Reminiscing on 2021 Home Runs and Dingers
As we wait for any tiny morsel of optimistic news about the MLB lockout, let’s talk about dingers during the 2021 season. There were some notable happenings with balls flying over walls that are pretty good examples of baseball in the current era.
Zunino hits 33 dingers with record-low 62 RBI
Tampa Bay catcher Mike Zunino set career-highs in home runs (33) and slugging percentage (.559) in 2021, putting together the best offensive season of his career. After three years of below-average hitting, he finished the season with a 134 wRC+ (34% above average on offense after league and ballpark effects were accounted for), which was right there with Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel, and Rafael Devers on the leaderboard for players with 350 or more plate appearances. He was one of the biggest offensive surprises of the season.
At the same time, Zunino produced the fewest combined runs and RBI for anyone who ever hit exactly 33 dingers in a season. Nineteen of his 33 homers were solo-shots, 12 were 2-run homers, and two were 3-run bombs. He didn’t hit a grand slam.
Since 1901, there have been 123 hitters who hit exactly 33 homers in a season. Zunino’s 64 runs scored is the second-lowest ever, with only 1999 Mo Vaughn scoring fewer (63). When it comes to RBI, Zunino is at the very bottom of the list of 33-homer players. He had 62 RBI during his 33-homer season, breaking the previous record-low of 64 RBI set by Hunter Renfroe in 2019.
Overall, Zunino had a combined 126 runs+plus+RBI, which is two fewer than Renfroe, and also a new record-low (the 123 players in MLB history with exactly 33 homers in a season averaged 196 runs-plus-RBI). Along with Zunino, four other players hit exactly 33 home runs in 2021: Austin Riley, Yordan Alvarez, Jorge Polanco, and Ryan Mountcastle. They averaged 89 runs scored and 100 RBI to Zunino’s 64 and 62.
Grandal and Gallo
In a different era, fans would look at the batting averages of Yasmani Grandal and Joey Gallo and think they had awful seasons at the plate. Grandal finished the 2021 season with a .240 batting average, while Gallo hit .199, one point below the Mendoza Line. These days, most modern fans know to look beyond batting average, so they know that Grandal and Gallo actually had above-average years at the dish.
Grandal was particularly good, hitting .240/.420/.520, giving him a 159 wRC+. That’s elite territory. For players with 350 or more plate appearances, Grandal ranked fourth in baseball in wRC+, right behind Juan Soto and ahead of Brandon Belt and the two elite juniors, Ronald Acuña and Fernando Tatis. Grandal was effective on offense thanks in large part to his 23 homers and 87 walks. Those 87 walks came in a season in which Grandal had just 67 hits, thanks to a very low .246 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP).
Gallo wasn’t as good as Grandal offensively, but his .199/.351/.458 batting line and 123 wRC+ made him an above-average hitter, about even with Kris Bryant, Michael Brantley, and Nelson Cruz. Like Grandal, Gallo had more walks than hits. He took a free pass 111 times while banging out 99 hits.
Historically speaking, the +20 difference between Grandal’s 87 walks and 67 hits ranks him 14th on the all-time list of players with more walks than hits in a season. Barry Bonds is the king of getting more walks than hits in a season. He did the deed six times, including the top three seasons with the most walks-minus-hits in baseball history. His 2004 season was his walks-minus-hits Magnus Opus; he walked 232 times while getting 135 hits, for a +97 mark.
Gallo’s +12 mark in 2021 ranks him 31st on the all-time list, behind 1996 Rickey Henderson and 1994 Mickey Tettleton and ahead of 1949 Eddie Joost. Tettleton had three seasons with 400 or more plate appearances and more walks than hits. Joost had two. Rickey had only that 1996 season, when he was 37 years old and walked 125 times with 112 hits (and stole 37 bases).
The full leaderboard is below:
All or Nothing
The National League was founded in 1876, the American League first showed up in 1901. For nearly a century after the first official pitch was thrown in the National League, not a single hitter in major league baseball ever hit 30 home runs in a season with an on-base percentage below .300. It was a seemingly unachievable mix of good and bad. Then came Joe Pepitone of the New York Yankees.
Pepitone is remembered by many as a teammate of pitcher/author Jim Bouton, whose book “Ball Four” gave readers a peek behind the curtain of major league baseball and the players who played it. Bouton played with Pepitone when both were on the Yankees and there are plenty of Pepitone stories in the book. He was quite a character.
