Re: More Bonds
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Hank clearly wasn't the only one who experienced a dramatic increase in his home run rate post 1968, on the road, away, whatever.
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As a whole, offense was drastically up, everyone knows that.
If you'd really like, we can break it down by age across the board, and what you'll see is that after the mound was lowered, homeruns by the young bucks did most indeed go up......but the guys aged around 35 and older like Mays, Banks, Clemente, they declined as "expected".
Except for one of them.
Shortening the mound 5 inches DOES boost offense, but it DOESN'T give a guy standing 60 feet away a power surge after age 35, when everyone else around the league at the comparable age continues to decline.
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I don't doubt that if you take all 34 YO's from 1968, and compare those years to 1969, Aaron comes out looking pretty good. But how many 35 YO's were even playing back then? Weren't careers much shorter? ie the sample size becomes so small that it's probably not worth comparing.
Anyways, my general point is that while Aarons post 35 burst is real, it's bit disingenuous to mention this w/o mentioning that At Bats/HR for the league in general went through massive changes over this time period.
here at the 1968 leaders:
At Bats per Home Run
McCovey-SFG 14.5
Allen-PHI 15.8
Banks-CHC 17.2
Stargell-PIT **18.1
Wynn-HOU 20.8
and 1969
McCovey-SFG 10.9
Aaron-ATL 12.4
Allen-PHI 13.7
Wynn-HOU 15
May-CIN 16
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