Most Extra-Inning Homers in a Single Season
From SABR member Tom Ruane at Retrosheet on October 15, 2011:
Normally, I try to find someone else to blame for suggesting one of these posts, but this silly one is all mine. After noticing that Nelson Cruz had seven RBIs in the eleventh innings of Texas’ playoff series with the Tigers, I wondered what player had the most extra-inning HRs and RBIs in a season from 1948 to 2010. And then I decided I might as well look at who holds the record in each inning. Here are the HR leaders by inning.
<snip>
Now our data is only 100% complete back to 1956 and the lists above and below will certainly look very different once we extend our reach before 1948, but hopefully this is of some interest despite these limitations.
Once I wrote these words, I realized that we do know at least what inning each home run was hit in, even if we are missing the play-by-play data for the game. So I went and generated the all-time leaders for each inning and only one old-timer replaced an entry above: Jimmie Foxx hit 12 seventh-inning homers back in 1932.
I had assumed that Mays had such a low HR/RBI ratio above was because hit fourth in 1954 and so frequently led off the second inning, but he actually hit sixth more often than any other place that year. And the same goes for Ron Cey in 1980 and Richard Hidalgo in 2000.
Read the full article here: http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/retro_fun2.htm#A111015
Originally published: October 17, 2011. Last Updated: October 17, 2011.