The Favorite Toy and the Home Run King

I have a list of articles I intend to write, most about players who toiled long before any of us were a gleam in our parents’ eye (hell, long before our parents were gleams in their parents’ eyes), but sometimes events collide and new ideas crop up and articles seemingly write themselves. With the recent indictment of Barry Bonds for perjury and obstruction of justice, it seems Bonds’ career is over and his home run total of 762 is the new standard (assuming it’s allowed to stand). Frankly, I was overjoyed when I heard of Bonds’ indictment because I can’t stand him and it’s always been clear to me (and I’m assuming a majority of baseball fans) that Bonds had been taking performance enhancing drugs. I’m also saddened and a little outraged that the indictment didn’t come BEFORE Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s home run record, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

Prior to Bonds’ indictment I obtained a copy of the 1999 edition of a book called Diamond Chronicles (There were three editions from 1998 to 2000) that features commentary from Bill James, Rob Neyer, David Pinto, Mat Olkin, John Dewan, Craig Wright, and Don Zminda, among many others. Last night while watching the Patriots beat the snot out of the Bills, I ran across an interesting article written by Jim Henzler on September 11, 1998 called “The Ultimate Home-Run Race,” in which he uses James’ Favorite Toy formula to determine which player had the best chance of surpassing Aaron. Now that we’re all but certain that Bonds’ 762 is the new mark to beat, I thought it would be interesting to review what Henzler wrote and rerun those Favorite Toy predictions almost 10 years later.

Before I continue I should explain what the Favorite Toy is and how it works. Basically it predicts the chance of reaching a specific milestone by accounting for a player’s age, his current stat total (in this case, home runs), his stat totals for the three previous seasons, and his goal. The player’s age determines how many years he has left in his career, his ultimate goal minus his current total establishes how far he has to go to reach the milestone, and the three years’ worth of data determines his established level of production.

Let’s use Bonds as an example. In 1998 Bonds was 33 years old (James uses June 30 as the cutoff date to determine a player’s age, while Baseball-Reference.com uses July 1; for simplicity’s sake I’m using B-R.com’s ages since they only differ by a day). He had 411 career home runs heading into the ’99 campaign and he’d hit 42, 40, and 37 homers from 1996-1998. Lastly, he needed 345 more home runs to pass Aaron on the all-time list. I punched Bonds’ numbers into the Career Assessments tool at ESPN.com (it’s the Favorite Toy with a new name), and it determined that Bonds had a .7 percent chance of surpassing Aaron and that he was expected to finish his career with approximately 586 round trippers.

At the time Henzler wrote his article, only two players had a better than 20% chance of catching and surpassing Aaron: Ken Griffey Jr. and Mark McGwire. Griffey had just belted 56 homers at the age of 28 and had hit 49, 56, and 56 from 1996-1998. He had 350 career homers through 1998 and would be only 29 years old in 1999. Henzler estimated Griffey’s chance of hitting 756 home runs at 38 percent.

McGwire was 34 in 1998 and was older than both Bonds and Griffey, but Henzler estimated that Big Mac had a 27 percent chance of hitting 756 home runs. He had 457 home runs in his career at that point and had hit 52, 58, and 70 from 1996-1998. Of course McGwire fell far short, retiring after 2001 with 583 circuit blasts.

Although McGwire had an outside shot at the home run record, heading into 1999 Griffey was considered the only serious threat to Aaron’s mark and he was one of only seven players in history with at least a 20 percent chance to hit 756 (the others were: Aaron, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, McGwire, and Willie Mays). In fact, Griffey was one of two players (at that time) who actually had a chance to belt 1,000 home runs. After his 1998 campaign, Junior had a better than 5 percent chance to reach that ridiculous figure. The only other player who had a shot at 1,000 was Jimmie Foxx, who had a 2.81 percent chance after belting 222 home runs by the age of 25. Foxx reached his 500th home run in 1940 at the age of 32, but flamed out and hit only 34 more over his last four seasons.

