{"id":5488,"date":"2026-08-19T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5488"},"modified":"2026-08-19T06:30:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T02:30:53","slug":"davey-would-appreciate-this-on-more-than-one-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5488","title":{"rendered":"Davey would appreciate this on more than one level"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of my favorite players\/managers of all time is Davey Johnson. Last year when he passed away I gave him a more complete profile<\/a>, but coming upon the one-year anniversary of his death I thought I would take a further dive into one of his more amazing stats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man did appreciate the numbers behind the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1973, his first season in Atlanta, Johnson hit 43 home runs. (He was one of three Braves to hit 40 that year.) His next-highest season total was 18. Quite the jump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn’t around in 1973, but people my age will always point to Brady Anderson’s 1996 season as a statistical anomaly for home runs, assuming steroids, of course, for the juiced-up stats. (No steroids back in ’73.) But Anderson three years later had 24, and equaled or bettered Johnson’s 18 half a dozen times. The ratio here is 2.08, whereas Johnson’s highest\/next-highest ratio (43\/18) is 2.39. Sure, we could take this to ridiculous extremes, say where someone once had three home runs in a season but never had more than one otherwise and was therefore tripling<\/em> his total, but that’s one of those equations where a percent difference isn’t<\/em> actually the best comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A fun hunt, no?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wade Boggs hit 24 home runs in the “rabbit ball” year of 1987 while his second-highest was 11; that’s a 2.18 ratio. Then of course there’s 1980 AL Rookie of the Year Joe Charboneau, who had 23 home runs that year but a total of six the rest of his career, kind of the ultimate one-hit wonder but sort of a different set of circumstances compared to the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luis Gonzalez hit 57 home runs in 2001 for the World Series-winning Diamondbacks (still pains me to say that) and his next-highest total was 28 (a 2.04 ratio), but he did hit at least 15 homers in 12 different seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New season at school and already starting on what sounds like a new chapter to From Box Scores to Test Scores<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite players\/managers of all time is Davey Johnson. Last year when he passed away I gave him a more complete profile, but coming upon the one-year anniversary of his death I thought I would take a further … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5489,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488\/revisions\/5489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}