I have some fun with numbers when discussing the incredible years of Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista (DEB!) and again make the case for Duane Kuiper in the Hall of Fame.
To prove this, of course, you can just show the numbers for each of the three. The numbers (entering Thursday) are really good and tell their own story:
Josh Donaldson: .301/.371/.574, 40 doubles, 39 homers, 117 runs, 120 RBIs.
Edwin Encarnacion: .277/.371/.550, 31 doubles, 35 homers, 86 runs, 105 RBIs.
Jose Bautista: .250/.373/.527, 36 homers, 102 walks, 103 runs, 105 RBIs.
Stunning, no? But the trio – let’s just call them DEB (Donaldson, Encarnacion, Bautista) — deserves more than that. DEB deserves a statistic it can call its own. I mean, how often does it happen where three players on the same team hit 35 home runs, right? It’s crazy; seriously, how often does that even happen? How often?
Well, actually … yeah, how often does that happen?
I’m not sure what the point is, other than having fun with demarcations. What I find VERY interesting, however, is that their team as a whole is performing like an all-time great squad. Using standardized run differential adjusted for league size (per my SABR “By the Numbers” article of some years ago), the Blue Jays are amazingly #20 all-time. And no one seems to be noticing.
Joe love this, thanks. Now if only Tulo had played the while season with them.
I’ll throw out another group of players, from the vastly underrated ’04 Cards: Pujols, Edmonds, & Rolen. They missed by one HR of having easily topping the Toronto 3.
1. Pujols was his usual great self that season: slash line of .331/.415/..657, OPS+ of 173. Albert hit 46HR, had 123RBIs, & scored 133 runs.
2. Edmonds: slash line of .301/.418/.643, OPS+ of 171. Throw in 42 HR’s, 111 RBIs, & 102 runs scored & you could have had an MVP, if not for his two teammates.
3. Rolen: ’04 was his best season. Slash line of .314/.409/.598. That extra HR may have pushed him over .600 in slugging, but I haven’t run the math. His OPS+: 158. Rolen only hit 34 HR’s, but had a team best 124 RBIs & scored 109 runs of his own.
So, to sum, all three hit over .300, had an OBP of over .400 and all slugged at least .598, with OPS+’s of 158 or better.
I’ll throw in this too: Edmonds & Rolen each won gold gloves in 2004.
One baseball feat that is indelible from my childhood memory is when the 1977 Dodgers became the first team to have 4 teammates with 30+ home runs (Steve Garvey, Reggie Smith, Dusty Baker, Ron Cey). To demonstrate how skewed things were in the “steroids era”, the feat was not accomplished again until 1995, but was matched 6 times throughout the rest of the 1990’s and 5 times in the 2000’s.
As a side note, Baker “only” hit 21 HRs to accompany the 1972 trio of Aaron, Johnson, and Evans.
Since expansion began in 1961, the difference between MLB’s #1 offense and #2 offense (in terms of runs per game) has never been anywhere near as large as the gap between the Blue Jays and Yankees this season.
http://groundballwitheyes.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-toronto-blue-jays-are-outscoring.html
Perhaps the most fun part of this comparison is that the 06 White Sox were 3rd in their division and didn’t go to the playoffs, whereas the Jays are finally back in the playoffs.