MLB Tickets – The Best Five Power Hitters in the Game
Though it’s certainly a cliche, it’s also well known that everyone loves the long ball. It’s what brought audiences back following the strike in the early 1990s and its one of the main reasons that helps to keep stadiums full each year. While fundamental baseball is all good and well, it’s still the homerun and the big boppers in the league that are the biggest draw, helping to sell the most MLB tickets. Here is how I have the top five power hitters in the game to start the 2010 season.
Mark Teixeira, New York Yankees. Other possible options here would be Mark Reynolds, Adrian Gonzalez, Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria or Miguel Cabrera, but Teixeira simply brings too much to the plate. As a switch-hitter, he is a nightmare matchup for the opposing bullpen as well as opposing starters and he Tadacip continues to put up huge numbers in the biggest spotlight of the league: New York. He has hit 30 or more homers and 100 RBIs each of the last six seasons and always does so with a very high batting average as well, which is something that not many power hitters of his caliber can boast.
Prince Fielder, Milwaukee Brewers. Fielder has been a bona fide superstar for a few seasons now but still lacks the fanfare of Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard. Far from just a free swinger, Fielder has also developed into a very good all-around hitter and last year he hit .299, which is a very high number for a power hitter who puts up the type of numbers that Fielder does. Coming off a 2009 season in which he hit 46 homeruns and 141 RBIs, few would be surprised if he led the league in round-trippers in 2010.
Ryan Howard, Philadelphia Phillies. Since his first full season in 2006, Ryan Howard has showed unbelievable power in the heart of the Phillies’ order. Out of his four complete seasons, his lowest homerun total was last year, when he hit 45 homeruns. Though he lacks the high batting average of Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols, Howard remains a power hitter of the old school and can hit the ball out of the ballpark as well as anyone. He does, of course, get a boost from a very strong Phillies lineup, which helps his RBI totals, but there’s no arguing with his run production. In his four full seasons, he has averaged 49.5 homeruns and 143 RBIs.
Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees. A-Rod has the disadvantage of playing in the American League, which suppresses his numbers from reaching the RBI totals of his NL counterparts like Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard, yet Rodriguez remains one of the best players in the game. In an injury-shortened season in 2009, A-Rod still got to 30 homeruns and 100 RBIs despite having quite Levitra a few less at-bats than the other players who reached the 100-RBI mark.
Once again, he also finished with an on-base percentage well over .400. What separates A-Rod from other power hitters, though, is his breakout postseason he posted in the 2009 playoffs. A-Rod reminded those who had forgotten that he is still one of the most feared bats in the league and had a playoff run that had Yankee fans forgetting his meager playoff performances in the past. Even without the unbelievable production numbers of Fielder and Howard in the last few years, A-Rod is still among the elite.
Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals. Ok, this one was easy. Pujols has actually only led the NL in homeruns one time – last year – but he is also the most consistently dominant power hitter in the game. His worst power season in his nine full seasons in the big leagues was in 2007, when he still hit 32 homeruns, batted .327 and drove in more than 100 runs. He has topped the 40 homerun mark five times in his career already and has had the top OPS (On base + slugging) for three out of the last four seasons.
Simply put, Pujols remains freakish in his ability to mash the ball out of the ballpark without sacrificing batting average and hardly ever strikes out. 22 players hit at least 32 homeruns a season ago, with Pujols topping the league at 47, and yet he was the only one that didn’t strike out at least 100 times; he struck out just 64 times. Pujols easily gives the most bang for your buck among power hitters.
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Category: Recreation and Leisure/Sports/Baseball
Keywords: MLB, sports, tickets, baseball, entertainment