The True Homerun King: Ken Griffey Jr

Ken Griffey Jr. is a certain Hall of Famer. His statistics and career add up to an almost guaranteed Major League Baseball Hall of Fame bid when he retires from baseball. Griffey currently stands first among active players on the all-time homerun list. He is one of the greatest sluggers ever to play the game of baseball. His batting statistics, more specifically the number of home runs he has hit, are what have made him the recognizable figure that he is today. Over the past few years though, he has dropped off the baseball radar. On the all time list he stands fifth behind Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds. Currently at the age 39, Griffey only has a few years left in his career, if that. As an avid baseball fan, and a major opponent of the "steroid era" in baseball, I have always been a fan of Griffey Jr. He has managed to keep his name and image totally clean. There has never been any speculation or doubt in my mind as to whether or not he used performance enhancing drugs. How did he do it? Mechanics. It's that sweet swing that we all know and love that has gotten him where he is today.

The same can't be said for most of the other players on the all-time list that have played in the last twenty years. Guys like Manny Ramirez, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds have all been strongly suspected of, or have admitted to using performance enhancing drugs during their careers. The only exception is Jim Thome, who is currently twelfth on the all time home run list. Unfortunately, Barry Bonds stands at the top of the list with 762 home runs. Bonds has never admitted to using steroids, but it's no coincidence that Barry Bonds' record breaking 756^th homerun has an asterisk on it. Our only hope to break Bonds' 762 homeruns is Alex Rodriguez, but he's let us all down too. He recently admitted to using steroids during parts of his career.

Griffey has made his way towards the top of the list despite some long years that were defined by injuries. Curiosity led me to wonder what would have happened if Griffey stayed healthy for those years. Would Barry Bonds remain the homerun king or could Ken Griffey Jr. dethrone him? Using Griffey's career numbers and statistics, I wanted to see what his statistics might look like had he stayed healthy throughout his career. The numbers I found were amazing.

This was the tricky part. First, using the number of plate appearances and homeruns that he's hit throughout his career, I figured out that throughout his entire career he has hit a homerun approximately every 17.7 at bats. For the purpose of trying to remain fair and to not over exaggerate his potential numbers, I did not round up any of the numbers. The next step was to average his plate appearances per year throughout his entire career which came out to be 533. I wanted a nice easy number to work with, and a lower number so not to skew or amplify his numbers, so I used 500. This is a relatively low number considering in his best year he came to the plate 720 times. Therefore, for all the years that he made less than 500 plate appearance, I added the number of plate appearances that it would take to get to 500 appearances for that season. For example, in 2003 he only had 201 plate appearances. So that year's number was 299. I added up all of those years that he made less than 500 plate appearances, and the number came to 1494 extra at bats. That's the total number of extra at bats he could have had throughout his career had he remained relatively healthy.

Using those numbers and remembering that he hits homeruns at an average of every 17.7 at bats, Griffey would have hit an extra 84 more homeruns at this point in his career. Adding his actual total of 630 homers, and 84 potential homeruns, he would currently have 714 homeruns. That's right. He would be tied with Babe Ruth on the career all-time homerun list. Now of course this is all speculation, but just for the fun of it consider that if Griffey were to play three more years in the majors he'd only have to hit 15 to 20 homeruns per season to pass Bonds on the all-time homerun list, a feat which is entirely possible if he were to stay healthy. We'd have a player at the top of the list who was drug free, respectable, and truly worthy of the title of "Homerun King." But that's just wishful thinking. In reality, Alex Rodriguez is more than likely going to sit atop the list one day. Though I don't particularly like A-Rod, I prefer him over Bonds because he at least had the backbone to admit his steroid use. I'll still always wonder about Ken Griffey Jr. though, and what could have been.

Baseball Reference, Ken Griffey Jr. Career Statistics and History, Baseball Reference.