One Outrageous Stat From Mark McGwire's Historic Four-Year Home Run Binge
It's not him hitting 50-plus taters for four straight years, but it's related to that.
I know that bringing up Mark McGwire has the potential to cause some strong reactions because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs. And even if some fans got their wish by having his stats accompanied by an asterisk, those gaudy numbers aren’t going anywhere.
So that means I’m going to talk about them. That’s good because what he did in the latter portion of the 1990s was insane.
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Revisiting Big Mac’s Historic Four-Year Power Surge
Even before McGwire started reaching the 50-homer plateau like it was nothing, he had established himself as one of the game’s premier power hitters. His 49 homers as a rookie in 1987 were an MLB record until Aaron Judge broke it in 2017 with 52 home runs of his own.
Big Mac proceeded to post five more seasons of at least 30 homers between 1988 and 1995. But what he did from 1996-99 was outrageous in multiple ways. I’ll start with the most obvious one before getting to the more obscure stats.
The right-handed slugger led the league in homers three times during this span (52 in 1996, 70 in 1998, and 65 in 1999). His 245 total home runs were the most in baseball (Ken Griffey Jr. was second at 209).
An average year for McGwire looked quite ridiculous, too. It included a .290/.437/.704 line with 61 (!) homers, 133 (!!) RBI, and 110 runs scored. That’s what he averaged!
He surpassed the 50-homer mark in each campaign, becoming the first MLB slugger to ever accomplish that feat.
Was Hitting a Home Run the Most Likely Outcome for McGwire?
We’ve established that McGwire hit 245 homers from 1996-99. He also collected 90 doubles and one triple (lol). Since he racked up a total of 577 hits, that means Big Mac hit 241 singles.
So, yes — if he put the ball in play, it was officially more likely that McGwire would hit a home run than a single. That just makes me laugh.
This type of ratio nearly followed him his entire career (sort of). Here’s a breakdown of McGwire’s career hit numbers:
Total hits: 1,626
Singles: 785
Doubles: 252
Triples: 6
Home Runs: 583
If we tally up the doubles, triples, and homers, that gives him 841 extra-base hits. So whenever McGwire put the ball in play during his 16-year big-league career, the chances of it going for extra bases were better than it being a simple single.
Related Reading: Big Mac may be best remembered for his time with the St. Louis Cardinals, but he spent 11.5 years with the Oakland Athletics. He’s also the club’s all-time home run leader with 363 dingers. Check out the rest of the leaderboard here to see how safe his record still is.