Cody Bellinger matches Jose Canseco
With his 33rd home run last night, Cody Bellinger ties Jose Canseco, Earl Williams, and Jimmy Hall. The key to this is that Cody hit his 33 home runs in only 389 plate appearances. It took Jose Canseco 682 plate appearances. When Jose burst upon the scene in 1986 he took baseball by storm much like Aaron Judge has done this year. No one had quite seen anything like Jose Canseco in a baseball uniform before. Two years later he would be the AL MVP and when he crushed a grand slam in the first game of the 1988 World Series in the 2nd inning it looked like he would lead the A’s to a crushing defeat of the Dodgers. But he didn’t. That was his last hit in the World Series as he went 1 for 19 as the Dodgers torpedoed the Bash Brothers with pitching and clutch hitting.
Earl Williams was a slugging catcher who hit 33 home runs his rookie year and followed that by hitting fewer home runs each year. 28 / 22 / 14 / 11 before finally stopping that trend with 17. Earl had hit 83 home runs in his first three years. If that doesn’t impress you maybe this chart will. Earl Williams hit more home runs as a catcher by the age of 24 than anyone not named Johnny Bench. Anyone. Of course, he stopped hitting home runs after the age of 24 and also stopped being a full time catcher.
Player HR From To Age PA OPS Johnny Bench 154 1967 1972 19-24 3229 .822 Earl Williams 83 1970 1973 21-24 1747 .792 Joe Torre 76 1960 1965 19-24 2487 .814 Gary Carter 75 1974 1978 20-24 2168 .774 Brian McCann 70 2005 2008 21-24 1821 .859 Ivan Rodriguez 68 1991 1996 19-24 2868 .753
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/10/2017.
Cody now sits alone with the most home runs by rookie left handed hitter in the NL with his 33 and ties Jimmy Hall who is in second place.
Hal Trosky has the major league rookie record for home runs by left handed hitter with 35.
Trosky had an interesting career. When you look at his baseball reference page you see a player who started with a bang but stopped playing at age 28 in 1941. I thought the war interrupted his career but the baseball sabr bio says it was migraines.
his career reached its apex in 1936, when he led the American League in runs batted in with 162, yet he has largely been consigned to historical obscurity. This anonymity is not only due to the reality that his career overlapped a triumvirate of Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, and Lou Gehrig, a triumvirate of future Hall of Fame first basemen who held a virtual lock on the position on the American League All Star teams of the mid-’30s, but also because, at what should have been the peak of his career, Trosky was sidelined with two years of severe migraine headaches, pain so debilitating that he became unable to take the field for days in a row.
From age 21 – 28 Trosky hit 215 home runs. He tried to come back in 1944 and 1946 but it didn’t work out and he ended his career with only 5748 plate appearances and 228 home runs with an OPS+ of 130. He had a short but brilliant career. The man once hit 42 home runs, drove in 162 runs, had an OPS of 146, led the league in TB with 405 and finished 10th in MVP voting.
Player HR Year Age Tm Lg PA Mark McGwire (RoY-1st) 49 1987 23 OAK AL 641 Frank Robinson (RoY-1st) 38 1956 20 CIN NL 667 Albert Pujols (RoY-1st) 37 2001 21 STL NL 676 Al Rosen 37 1950 26 CLE AL 668 Jose Abreu (RoY-1st) 36 2014 27 CHW AL 622 Mike Piazza (RoY-1st) 35 1993 24 LAD NL 602 Ron Kittle (RoY-1st) 35 1983 25 CHW AL 570 Rudy York 35 1937 23 DET AL 417 Hal Trosky 35 1934 21 CLE AL 685 Aaron Judge 35 2017 25 NYY AL 460 Ryan Braun (RoY-1st) 34 2007 23 MIL NL 492 Walt Dropo (RoY-1st) 34 1950 27 BOS AL 609 Cody Bellinger 33 2017 21 LAD NL 389 Jose Canseco (RoY-1st) 33 1986 21 OAK AL 682 Earl Williams (RoY-1st) 33 1971 22 ATL NL 550 Jimmie Hall (RoY-3rd) 33 1963 25 MIN AL 571 Chris Young (RoY-4th) 32 2007 23 ARI NL 624 Matt Nokes (RoY-3rd) 32 1987 23 DET AL 508 Tony Oliva (RoY-1st) 32 1964 25 MIN AL 719 Tim Salmon (RoY-1st) 31 1993 24 CAL AL 610 Jim Ray Hart (RoY-2nd) 31 1964 22 SFG NL 625 Ted Williams 31 1939 20 BOS AL 675
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/3/2017.
- Posted in: Chasing Piazza ♦ Uncategorized
- Tagged: Cody Bellinger, Earl Williams, Hal Trosky, Jimmy Hall, Jose Canseco
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 
This is a list.
22 players with more than 30 HR since 1934.
So a guy shows up on this list about once every 3.77 years.
About nine of the players on the list went on to have careers that people still talk about.
Tracking BELLINER is fun!
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It is, I haven’t thought about many of these players in years. Earl Williams had quite an interesting career if you click on the sabr bio. Jimmy Hall will be next.
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“My favorite position is batter!”
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