epic outlier seasons

Forget Batista--besides his 41 HR year with the Jays, he also had three seasons of 30+, three of 20+, and 221 for his career. (Shows you how closely I paid attention to him before and after his couple of years here.) But I looked at Hickman's and Lezcano's lines, and I think they qualify on the milder end of the spectrum.

Huh? His previous best in MLB was 16, and he has 92 MLB home runs.

Oh, Tony Batista. I see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esteban_Loaiza

After signing with the Chicago White Sox as a free agent, Loaiza enjoyed a career season in 2003, leading American League pitchers in strikeouts (207), and was second in wins (21) and strikeouts per nine innings (8.23); third in ERA (2.90), and sixth in innings pitched (226.3). Considered for the Cy Young Award, Loaiza finished second behind Roy Halladay, ahead of Pedro Martínez and Tim Hudson.

2nd lowest era of his career: 3.77

tommy davis in 1962
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/davisto02.shtml

follow-up year was pretty decent but then a big dropoff

I don't know if Jim Gentile's '61 is a true outlier--it sits in the middle of five pretty good years--but it definitely jumps out at you: 46 HR (a quarter of his career total), 141 RBI (never more than 100 otherwise), only time he batted .300, and a slugging pct. of .646 (+.160 over his career mark). I was reminded of him this morning because of this.

There are quite a few in the roids era that are head scratchers.

Luis Gonzales whole time in Arizona is freakish, especially the year he hit 57 home runs. The guy was an ok to decent outfielder and then all of the sudden at 31 the guy turns into hitting machine.

Darin Erstad hitting .355 in 2000 is a definite outiler season. He was decent in other years, but never hit over .300 any other season.

The batting title years for Freddie Sanchez and Bill Mueller are pretty epic for those guys. Paul O'Neill was pretty good for a long time, but it was totally out of the blue when he hit .359 and won a batting title for Reds fans.

I know what you mean about Gonazalez's 2001, but I might be more inclined to count his entire 1999-2003 run as an outlying block of seasons. For five years in the middle of an otherwise unspectacular career, he's suddenly a comparable hitter (.314/.405/.564) to Stan Musial (.331/.417/.559).

You've got "Gonzales," I've got "Gonazalez"...we'll get it right yet.

Would Randy Winn's first half-season with the Giants (in 2005) count? .359/.391/.680, 14 HRs in 58 games, which is the most he hit in any other year in his whole career.

darin erstad parlayed that epic season into a hefty contract iirc. the rest of his career he kept getting big league gigs based on the fact that he dove for balls occasionally and was addicted to tobacco dip and had facial stubble aka "grit"

Using WAR, someone has tried to measure this systematically, coming to the conclusion that truly fluky seasons are quite rare:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/08/lightning-in-a-bottle-baseballs-one-year-wonders/

His criterion: a season of 6.0+ WAR, no other season over 3.0. So something like Jim Hickman's 1970, a season I think of as a real outlier, doesn't qualify (4.7 WAR--bit hitter's year, Wrigley Field).

Epic outlier game:

http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/11088/50-years-ago-tom-cheney-struck-out-21

Nobody ever talks about this game for some reason.

i guess it doesn't count as an outlier since the previous season he actually led the NL in era, but bill swift's 1993 was pretty impressive. maybe combine those two seasons as outliers.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/swiftbi02.shtml

Not epic, but Rich Aurilia's 2001 was a noticeable fluke. Here's what he did, followed by his next-best season:

206 hits (157)
37 HR (23)
37 doubles (25)
.324 BA (hit exactly .300 one other time in a full season)
.572 SA (.518--no other full season over .444, which, weirdly enough, he reached three times)
114 runs (76)
97 RBI (80)
364 total bases (248)
6.5 WAR (2.2)
12th in MVP voting, probably should have been higher (never drew a single vote otherwise)

Couldn't even begin to guess what got into him.

Check out this dude's 1958 season:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hydedi01.shtml

4.9 WAR, 12th in the MVP voting as a relief pitcher for the Senators.

1.3 the rest of his career--79% of his career value in one year. (Or, looked at another way, a 3.8-1 ratio.) Someone must have compiled a list along those lines.

Never heard of him. Probably suffered childhood trauma because of his name.

Adam Dunn's 2011. Hit .159/.292/.277 over almost 500 plate appearances, combined with below average defense, making him a -3 WAR player. I can't imagine we'll see a player fall so quickly down a cliff and yet remain an everday player like this again. And then to rebound with a +1.8 WAR season right after. Look at his HR numbers from 2004 on - 46, 40, 40, 40, 40, 38, 38, 11, 41, 34, 22.

For epic outliers in the other direction, George Scott's 1968 season came up on James's site a couple of months ago:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/scottge02.shtml?redir

Even accounting for the fact that it was a historical pitcher's year, that's still one hideous season in the midst of a pretty solid 12-year block.

Also 1958 - Bob Cerv

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/cervbo01.shtml

Played for six weeks that year with his jaw wired shut and on a liquid diet after he broke it in a home plate collision.

Hadn't had much of a chance to play when he was on the Yankees.

i can't believe i forgot this guy:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wilkiri01.shtml

that 1993 was such a great season for him. so many late '80s/early '90s cubs players had such promising starts and such sputtering finishes.