Here we are nine years later and the man who had a less than one percent chance now stands as the all-time home run king and the man who had an almost 40 percent chance is still 162 homers short of Aaron and 169 short of Bonds. Bonds has yet to be convicted of anything and there are Bonds apologists who will tell you that his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs has nothing to do with his ability to hit home runs, but few of us are surprised that he surpassed Aaron given the evidence. Meanwhile Griffey has been dogged by injuries that have limited him to 698 games out of a possible 1,134 over the last seven years.

Here’s how both Bonds’ and Griffey’s chance to reach 756 homers have fluctuated since 1998:

Bonds

Griffey

Year	Age	HR	Total	Need	Chance	Year	Age	HR	Total	Need	Chance
1999	34	34	445	311	0.0	1999	29	48	398	358	44.4
2000	35	49	494	262	6.1	2000	30	40	438	318	35.5
2001	36	73	567	189	42.9	2001	31	22	460	296	10.1
2002	37	46	613	143	47.0	2002	32	8	468	288	0.0
2003	38	45	658	98	52.0	2003	33	13	481	275	0.0
2004	39	45	703	53	77.8	2004	34	20	501	255	0.0
2005	40	5	708	48	28.1	2005	35	35	536	220	0.0
2006	41	26	734	22	97.0	2006	36	27	563	193	0.0
2007	42	28	762	0	100.0	2007	37	30	593	163	0.0

After 1999 Bonds’ chance of hitting at least 756 home runs began to climb and jumped dramatically in 2001 when he set the single-season home run mark with 73. His only bump in the road came in 2005 when he played in only 14 games and hit only five home runs. But he recovered to hit 54 over his last two seasons, finally surpassing Aaron in 2007. Junior’s chances, on the other hand, plummeted after an injury-plagued 2001 campaign limited him to only 22 homers and he’s now expected to finish with 668 career home runs, putting him 94 short of Bonds. Considering he’s only amassed at least 500 at-bats once in the last seven years, it looks like Griffey will fall short.

Since Griffey’s pace has fallen off, the new heir to the throne appears to be Alex Rodriguez, who already has 518 home runs at the age of 31 (can you imagine if Griffey and A-Rod had both stayed with the Mariners and were chasing Bonds at the same time?). Rodriguez’s chance of catching and passing Bonds is estimated at 54.8 percent. Just for the hell of it I checked his chances of hitting 1,000 and they came out at 3.3 percent. But according to the Favorite Toy, A-Rod is projected to hit 775 home runs in his career. That assumes he has only 5 1/2 more years left, however, which seems conservative. If he stays healthy and he plays through his current contract, he’ll be 42 when he retires and I can’t imagine him finishing with fewer than 800 homers. Of course, I couldn’t imagine Griffey not breaking Aaron’s record when he was A-Rod’s age, so you never know what might happen.

Below is a table of active players who have the best chance (according to the Favorite Toy) of hitting 763 homers:

Player	Age	HR	Need	ELP	YRS	Chance	Est. HR
Alex Rodriguez	31	518	245	46.7	5.5	54.8	775
Albert Pujols	27	282	481	39.2	7.5	11.1	576
Adam Dunn	27	238	525	40.0	7.5	7.1	538
Ryan Howard	27	129	634	46.5	7.5	5.0	478
Andruw Jones	30	368	395	35.2	6.0	3.4	579

ELP=Established Level of Production, YRS=years remaining in career

As you can clearly see A-Rod has the only legitimate shot at catching Bonds while the rest will not only fall short of the record, but none will even hit 600 according to the Favorite Toy. Frankly, I was surprised that the list was so small, and there is at least one player who is missing that I expected to see and that’s Miguel Cabrera who has 138 home runs at the age of 24. He’s far ahead of Howard’s pace, yet the Favorite Toy has him finishing with only 419 career home runs. That’s because his established level of production is 31.2 and he’s expected to play only nine more years, which, again, seems to be conservative to me. I don’t know the average age of retirement these days and it’s possible Cabrera will eat himself out of the league by the time he turns 33, but it’s also possible (and probable) that barring serious injury he should play into his late 30s.

