Five MLB Players that Had a Great Season Out of Nowhere

Over the years, there have been baseball players that have had a season so great, but also so out of character with what they had accomplished previously, that fans are left with their mouths agape. These seasons have not been relegated only to the "steroid era", since as far back as 1961 Roger Maris shocked the sport by eclipsing Babe Ruth's single season home run record. However, three players have had such eye-opening campaigns since the words "steroids" and "baseball" have been used in the same sentence that it is hard to come up with any other rational explanation. Here are five players that had a season out of the blue that defied logic.

Maris was coming off an American League Most Valuable Player Award winning season in 1960 when he took off in pursuit of sixty homers and Ruth's record. However, Maris, who was a left-handed hitter with a swing tailored for Yankee Stadium, had hit "just" 39 homers the prior season, which was his career high by eleven up to that point. Roger had been in the league for four years when the 1961 season commenced, a year in which he hit the 61 homers and had 142 runs batted in, a total that was thirty more than the previous year. Maris hit at a .267 clip that season, but he did tie his career-high for at-bats with 590, as he was healthy for most of the season. After 1961, with the bitterness that he felt over how he was treated by the fans and the press helping his vigor and wellbeing to dissipate, Maris had one more good year; he had 56 home runs combined in 1962 and '63. To put his one shining season into perspective, Maris hit about twenty-seven percent of his 275 home run s in 1961.

Kevin Mitchell had shown glimpses of being a very good hitter in his three plus seasons prior to 1989, but nobody could have predicted that he would be the NL MVP that year. Mitchell hit 47 home runs, six fewer than his lifetime total by 1989, and drove in 125 runs for the Giants. He batted .291 and was named the MVP handily over teammate Will Clark. Mitchell never again hit more than 35 home runs and his next best RBI total after 1989 was 93 in 1990. Mitchell accumulated one sixth of his 760 career ribbies in that one year.

Bret Boone was a serviceable second baseman in the National League for the Reds from 1994 through 1998, then played for the Braves and Padres for one year each with his best year by far coming in 1998 with 95 runs batted in. Then he signed with the Mariners and became the second coming of Rogers Hornsby. Suddenly, Boone was a power threat, hitting 96 home runs and collecting 365 runs batted in from 2001 through 2003 with Seattle. In 2001, Boone hit .331, clobbered 37 home runs, and sent 141 men across home plate. Boone was a lifetime .266 hitter, and within two years after his last great season, he was out of baseball as an active player.

Luis Gonzalez was a journeyman outfielder with a career high of 72 RBI in one year when the 1999 season dawned and his fortunes rose considerably. He began a string of five seasons in which the fewest runs batted in he had was 103. At his zenith in 2001, Luis was third in the MVP voting of the senior circuit when he hit 57 home runs for Arizona, two dozen more than he had ever had or would have, and garnered 142 runs batted in. Gonzalez had four of his five .300 campaigns in that stretch, culminating with that 2001 anomaly when he batted .325 and walked 100 times.

Brady Anderson seems to be the poster child for this trend, as his 1996 season cannot be accounted for. Anderson, a leadoff hitter for the Orioles that had a high of 21 homers prior to '96, knocked 50 over the fences to go along with his 110 runs batted in. Anderson never approached those numbers again, as his next best year saw him hit 24 home runs and amass 81 RBI. Anderson hit 210 home runs in his fifteen years in Major League Baseball, almost one quarter of them in 1996.