Just a preview of what is to come. Following are the Dominance scores for our biggest home run seasons — focusing strictly on the dominance in that category:
Mark McGwire (1998) – .94
Barry Bonds (2001) - .94
Roger Maris (1961) – .93
Babe Ruth (1927) – .97
Babe Ruth (1920) – .98
Important to point out the meaning of this. I was surprised to find McGwire, Bonds and Maris close to Ruth’s numbers, given that Ruth hit more home runs than some teams. The absolute most a player could get is a 1.00, but that’s only if the player in question was the only one in the league to hit a home run.
It’s important to remember that Bonds and McGwire surpassed Ruth by 13 and 10 home runs respectively in their big years (13 is 22% of 60, so this is a significant number), yet The Babe still has the highest scores.
As I go year by year, I also found it interesting that there is little difference in scores between Barry Bonds’ supposed juiced and clean years.
1990 – 3.44
1991 – 2.96
1992 – 3.63
1993 – 3.76
1994 – 3.07
1995 – 3.19
1996 – 3.64
1997 – 3.25
1998 – 3.09
2001 – 3.62
2002 – 3.30
2003 – 3.12
2004 – 3.29
Simple explanation. Barry Bonds undoubtedly was on the juice. So was everyone else, which increased the league averages, keeping his dominance in reference to the rest of the player pool steady.
