I was watching Pedro Alvarez yesterday, smasher of 400-foot home runs and manufacturer of golden sombreros. Alvarez is one of a few streaky hitters who have excellent 2-3 game stretches of power, followed by long stretches of bat contact amnesia. I wondered which hitters hit home runs on back-to-back days most often, so I fired up our database and looked for games where any hitter homered. Then, I tabulated their performance the day after and took the leaders (data since 2011):
Name |
|||
61 |
264 |
24 |
|
63 |
283 |
20 |
|
61 |
267 |
20 |
|
65 |
271 |
19 |
|
62 |
276 |
18 |
|
65 |
266 |
18 |
|
50 |
203 |
17 |
|
62 |
270 |
16 |
The “HR” column is essentially the number of times that the hitter homered on back-to-back days. So Giancarlo Stanton homered in 61 games and played a game the day after. In 24 of those subsequent games, he homered again (24 or less, depending on multi-homer games).
Here’s everyone whose slugging percentage is over 600 in “day after games” (minimum 25 “before games”):
Name |
G |
HR |
|||
36 |
126 |
99 |
15 |
0.786 |
|
Chris Davis |
50 |
176 |
129 |
17 |
0.733 |
Giancarlo Stanton |
61 |
232 |
162 |
24 |
0.698 |
29 |
98 |
63 |
8 |
0.643 |
|
44 |
168 |
106 |
14 |
0.631 |
|
52 |
197 |
123 |
15 |
0.624 |
|
Josh Hamilton |
61 |
237 |
148 |
20 |
0.624 |
62 |
243 |
151 |
15 |
0.621 |
|
26 |
98 |
60 |
7 |
0.612 |
|
Jay Bruce |
65 |
236 |
144 |
18 |
0.610 |
Albert Pujols |
63 |
252 |
153 |
20 |
0.607 |
51 |
193 |
116 |
12 |
0.601 |
Most of these players are just plain good at hitting. Alvarez came in at 29 games, 99 at bats, with 5 home runs and a 545 SLG.
For fun, here are the MLB-wide performances after one, two, and three homer games:
The day after a… |
G |
AB |
TB |
HR |
SLG |
1 homer game |
8466 |
30611 |
13619 |
1212 |
0.445 |
2 homer game |
484 |
1787 |
733 |
72 |
0.410 |
3 homer game |
18 |
71 |
41 |
5 |
0.577 |
The day after Ike Davis homered three times, he went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts. That sums up Ike Davis.
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