Torrid April Doesn’t Guarantee Hot Summer

Alex Rodriguez has spent most of his Yankees career playing an unfamiliar position — not third base, but designated scapegoat. Despite averaging 40 homers, 119 RBI, and a line with a .299 average, .396 OBP, and .549 SLG from 2004–2006, Rodriguez’s perceived inability to rise to the occasion has netted him a disproportionate share of the blame for the Bombers’ failure to capture another World Championship. But while the Yankees are off to an uncharacteristically lackluster 8–10 start this year, Rodriguez has finally found a way to insulate himself from finger-pointing: get off to the hottest start in baseball history.Including his two home runs in Monday night’s loss, Rodriguez has 14 homers in 18 games. Not only is this the fastest anyone has reached 14 home runs in a season, it ties Albert Pujols’s 2006 effort for the most homers in April. As Pujols showed last year, such early success doesn’t necessarily herald a record-breaking year. As the oblique strain that sidelined him for three weeks last June serves to remind us, injuries on top of the inevitable cooldown from such a hot start can quickly make such season-opening tears an afterthought. Still, it’s worth asking what we can expect from Rodriguez the rest of the way.Before A-Rod this spring, only three hitters have hit more than 11 homers in April — Pujols, Luis Gonzalez, and Ken Griffey Jr. That number is partially a product of scheduling — Opening Day now arrives about a week earlier than it did prior to 1993, and two weeks earlier than it did in the late 1950s. Given that the Yanks still have six games to play before the calendar flips to May, setting the bar at 24 games provides a better gauge to measure Rodriguez against other hot starters in baseball history. Since 1957 (the earliest year for which game logs are continuously available), just six other players have managed 12 or more homers in the first 24 games:As a group, this sextet averaged 35.2 homers the rest of the way, but none of them broke any records, and only two, Gonzalez and Griffey, are among the select group who have topped 50 homers in a year. However, the record-setters weren’t too far off this pace — Mark McGwire hit 10 of his record-breaking 70 homers in the first 24 games of the 1998 season, while Barry Bonds hit 11 homers through 24 games in 2001, on his way to the current single-season standard of 73. (Previous recordholder Roger Maris had just three through 24 games in 1961, proving that a hot start isn’t a necessity).In all, 51 players besides Rodriguez have hit at least 10 homers in the first 24 games, including two others — Willie Mays in 1965 and Brady Anderson in 1996 — who hit at least 50. As a group, this bunch averaged 28.4 homers the rest of the way, with Bonds (62 in 2001) and McGwire (60 in 1998) pacing the field.At the other end of the spectrum, three players didn’t even manage double digits in home runs for the rest of the year. Ellis Burks hit just three during the remainder of 1994, though a wrist injury and the season-ending strike had more than a little to do with that. The other two members of this ignominious list joined it last year: Detroit’s Chris Shelton, who homered five times in the first four games, socked his 10th on April 28, 2006, but managed just six more homers thereafter. A tendency to chase too many breaking pitches would cost Shelton his job as the Tigers’ first baseman. After spending all of August in the minor leagues, he was reduced to bystander status during his team’s run to the World Series, and he’s back in the minors to start this year as well. At least Shelton had his health. The same can’t be said for Tampa Bay’s Jonny Gomes, who hit 11 bombs in April 2006; Gomes subsequently strained his rotator cuff shortly after hitting his 17th homer in mid-June. Electing to tough it out rather than go to the disabled list, he was soon mired in a 5-for-73 slump, and finally underwent season-ending surgery in late August, finishing the year with just 20 homers.Some of the aforementioned players’ accomplishments are tainted by suspicions that they used performance-enhancing substances, but a dishonorable mention of a different sort goes to Graig Nettles. After hitting 11 homers in the first 24 games of 1974, Nettles hit just 11 the rest of the way, and his .349 slugging percentage after his first 24 is lower than everyone else but the ill-fated trio of Burks, Shelton, and Gomes. Worse was in store: When Nettles shattered his bat while hitting a single on September 7, 1974, six Superballs came bouncing out. The single was disallowed, but not the homer he’d hit earlier in the game. Nettles claimed it was the first time he’d used the juiced bat, which was allegedly the gift of a fan. Given his steep drop-off after his opening flurry of homers, one can understand his desperation to resort to the black arts.The name most prominently mentioned in light of Rodriguez’s hot start is that of the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt. Thanks in part to a fourhomer game at Wrigley Field on April 17, 1976 (the wind was blowing out during an 18–16 slugfest), Schmidt hit his 10th and 11th homers in the season’s 12th game, making him the fastest player to get to double digits. Rodriguez equaled Schmidt’s 12-in-15 feat this past weekend, and he’ll have until the season’s 29th game before he falls behind again. Indeed, Schmidt’s pace slowed to a crawl after that season-opening burst — he didn’t hit number 16 until the season’s 51st game, and he finished with “only” 38. Still, that was enough for him to lead the National League for the third year in a row.Even with his torrid start, Rodriguez still has his work cut out to match his own career high of 57 homers. Only five players — Bonds, McGwire, Gonzalez, Griffey, and Mays — have hit more than 40 the rest of the way. As the last three years have illustrated, living up to his own past exploits has been Rodriguez’s greatest challenge since coming to New York. Still, he already stands an excellent chance of entering the record books again this year. He’s 22 shy of being the youngest player to reach 500 homers, and roughly three years ahead of Hank Aaron’s pace to 755. Now that’s a pace worth watching.Mr. Jaffe is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseballprospectus.com.

Torrid April Doesn’t Guarantee Hot Summer

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