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Baseball Breakdown :: Sluggers

The baseball season is flying high and so are the homeruns. The biggest homerun hitters are known as the sluggers. A baseball player becomes known as a slugger if he hits more than 40 home runs in a season. Home runs are definitely the most exciting thing in a baseball game, so let’s check out everything there is to know about these sluggers!

Home Run Hitter
Courtesy of Mark Maguire

Babe Ruth
Courtesy of MLB

Snoopy on Steroids
Courtesy of Peanuts

SLG Equation
Courtesy of Wikipedia

Josh Hamilton
Courtesy of MLB

Slugger Power

There is actually an equation for calculating a baseball player’s slugger power. It looks like this:

SLG Equation
Courtesy of Wikipedia

To make a long story short, it basically the slugger percentage (SLG) calculates the average number of bases (TB) a player gets for every time he steps up to the plate (AB). So the guys that hit lots of home runs have the highest slugger power.

Perfect Power

The perfect SLG percentage is 4.000. If a player had a 4.000 SLG, that means that every time he stepped up to bat, he hit a homerun (when you hit a homerun, you pass 4 bases... get it?!). In 2008, Felix Hernandez hit a home run in his only at-bat of the season, so his baseball card actually has this perfect SLG rating on the back.

The Babe

Babe Ruth
Courtesy of MLB

You might have seen a movie about Babe Ruth. He holds the all-time record for slugging with a percentage of .690. Nobody could come close to his single season record in 1920 when he had a whopping .847 SLG. It would be almost 70 years before the Steroid Sluggers challenged the Babe.

Steroid Sluggers

Snoopy on Steroids
Courtesy of Peanuts

In the 1990s, there was a massive outbreak of homeruns due to players using steroids. Players like Mark Mcquire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds were hitting almost 70, 80, 90 home runs every season. Finally, in 2001, Barry finally beat the Babe’s slugger record with an astonishing .863 SLG.

2012 Season Slugger

Josh Hamilton
Courtesy of MLB

So far in the 2012 Season, Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers with a .840 SLG. He already has 43 hits, 4 doubles, and a whopping 14 homers and if he keeps it up he could have a shot at the record by the end of the year.