November 16, 2019

Babe Ruth Hit A Lot Of Home Runs, Against Everyone

Most Career Home Runs Against Original AL Teams
Athletics        Babe Ruth   108   (17 more than Ted Williams)
Browns/Orioles   Babe Ruth    96   ( 4 more than Lou Gehrig)
Cleveland        Babe Ruth    92   (13 more than Ted Williams)
Red Sox          Babe Ruth    90   (20 more than Lou Gehrig)
Senators/Twins   Babe Ruth    89   (17 more than Mickey Mantle)
Tigers           Babe Ruth   123   (30 more than Jimmie Foxx)
White Sox        Babe Ruth    98   (21 more than Lou Gehrig)

Most Career Home Runs Against Any Team
 1. Babe Ruth    123    Tigers
 2. Babe Ruth    108    Athletics
 3. Babe Ruth     98    White Sox
    Willie Mays   98    Dodgers
 5. Hank Aaron    97    Reds
 6. Babe Ruth     96    Browns
 7. Hank Aaron    95    Dodgers
 8. Jimmie Foxx   93    Tigers
 9. Babe Ruth     92    Cleveland
10. Willie Mays   92    Cubs
Ruth is also at #14 (90, Red Sox) and #15 (89, Senators), giving him 7 of history's top 15 spots.

Most Career Home Runs For Each Month
May       Ken Griffey Jr.  134   ( 1 more than Babe Ruth)
June      Hank Aaron       150   ( 9 more than Babe Ruth)
July      Hank Aaron       152   ( 5 more than Babe Ruth)
August    Barry Bonds      148   (15 more than Alex Rodriguez; Ruth hit 124 (#6))
Sept/Oct  Barry Bonds      128   ( 7 more than Babe Ruth)
While Ruth does not hold the record for any single month, but he is #2 in 4 of the 5 full months in which games have been played.

3 comments:

Jere said...

Ruth does unfairly lose a September (1918). Had 11 dongs that year but none after June 30th.

allan said...

True. I found that odd, that he went two entire months without an official dong (despite slugging a fair amount (especially July 6-19: 1.408 OPS: 7 singles, 6 doubles, 7 triples).

Ruth did hit a game-winning, bottom-of-the-tenth dong in a scoreless tie at Fenway on July 8, but because there was a runner on first base, he got credit for only a triple. That rule was changed a couple of years later.

When The Baseball Encyclopedia was first coming out in 1969, it was decided to change all those down-graded home runs before the rule change (there were 38, I think) to actual home runs. So Ruth had 715 career HRs for about six weeks until some members of the committee changed their mind in a re-vote, not wanting to alter such an iconic number (and so knowingly keeping a historically wrong number on the books), and only some players (none of which were named Babe Ruth) got credit for their dongs.

Bill said...

Free agency, expansion, and interleague play make Ruth's HR vs Team records basically untouchable.

Ruth played about 350 games against 6 of the 8 AL teams (347 or more against them, 293 against Boston, and 52 against the Yankees). I can't find a semi-recent (1980-ish to present) player who broke 300 against any team. Captain Intangibles is the closest I found with 291 against the Orioles. Oddly, Albert Pujols is pretty close to 300 against the Astros and only the Astros (280 against them, 182 is his next best against the Cubs) because they changed leagues around the same time he did. Ripken 246 vs Yankees. Biggio 268 vs Reds, Bonds 274 vs Dodgers, Rickey barely broke 200 because he played all over. And these are all guys who played hundreds more total games than Ruth, but he still ends up with ~20% more games against those 6 teams than they managed against anyone.