In 1966, Pepitone hit 31 homers and had a .290 on-base percentage, becoming the charter member of the 30-HR, sub-.300-OBP club. He had nearly done it two years earlier, when he hit 28 homers with a .281 OBP. In 1969, he would hit 27 homers with a .284 OBP. This was kind of his thing.
Once Pepitone opened the door to the 30-HR, sub-.300-OBP club, two other players walked through it over the next five years. Ernie Banks (32 HR, .287 OBP) did it in 1968, which became known as “The Year of the Pitcher.” To be fair to Banks, the entire National League had a .300 OBP in 1968, so his .287 OBP wasn’t that bad in comparison (he had an above-average 123 wRC+). Two years after Banks, Cincinnati’s Lee May joined the club when he hit 34 big flies and had a .297 OBP.
The most prolific 30-HR, sub-.300-OBP hitter is Dave Kingman, with a record four such seasons between 1975 and 1986. That 1986 season (35 HR, .255 OBP) was Kingman’s last in the big leagues. At the time, it was the most home runs a player ever hit in their final season. David Ortiz surpassed Kingman in his final season when he hit 38 HR in 2016, and recently-retired Kyle Seager tied him in 2021 before announcing his retirement recently. Still, when it comes to all-or-nothing offense, Dave is the king, man.
After two 30-HR, sub-.300-OBP hitter seasons in the 1960s and three in the 1970s, there was a veritable explosion of such seasons in the 1980s. Specifically, it happened seven times in eight years between 1982 and 1989 including, for the first time, two players doing it in the same season, 1984—Detroit catcher Lance Parrish (33 HR, .287 OBP) and White Sox outfielder Ron Kittle (32 HR, .295 OBP). The year-by-year quantities are shown below:
After becoming a near-yearly event in the mid-1980s, the 30-HR, sub-.300 OBP season disappeared for a dozen years, with not a single instance between Joe Carter in 1989 (35 HR, .292 OBP) and Jeromy Burnitz in 2003 (31 HR, .299 OBP). In 2004, Jose Valentin (30 HR, .287 OBP) and Tony Batista (32 HR, .272 OBP) equaled the feat of Parrish and Kittle from 20 years before with a second season of two players hitting 30-plus homers with an on-base percentage below .300. Overall, there were five such seasons in the 2000s, culminating with the Marlins’ Mike Jacobs in 2008 (32 HR, .299 OBP).
Starting in 2013, what had once been rare became commonplace. That year, Mark Trumbo (34 HR, .294 OBP) and Pedro Alvarez (36 HR, .296 OBP) joined the club. In 2016, it was Adam Duvall (33 HR, .297 OBP) and Rougned Odor (33 HR, .296 OBP). Odor made it back-to-back seasons in 2017 (30 HR, .252 OBP). For the first time ever, three players accomplished the feat in 2019—Hunter Renfroe (33 HR, .289 OBP), Randal Grichuk (31 HR, .280 OBP) and our old friend Rougned Odor (30 HR, .283 OBP), who moved into second behind Dave Kingman on the all-time list of players with seasons of 30 or more homers and a sub-.300 OBP.
It didn’t happen in 2020 because of the pandemic, but 2021 saw a new record with four players joining the club. Adam Duvall (38 HR, .281 OBP) did it for a second time in his career. He was joined by newcomers Adolis Garcia (31 HR, .286 OBP), Eugenio Suarez (31 HR, .286 OBP), and the now-retired Kyle Seager (35 HR, .285 OBP). Here’s the full list:
Now that the 30-HR, sub-.300-OBP season has happened seven times in the last two full seasons, what can we look forward to in 2022? According to the Steamer projections at Fangraphs, our old friend Adam Duvall has a solid chance to do it for the third time, and four others are within reach:
Adam Duvall (again)—32 HR, .288 OBP
Salvador Perez—37 HR, .302 OBP
Patrick Wisdom—29 HR, .287 OBP
Hunter Renfroe—32 HR, .305 OBP
Bobby Dalbec—29 HR, .306 OBP
This is baseball in the modern era. Home runs are way up, historically, while on-base percentage is lagging. In 2021, hitters produced the fourth-highest home run rate and third-lowest on-base percentage since the advent of the DH in 1973, which meshes perfectly with the 30-HR, sub.-300-OBP club.
-Bobby Mueller
