Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards
Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were one and two in the NL (2 and 3 in the majors behind Killebrew) for HR's in the 1960's with 375 and 350 respectively. Those totals would have led the majors in the 1940's, 1950's, 1970's and 1980's. They would have been second in the majors in the 1920's, and 1930's.
The 1960's were the first decade to produce 5 300 home run hitters adding Frank Robinson and Willie McCovey. So you get 3 exclusive NL players hitting over 300 in the decade and one who played half the decade in the NL.
If you look for 250 Home run hitters you add Ernie Banks, Orlando Cepeda and Frank Howard, and Ron Santo (Billy Williams hit 249) to the ranks of NL players (Howard about half his total as a teammate of Koufax's but making the argument that the league wasn't weak) All of the aforementioned players would have finished top 6 in the 1950's and top 5 in the 1970's in all of MLB.
League-wide batting average in the 1940's was .275, 1950's .276, 1960's .272, 1970's .272 and 1980's .273.
The average home runs hit by a player in the Majors (approximations since I had to read them off a graph that didn't label it's data points)
1920's 6.8, 1930's 9, 1940's 8.5, 1950's 15.5, 1960's 16.1, 1970's 14.2, 1980's 14.5
This myth that the 1960's was a desert of great hitting league wide is just that. There was, in essence, one anomalous year, at which time Koufax was already retired (can you imagine what he would've done that year???)
I'm not saying this makes Koufax the greatest lefty of all time. I am merely pointing out a fallacy that seems to persist for some reason not even remotely backed up by facts.
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Look at the runs scored per game. Home Runs remained; total offense declined significantly. I am not the first, or even the 10,000th to refer to it as a second deadball era as a result. Is it LITERALLY a deadball era? No, but neither was the original. We can call it whatever word you want to denote a low run environment. During Koufax's peak years, NL offense was in a decline. This is a fact. Ty Cobb hit almost .400 every year, but that doesn't mean the deadball era wasn't a low run environment.
Runs per game per team in the NL during the postwar era, using 1963 as Koufax's breakout mega season (though he had an excellent 1962 as well, it breaks down very similarly each year you use as he had a very short peak and all of it was in a pitching dominated era):
1953: 4.8
1963: 3.8
1973: 4.15
1983: 4.1
1993: 4.49
2003: 4.61
2013: 4.00
Can we stop debating things that are easily proven by even a cursory look at the numbers in this thread?