Here’s a list of the top 10 active home run hitters and their projected totals (this list assumes that Bonds’ career is over):

Player	Age	HR	Need	ELP	YRS	Chance	Est. HR
Sammy Sosa	38	609	154	21.0	2.0	0.0	651
Ken Griffey Jr.	37	593	170	29.8	2.5	0.0	668
Alex Rodriguez	31	518	245	46.7	5.5	54.8	775
Frank Thomas	39	513	250	28.0	1.5	0.0	555
Jim Thome	36	507	256	32.7	3.0	0.0	605
Manny Ramirez	35	490	273	29.2	3.5	0.0	592
Gary Sheffield	38	480	283	20.2	2.0	0.0	520
Carlos Delgado	35	431	332	30.2	3.5	0.0	537
Mike Piazza	38	427	336	14.5	2.0	0.0	456
Chipper Jones	35	386	377	26.7	3.5	0.0	479

It’s not difficult to see why A-Rod is the only one among the active leaders who has a chance to be the home run king. His established level of production eclipses the rest by a wide margin and even if we assume Thome would have maintained his typical production level in 2005 instead of hitting only seven home runs in an injury-riddled season, Rodriguez is still far and away the most productive in terms of home runs.

Lastly I decided to compile a list of active home run hitters younger than 35 to see what their estimated career totals are projected to (list does not include previously mentioned players).

Player	Age	HR	Need	ELP	YRS	Chance	Est. HR
Vladimir Guerrero	31	365	398	29.8	5.5	0.0	529
Shawn Green	34	328	435	13.7	4.0	0.0	383
Todd Helton	33	303	460	16.8	4.5	0.0	379
Richie Sexson	32	294	469	28.3	5.0	0.0	436
Troy Glaus	30	277	486	28.8	6.0	0.0	450
Paul Konerko	31	276	487	33.8	5.5	0.0	462
David Ortiz	31	266	497	43.3	5.5	0.0	504
Jermaine Dye	33	264	499	33.8	4.5	0.0	416
Scott Rolen	32	261	502	12.2	5.0	0.0	322
Lance Berkman	31	259	504	36.0	5.5	0.0	457

Assuming Guerrero stays healthy, I can see him reaching 500 homers (the Favorite Toy gives him a 71.5% chance of reaching that total), but I’ll be shocked if David Ortiz amasses that many. Ortiz is my favorite player and he’s a beast, but I don’t see him staying healthy enough to hit another 234 homers over the course of his career. You can probably blame my scepticism on Mo Vaughn, another behemoth left-handed Red Sox slugger who had a 39% chance of hitting 500 after he’d belted 299 through the age of 32, but ended up with only 328 career round-trippers, thanks to injuries to his knee and ankle. Ortiz is taller than Vaughn but he has the same stocky frame and he’s not exactly svelt (he’s not fat, he’s just big boned), and he’s having knee troubles of his own. That doesn’t bode well for him.

If I was a betting man (and I’m not), I’d say A-Rod will definitely break the record, while Pujols has an outside shot, but I wouldn’t put money on any of the others. Dunn, Howard, and Jones are all hackers who will most likely succumb to their free-swinging ways long before they reach 500 dingers.

Dunn’s similarity scores are loaded with guys who are synonymous with the strike out and none hit more than 237 homers. It gets better when you look at his sim scores through age 27 (the list includes Bonds, Harmon Killebrew, and Reggie Jackson) and it’s certainly not unfathomable for him to record seven more 40-homer seasons or nine 30-homer seasons, but there’s no way Dunn is going to hit 525 more homers in his career. Howard’s sim scores are even less impressive (of course he’s had only two full seasons and two partial seasons under his belt). Jones is listed with some great hitters (Frank Robinson and Eddie Mathews are the most similar through age 30), but he appears to be getting more clueless at the plate as time goes on. He should easily hit 500, may even reach 600, and has a decent chance at 700 (he has a 97% chance at 500, a 41% chance to hit 600, and a 14% chance at 700). But his attitude at the plate and in the clubhouse could wear thin before he reaches any of those milestones.