Sunday, May 10, 2020

McGwire homered off 65 pitchers in 1998. 60 Home Runs pitcher counts.

Mark McGwire homered off an astonishing 65 pitchers in 1998 when he set the season home run record with 70. Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa homered off the second highest number of pitchers: 58.

Babe Ruth homered off by far the fewest: 33. Even in 1921 when Ruth hit 59 home runs he homered off more: 37.

Here's the box score:

YearHRPit4321
Bonds200173583946
McGwire19987065560
McGwire199965561649
Sosa199866582452
Sosa2001644641032
Sosa199963521942
Maris196161463934
Ruth1927603327717
Ruth1921593741419

The numbers across the top are the number of pitchers. Ruth and McGwire are the only ones to homer off pitchers four times in one of those seasons. McGwire off Andy Ashby. Ruth did it to two pitchers:
Milt Gaston
Rube Walberg.


Bonds homered three times in 2001 off these three pitchers:
Jason Middlebrook
Curt Schilling
Chan Ho Park.


Maris homered three times in 1961 off these three pitchers:
Jim Perry
Frank Lary
Pete Burnside


Finally, the 7 pitchers who each gave up three home runs to Babe Ruth in 1927:
Slim Harriss
Ken Holloway
Joe Shaute
Tommy Thomas
Sloppy Thurston
Tony Welzer

Tom Zachary: 22,36,60.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Of course McGwire hit homers off more pitchers than Ruth. There were fewer teams in Ruth's day, no inter-league play, and fewer pitchers per team