and one single equal 1 total base. Ten total bases divided by 20 official plate appearances results in a .500 slugging average. Achieving a .600 lifetime slugging average is one of the rarest of all accomplishments. It is significant that the last player to retire with a .600 slugging average, Ted Williams, retired forty four years ago but in the last seven years, both Todd Helton and Barry Bonds have achieved better than .600 lifetime slugging averages.

Helton's statistic can be easily explained. He plays one half of his games in Denver, where the air is rarified. Entering this season, Helton's lifetime home slugging average was significantly higher than his road slugging average, but Barry Bonds is another story.

At the end of the 1999 season, Barry Bonds had a .557 slugging average. From 2000-2004, Barry Bonds had has an astonishing .781 slugging average. Barry Bonds was thirty five years old in 2000. Imagine what Bonds would have accomplished if he had known in the twentieth century what he discovered in the twenty first century.

No player has produced his greatest seasons after the age of thirty five. Until 2000, Barry Bonds was considered an outstanding player and one of the all time greats, but no one in his right mind would have considered comparing Bonds to Babe Ruth in 1999. Today, there is a relatively large contingent of modern fans who argue that Bonds was a better hitter than Ruth. How do they explain the fact that until 2000, Bonds' lifetime batting average was below .300, his slugging average was below .600, and he never hit more than 46 home runs in a single season?

The copyright of the article Where Have All the Sluggers Gone? in Baseball is owned by . Permission to republish Where Have All the Sluggers Gone? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.