Ah, When Mike was Healthy.......

With the forthcoming promotion of Moose Tacos, who (if he stayed with the Royals for his career, which he will not, so this is a moot point) has the potential to hit for more power than any Royal in history, I’ve been playing around with a few stats over lunch.

Man, is it easy to forget how good of a hitter Mike Sweeney was, before he was reduced to a huddled mass on a gurney.  In fact, this may sound ludicrous, but from 1999 to 2005 (his only quasi-healthy-to-healthy seasons), he had the most offensively-productive seven-year period in the history of Royals’ baseball.

Granted, he wasn’t even completely healthy during that period, missing about 30 games a year on average.  But the MOST productive offensive player (George Brett) was also prone to the same kind of health outages throughout his career.

I scoured Brett’s stats to see if I could find what his MOST productive seven-year period was.  There’s some room for debate in there—Brett had periods where he hit for great average, but not much in terms of power, for example.  BY A SLIM MARGIN, I picked the period starting in 1982 over the period starting in 1980.  The period starting in 1982 was his best “power” period of seven seasons, with five of his top eight dong years, three of his top seven OPS years (including two of his top three), and four of his top nine RBI years.  Brett’s batting average for that period is nearly identical to his career average (.304, compared to .305 for his career).  I think it’s a fair period to look at.

Plus, it just so happens that Brett and Sweeney had nearly an identical number of games (922 and 918, respectively) and at bats (3,400 and 3,496) for the periods, so it works out very nicely.

BY THE WAY….I’d like to apologize to all of my stat geek friends.  I did not calculate OBP for this model.  I thought about doing it, but didn’t have the time.  Besides, I eye-balled it, and my educated guess is that Brett trended slightly higher, but not by a whole lot.  Brett’s OBP for the period floated between a low of .344 and a high of .436, while Sweeney went between .347 and .417.  All solidly within the range of what you’d take for guys hitting with the kind of power they did in their respective 7-year periods.

OK, so here’s your comparison.  Enjoy!

Mike Sweeney, 1999 through 2005 (age 25 to 31)

Games = 918

Hits = 1095

Batting Average = .313

Homeruns = 163

Doubles = 231

Triples = 4

Slugging Percentage = .521

RBIs = 697

George Brett, 1982 through 1988 (age 29 to 35)

Games = 922

Hits = 1033

Batting Average = .304

Homeruns = 151

Doubles = 217

Triples = 28

Slugging Percentage = .517

RBIs = 610