It Was ‘Target Practice’ for Jose Bautista
From SABR member Jayson Stark at ESPN.com on May 16, with mentions of SABR members David Vincent and Trent McCotter:
• Is Jose Bautista amazing, or what? He just hit five home runs in one weekend at Target Field. They came in a mere 14 at-bats. The Twins (all of them) have hit six home runs there all season — in 509 at-bats.
• Then again, Bautista has hit 16 home runs this season in all the parks he’s played, in 114 at-bats. The Twins’ whole team has hit 18 homers all season — in 1,283 at-bats.
• Our buddy Joe Christensen, of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune unfurled this amazing pearl today on Bautista: Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau have played a combined 129 games at Target Field — and hit a total of five home runs. Bautista has now played seven games there — and hit seven bombs. Yikes.
• And in case you missed this list in Rumblings a couple of weeks back, Bautista has now become just the seventh player in history to hit 60 home runs in a calendar year without ever hitting 60 in any full season. The others, according to the Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR Home Run historian David Vincent: Hank Greenberg twice (60 in 1937-38 and 1938-39), Ken Griffey Jr. twice (62 in 1993-94 and 66 in 1997-98), Albert Belle (67 in 1995-96), Alex Rodriguez (63 in 2001-02), Ryan Howard (63 in 2005-06) and David Ortiz (62 in 2005-06).
Read the full article here: http://espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/stark_jayson/id/6556777/history-encouraging-jorge-posada
Originally published: May 16, 2011. Last Updated: May 16, 2011.