A-Rod Hits 600th Home Run – What’s the Big Deal?

Now that Ken Griffey, Jr. is retired, Alex Rodriguez is the active player with the most career home runs in MLB. On Wednesday, Alex, or “Al”, as Joe Girardi referred to him, skipped Yankees team photo day and went on to hit his 600th career home run off Shaun Marcum, the only active Major League Baseball player that spells his first name the same way that I do.
I’ve given up 26 home runs during my Wiffle Ball career, including a few to the Major League Wiffleball Home Run King, Mike Breen. I’ve never given up a 600th home run though. Nobody in MLW has. That’s because our seasons are only 20 games long. Even Mike would have needed 32 seasons to hit that many home runs in MLW.
But if you look at the numbers a little more closely, you’ll see that Mike Breen is a much better home run hitter than A-Rod.
Rodriguez went 46 at bats between his 599th and 600th home runs. If he averaged that pace over his 17-year career, he’d only have around 230 career home runs. Then again, Derek Jeter, who did show up for picture day, is probably pretty happy with his 233 career homers.
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To be fair, A-Rod homers on average every 14.5 at bats, which is still disappointing in comparison to our career home run leader.
In his first season, Mike Breen hit 12 home runs in 73 at bats, or about once every 6 at bats, and that was the worst HR/AB ratio of his career. Over the years, he just kept getting better, and averaged one home run every 5.28 at bats throughout his career.
If A-Rod hit home runs as often as Mike Breen, he would have hit his 600th home run back in 2001, his first year in Texas. And if Mike Breen started playing in 1997 when A-Rod did, and had the same 8691 at bats that A-Rod has now, he’d have 1646 home runs, or more than double of MLB all-time Home Run King Barry Bonds (762).
We give A-Rod credit. Only seven MLB players have reached the 600 home run milestone. But we’ll be more interested when he starts hitting them at Mike Breen’s pace, which hopefully never happens.






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