Another catcher--less drastic outlier, but still impressive: Dick Dietz in 1970.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dietzdi01.shtml

Brady Andersons 96 is really fucking amazing - .297/.396/.637 vs his career .256/.362/.425

Not a bad career OBP, however..

Then again after 1995 his average for being HBP went up from about 10 per season to double that the next 4 years..

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/anderbr01.shtml

#boredatwork

speaking of both catchers and 1996, terry steinbach really must have 'lifted weights' in the offseason with his 'trainer':

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/steinte01.shtml

brady anderson always reminds me a bit of steve finley but i just realized finley actually had four 30 HR seasons and three more 20 HR seasons, so he never had any real outlier years.

Matt Nokes, 1987:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/nokesma01.shtml

Like Dietz, the milder end of the outlier spectrum. Both had about a third of their career WAR in the one season--maybe that's about where outliers begin. (Another similarity: 1970 and 1987 were the two most prominent fluke hitter years in my lifetime. Hitters dominated, but both years are surrounded by neutral or pitcher-dominated years.)

(By way of contrast, almost half of Wilkins' career WAR comes in '93; that's a truer outlier than Dietz or Nokes.)

Aren't there a lot rookies who have good-great first years and then bupkis. Ben Grieve springs to mind.

You can't just use percentage-of-career-WAR as a qualifier, or at least not set the bar at 33%; if you do, Brady Anderson's '96 doesn't qualify as an outlier, even if you limit WAR to offense only. (He's just under 20% of his career offensive WAR in '96.) I think you'd need a combination: percentage of career WAR, and also a ratio of the outlier year compared to second-best year. Anderson doesn't qualify because he had a bunch of pretty good years, and one other season better than that. You'd need a combination of the two that somehow lets Brady Anderson's '96 in.

(xpost) I think that's true, but Grieve might not fit--his first three years are all pretty close (with adjustments, his first was a bit better). Never did much after that, though.

Steve Finley magically transformed from an 8-HR-a-year guy to a slugger at age 31.

Bobby Shantz's MVP year in 1952.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/shantbo01.shtml

Never realized the 1950 Whiz Kid Phillies included a relief pitcher MVP in Jim Konstanty.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/konstji01.shtml

He gets a chapter in the first baseball book I read as a kid, so I learned about him before three-quarters of the people in the HOF.

https://img0.etsystatic.com/038/0/8035771/il_570xN.636016346_2pwo.jpg

He wasn't the worst choice ever, but, just among Phillies pitchers that year, Robin Roberts would have obviously been much better.

Always thought Cito Gaston had more good years, but maybe not so much. 5.1 bWAR in 1970, but ended up with a negative for his career.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gastoci01.shtml

As I've posted before (but seemingly not on this thread), 1970 is the mother of all outlier seasons.

Jim Gentile 1961. 141 RBI tied for lead league the year Maris broke the record.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gentiji01.shtml

Brady Anderson turns 55 today. With that in mind - when you think of one player in any sport having one season where they are mind-blowingly better than in any other year of their career - who do you think of and what year

— Nick Shepkowski (@Shep670) January 18, 2019

Another 1970 one, Tommy Harper:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/harpeto01.shtml

It's not epic, and it's not a season, but this seems as appropriate a place as anywhere--Brian Harper's few years catching for the Twins in the late-'80s/early-'90s. (His picture popped up today in that little photo gallery to the left of the Baseball Reference page.) From '79 to '87, he plays for five teams, plays all over the diamond, and basically does nothing. Then he has five-and-a-half really solid seasons with the Twins, hitting .294-.325 every year, with OBPs around .350 and slugging averages in the low-mid .400s (except for his last year there, very much a pitcher's era), and has a fantastic Series when the Twins win everything in '91. Then he leaves in '94, gets 300 more AB elsewhere the next two years, then he retires.

Dug up this:

http://www.banishedtothepen.com/brian-harper-a-baseball-life/

Jesus Aguilar is looking like a potential inner circle outlier season guy

see also his former teammate, gio urshela

rick porcello's 2016

a whole bunch of guys you forgot about the moment they retired

Similar Pitchers

Shane Reynolds (948.7)
Charles Nagy (948.0)
Brad Penny (945.6)
Matt Morris (939.6)
Jon Lieber (938.0)
Denny Neagle (931.9)
Pat Hentgen (931.0)
John Smiley (928.9)
Josh Beckett (927.4)
Yovani Gallardo (923.9)

Epic outlier in reverse: Wade Boggs, 1992 (his last season in Boston). No recollection--what happened? The Margo Adams thing was a couple of years earlier.

mike marshall, 1974

Only in the freakish 100+ games, though--he was arguably better in '73, and definitely better in '72.

he was good for the couple years around it, but: jake arrieta's 2015. tbf it would be an epic outlier for almost anyone -- he was all but unhittable

up-thread mention rick porcello is apparently out of baseball at age 32? has to be one of the crappier pitchers to win 150 games

On a similar note, R.A. Dickey's Cy year.

Arietta was in the ESPN body issue, that was awesome

I recall sam miller calling arietta “built” on EW