Most Grand Slams Ever

I was flipping through my copy of The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract recently, and I came across the player comment on Lou Gehrig. I was expecting a long, laudatory comment, but all James simply wrote a few dozen words on Gehrig's home runs with men on base. You probably know that Gehrig is the career leader in grand slams with 23. But apparently, he hit quite a few 3-run homers and more than his share of 2-run blasts, to boot. Add 'em all up and Gehrig averaged "1.77 RBI per home run, the highest [value] among players with 300 or more home runs."

I was sort of hoping for a more "meaty" comment by James, but actually this is a pretty interesting tidbit. I've been recent fooling around with some home run data that is available over at bb-ref.com and I thought I'd poke around this business of home runs with men on base.

First of all, here are the career grand slam leaders:

+-----------------+------------+-----+
| Name            | GrandSlams | HR  |
+-----------------+------------+-----+
| Gehrig, Lou     |         23 | 493 | 
| Ramirez, Manny  |         21 | 546 | 
| Murray, Eddie   |         19 | 504 | 
| Rodriguez, Alex |         18 | 583 | 
| Ventura, Robin  |         18 | 294 | 
| McCovey, Willie |         18 | 521 | 
| Foxx, Jimmie    |         17 | 534 | 
| Williams, Ted   |         17 | 521 | 
| Ruth, Babe      |         16 | 714 | 
| Kingman, Dave   |         16 | 442 | 
| Aaron, Hank     |         16 | 755 | 
| Griffey, Ken    |         15 | 630 | 
| Sexson, Richie  |         15 | 306 | 
| Giambi, Jason   |         14 | 409 | 
| Hodges, Gil     |         14 | 370 | 
| Piazza, Mike    |         14 | 427 | 
| McGwire, Mark   |         14 | 583 | 
| Lee, Carlos     |         14 | 307 | 
| Belle, Albert   |         13 | 381 | 
| Kiner, Ralph    |         13 | 369 | 
+-----------------+------------+-----+

There's Lou in the top spot, with Manny Ramirez poised to take the lead in the next couple of years. Looks like Alex Rodriguez will also reach 23 at some point. Interesting that Robin Ventura managed 18 grand slams while hitting "only" 294 home runs. That's the highest ratio of anybody with at least 200 homers:

+------------------+------------+-----+--------------+
| Name             | GrandSlams | HR  | Slams_per_HR |
+------------------+------------+-----+--------------+
| Ventura, Robin   |         18 | 294 |       0.0612 | 
| White, Devon     |         11 | 208 |       0.0529 | 
| Sexson, Richie   |         15 | 306 |       0.0490 | 
| Gehrig, Lou      |         23 | 493 |       0.0467 | 
| Stairs, Matt     |         12 | 259 |       0.0463 | 
| Lee, Carlos      |         14 | 307 |       0.0456 | 
| York, Rudy       |         12 | 277 |       0.0433 | 
| Petrocelli, Rico |          9 | 210 |       0.0429 | 
| Hunter, Torii    |         10 | 235 |       0.0426 | 
| Tartabull, Danny |         11 | 262 |       0.0420 | 
+------------------+------------+-----+--------------+

Ventura leads the pack by a wide margin, but there are some more interesting names coming out here: Devon White, who was mostly a leadoff hitter (!) and Matt Stairs, the Wonder Hamster. Gehrig, of course, is near the top.

Of course, to hit a grand slam you have to bat with the bases loaded, and not all batters get the same opportunities to do so. We can look at those opportunities going back about 55 years (the so-called retrosheet era) (which means we don't know how often Gehrig and Ruth batted with the bases loaded, unfortunately). We expect, of course, the number of bases-loaded opps to depend heavily on batting order position. I'm guessing the #4 batters will have an advantage over #3 batters and perhaps all other lineup slots. Well, thanks to retrosheet, we can figure that out (data from 1954-2009):

+------------+-------------------+
| lineup_pos | Opps_bases_loaded |
+------------+-------------------+
|          6 |             27991 | 
|          5 |             26127 | 
|          7 |             24616 | 
|          9 |             23978 | 
|          8 |             23119 | 
|          4 |             21881 | 
|          1 |             18504 | 
|          2 |             18423 | 
|          3 |             17565 | 
+------------+-------------------+

Whoa! That's surprising. The #3 slot, where you find many of the best home run hitters, is the absolute worst position for hitting with the bases loaded. Does that surprise anybody else? I mean, leadoff hitters hit more often with the bases loaded than #3 batters. Now, that's partly because leadoff hitters get more plate appearances overall than #3 hitters, but still.

Gehrig batted cleanup for the Murderer's Row Yankees, of course, behind Ruth, who batted third. Most of the guys on the career list above batted 3rd or 4th, simply because that's where most home run hitters bat. A notable exception is Ventura who batted 5th mostly and hence likely saw more bases loaded situations than some of the others. Actually, we can check that, too, with retrosheet. Here are the top 20 Slammers along with the number of PA's they had with the bases full:

+-----------------+-----+-------+------+
| Name            | HR  | Slams | Opps |
+-----------------+-----+-------+------+
| Gehrig, Lou     | 493 |    23 | NULL | 
| Ramirez, Manny  | 546 |    21 |  278 | 
| Murray, Eddie   | 504 |    19 |  302 | 
| McCovey, Willie | 521 |    18 |  196 | 
| Rodriguez, Alex | 583 |    18 |  232 | 
| Ventura, Robin  | 294 |    18 |  238 | 
| Foxx, Jimmie    | 534 |    17 | NULL | 
| Williams, Ted   | 521 |    17 |   66 |* 
| Kingman, Dave   | 442 |    16 |  167 | 
| Aaron, Hank     | 755 |    16 |  256 | 
| Ruth, Babe      | 714 |    16 | NULL | 
| Sexson, Richie  | 306 |    15 |  162 | 
| Griffey, Ken    | 630 |    15 |  199 | 
| Hodges, Gil     | 370 |    14 |  169 |* 
| McGwire, Mark   | 583 |    14 |  164 | 
| Piazza, Mike    | 427 |    14 |  177 | 
| Giambi, Jason   | 409 |    14 |  211 | 
| Lee, Carlos     | 307 |    14 |  169 | 
| Kent, Jeff      | 377 |    13 |  289 | 
| Kiner, Ralph    | 369 |    13 |   33 |* 
+-----------------+-----+-------+------+

The column labeled "Opps" shows the bases-loaded PAs. "NULL" means that player played before the retrosheet era and I've put a "*" next to guys whose careers are only partially covered by the retrosheet data. Here we see that Ventura actually did have more bases-loaded plate appearances than most of the others in the table, although he doesn't come close to Eddie Murray or Jeff Kent. Still, Ventura certainly had a better HR percentage when batting with the bases loaded than he did otherwise.

By the way, the all-time (meaning since 1952) leader in bases-loaded PAs is Brooks Robinson, who had 333 chances to hit a grand slam. He hit five.