FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Bigalke said 06/22, 09:35 AM
When this record was set in 2001, it surpassed the mark which had been set eighty-one years prior. Many of baseball's greatest hitters failed to eclipse the mark in the period from 1920 until it toppled at the start of the new millennium. It takes both power AND plate smarts to pass this mark, yet so many who have possessed both throughout history could not overtake the Sultan of Swat...

When the record finally fell, it was one of those marks which would supposedly never fall. The new high-water mark is even higher and even less fallible. Set by Barry Bonds, the single-season slugging percentage record is the least likely record to be broken...

A calculation of total bases divided by at-bats, Bonds' .863 SLG sets a ludicrously-high precedent for everyone else to chase. Why is THIS record so hard to break? Theoretically, the highest possible SLG is 4.000, but over an entire season no one can sustain such a pace. Not every hit is a homer... nor can every at-bat result in a hit. So what Bonds did to surpass Ruth is even more impressive. A person would need a .900 BA -- or a .225 achieved only with homers -- to best Bonds' SLG, which is why this record is least likely to be broken.

Bigalke said 06/22, 07:03 PM
A good choice, certainly... however, in those years when his on-base percentage was breaking his own record, he couldn't get near his slugging percentage record. Someone can easily come along who gets on base regularly and threaten the on-base percentage record. This is a stat is indicative of patience at the plate... whereas slugging is dependent on BOTH patience AND power...

As you indicate yourself, a lot of the on-base percentage record was dependent on walks. Slugging percentage is dependent solely on making contact with the ball... making it much harder to attain, as it is wholly dependent on the production of the hitter and cannot be bolstered artificially through pitcher inaccuracy or intentional walks...

Essentially, Bonds' .609 OBP in 2004 was one part Bonds & two parts fear of pitching to Bonds... his slugging percentage record is one-hundred percent his doing. Someone will eventually come along to make pitchers walk them with frequency; but as he threatens the OBP record, it is highly likely that he will come nowhere near that slugging record. It is far more difficult to achieve a record all on one's own than it is to allow peripheral stats to increase that number...

Bigalke said 06/23, 09:49 PM
Bonds is a statistical anomaly, Nick... let's not forget that. The fact that he was able to break his own record by a mere .027 two years later, largely on 38 more walks, is indicative that this record could be broken by a feared hitter. This hitter, while belting homers, could also easily never come close to the slugging percentage record. The fact that Bonds was never able to break this record of his own -- which makes doping moot, since it is him besting himself on an equal playing field -- is indicative of the fact that it requires more than getting walked a little more to defeat the numbers.

You can talk about how many more BASES it requires to break a record, but it is less likely that someone will replicate the concurrence of power and plate presence that Barry Bonds put together in 2001. As the record shows, he was able to beat himself at his own game, breaking his own on-base percentage record as pitchers feared him more... but he could never come close to replicating his slugging numbers, only coming within .051 of the record in that on-base-breaking 2004 season...

Ultimately, the slugging percentage record is less likely to be broken...