Mark Mcgwire Stats
How did the tainted Mark McGwire do every time he stepped up to the plate in the major leagues?
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Presented in this article are Mark McGwire’s real baseball stats per official at bat. How many runs, RBI’s and home runs (HR’s) did Big Mac get per official at bat? Presenting the stats in this manner is meant to give you a clearer picture of what on average Mark McGwire accomplished for each official at bat he had in the major leagues.
How are the stats calculated out? Simply by dividing each stat listed by official at bats. Just like you do with hits for batting average. Here we are dividing total runs scored by total official at bats to get a player’s run average, total RBI’s by total official at bats for a player’s RBI average and total HR’s by total official at bats for a player’s HR average. For example: if a player has scored 1,000 runs in 5,000 official at bats his run average would be .200. If the player had 900 RBI’s his RBI average would be .180. And if he had 200 HR’s his HR average would be .040. So on average this player would have scored a run 20% of the time, driven in a run 18% of the time and hit a HR 4% of the time he recorded an official at bat in the major leagues.
Obviously the higher the averages the better the player was. Here is a rough guide to determine how a players averages stack up.
Run Average and RBI Average – anything over .150 is good. Anything above .200 is excellent, and the very best players in history have occasionally gone over .300 in some seasons.
HR Average – anything over .055 is good. Anything above .065 is really good and anything above .075 means one of the best HR hitters of all time.
Here are Big Mac’s raw numbers (AB’s/runs/RBI’s/HR’s) 6187/1167/583/1414.
Mark McGwire’s Career Numbers
Run Average – .189
RBI Average – .229
HR Average – .094
So on average Mark McGwire scored a run 18.9% of the time, drove in a run 22.9% of the time and hit a HR 9.4% of the time he stepped up to the plate and had an official at bat in the major leagues.
Mark McGwire accomplished a lot during his 16 year major league career. He hit 49 home runs as a rookie for the Oakland A’s and was named American League Rookie of the Year in 1987. He went on to break Babe Ruth’s single season home run mark when he hit 70 home runs in 1998 while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and then hit 65 more home runs in 1999. His HR average is the highest of all time for any player. Today all of McGwire’s accomplishments are not regarded as real due to the belief he used performance enhancing drugs in his career. While McGwire himself has never admitted to using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs the evidence against him is too large to be denied.
In 2005 before the House Government Reform Committee in Congress, McGwire repeatedly refused to answer questions about his use of performance enhancing drugs. If he did not use them why not say so? Big Mac’s former teammate Jose Canseco revealed in his book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big”, that he personally injected McGwire with steroids. Though many people scoffed at Canseco at that time most of what he revealed in the book has been shown to be true concerning the use of performance enhancing drugs. Canseco had repeatedly said he believed that Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees used performance enhancing drugs and it was revealed that in fact A-Rod did fail a drug test given by baseball in 2003 for steroids.
In January of 2009 Mcgwire’s own brother Jay circulated a book proposal in which he claims that he was the first one to inject Mark with steroids in 1994 and that Mark also used HGH while playing major league baseball. Given that Mark McGwire has the highest HR average of all time combined with all the evidence against him I think it’s easy to realize that indeed Mark McGwire used performance enhancing drugs during his playing career.
Clearly the sportswriters who vote for eligibility to the Baseball Hall of Fame believe that Big Mac cheated with drugs because they have continually given him well below the percentage of the votes he needs to be elected. If there was no question about the drugs Big Mac would have been a shoe-in based upon his stats. Whether he will ever gain entry into the Hall of Fame remains very much an open question unlikely to be answered until the Veterans Committee decides his fate in this regard.
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1 Comment
well presented article.
I also play softball (pitcher) in our women varsity in highschool and college. but it was all for fun and sports…