Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Mickey Mantle batting only righty: 461 to 468 homers.

Mickey Mantle might have lost as many as 75 home runs (HR) had he batted only right handed instead of switch hitting.

Click link to view detailed data.

Mickey in the Twilight Zone (TZ) of batting only righty would have been penalized greatly by playing his home games in Yankee Stadium, which had very long distances to the outfield walls in left and center.

I tried two methods, which yielded very close totals but very different HR per season.

Method one used Mickey's career HR rates (AB/HR) for each season; 461 HR.

Method two used Mickey's season HR rates (AB/HR) per season: 468 HR.

With both methods I applied the percent difference for MLB average HR rates per season between righty  batters against lefty pitchers versus righty batters against righty pitchers.  We know Mickey's results batting righty against lefty pitchers.  We enter the Twilight Zone in speculating on his HR batting righty against all pitchers.  Unlike stats like batting average (BA), which consistently give lefty batters an advantage, MLB average HR rates vary a lot.

As speculated in a previous post, Mickey loses his 1956 triple crown because he loses more than two HR and his RBI lead over Al Kaline was two.

Both methods drop Mickey's two 50 HR seasons well below 50.  However, method two has a major surprise: 53 HR in 1960 when real Mickey hit only 40.  That's because Mickey had very high HR rates batting righty, both home and away.

Led AL in HR:
Real Mickey:
1955 37
1956 52
1958 42
1960 40

TZ Mickey:
method one: 1956
method two: 1956, 1960

Method one:
tot Year
13 1951
30 1952
28 1953
28 1954
29 1955
34 1956
25 1957
31 1958
26 1959
37 1960
31 1961
20 1962
13 1963
33 1964
22 1965
20 1966
19 1967
23 1968

Method two:
Year  home road tot
1951 2 2 5
1952 9 21 30 second to Larry Doby
1953 9 21 30
1954 10 10 20
1955 6 21 27 second to Gus Zernial 30
1956 19 21 40
1957 10 13 24
1958 18 14 32
1959 12 8 20
1960 21 32 53
1961 10 26 36
1962 8 4 12
1963 7 10 17
1964 25 19 45 second to Killebrew 49
1965 13 10 23
1966 11 10 21
1967 5 7 12
1968 9 13 23
204 264 468

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