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Prior to me highlighting some of the greatest individual offensive performances in baseball history, I would like to address a minor alteration to my statistic of IOR or Individual Offensive Rating. The concept of the statistic will remain the same (for further explication of the statistic, please refer to The Inaugural Post), this being, a statistic in order to measure the individual offensive performances of players. I am making this amendment, to address the issue of the statistics weight. Seeing as IOR incorporates all individual components of a players offensive game, I desired to make this adjustment in order to make a more uniform statistic. With the original equation, the denominator utilized was At-Bats and as a result, the ratings seemed to be rather inflated to me. Thus, I am switching the denominator to Plate-Appearances. The new equation is as follows:
IOR= (H+BB+HR+SB) / (PA)
*Note that BBs include IBB and HBP as well*
With this alteration being explained, I will now move on to recognizing some of the greatest individual offensive performances of all-time, per IOR values. Note that the proceeding highlights are neither in any specific order, nor are they a ranking of any sort. Also, some of the following players have been called out in years past due to their affinity for performance enhancing drugs. However, despite the acknowledgement of the unfair advantages these players had, the achievements that these players earned are still truly incredible. I, like many others, even if they may not admit it, have a love-hate relationship for that performance-enhancing age. Do not get me wrong, I definitely frown upon and do not condone the use of these drugs, especially in order to gain an unfair advantage. However, I ask you, what was more exciting to watch, the '99 Home Run Derby where Mark McGwire and his regime of swollen slashers were launching baseballs onto the Mass Pike, or this past '14 Home Run Derby, where Todd Frazier weaseled his way to the finals by hitting one measly home run in the semi-final round?
Speaking of Mark McGwire, he seems to be a solid hitter to begin with. It was blatant that McGwire used copious amounts of performance enhancing drugs during his career, for when he entered the league he was relatively lean, but by the time he reached his prime, McGwire was the size of your run-of-the-mill Redwood Tree. During his statistically best season in '98, McGwire narrowly edged Sammy Sosa for the MLB HR title, amassing an overwhelming 70 HRs. For his '98 campaign, McGwire managed to accumulate an IOR of 0.615. Despite the incredible year that Sosa had in '98 and winning the MVP, his best year, in terms of IOR, came later on in '01, when he achieved an IOR of 0.579.
Despite debatably being the most notorious juice-head in the history of the MLB, Barry Bonds had power that very few could and may ever parallel. Bonds was the one to break both the single-season and career home run records, set by McGwire and Aaron, respectively. During his '04 season with the San Francisco Giants, Bonds earned probably the highest IOR in the history of the game, that rating being 0.887.
Next, I move on to probably the most famous pitcher-converted-to-hitter of all time and the speculated source for the Boston Red Sox 86 year, World Series drought, Babe Ruth. The Bambino slugged his way off of the mound and into Cooperstown during his prolific career. In 1920, the Sultan of Swat recorded a career best IOR of 0.638. This IOR would probably be much greater too, however, per Baseball-Reference.com, IBB were not recorded during this time.
Other Notable Player Career Best IOR:
Hank Aaron (1971)- 0.531
Pete Rose (1969)- 0.482
Roberto Clemente (1969)- 0.479
Ken Griffey Jr. (1994)- 0.544
Tony Gwynn (1987)- 0.576
Chipper Jones (1999)- 0.566
Ted Williams (1957)- 0.654
Lastly, I just want to calculate and provide the top IORs from this 2014 MLB season thus far. This will help illuminate the greatness of the aforementioned historic baseball icons and provide insight for who might transcend to the HOF ranks. The top 10 IORs in the MLB for this 2014 season are as follows:
1) Giancarlo Stanton- 0.502
2) Troy Tulowitzki- 0.501
3) Andrew McCutchen- 0.495
4) Jose Bautista- 0.487
5) Victor Martinez- 0.479
6) Jose Altuve- 0.473
7) Paul Goldschmidt- 0.472
8) Mike Trout- 0.465
9) Robinson Cano- 0.465
10) Jose Abreu- 0.462
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