Fun With Bar Graphs - Yankees Career Home Run Leaders

While we're all waiting around for the World Series to end, I found a new way to create some Yankees content before we can really dig in to off-season topics. Home runs are always fun and have a prominent place in Yankee history. So why not combine those with a cool way to visualize data that's all the rage with the kids these days. It's the Yankees cumulative career home run bar chart race. The bar chart race you didn't know you needed in your life until just now. More thoughts below the race (click the button on the bottom left to pause/play/re-play as you'd like).

Nothing but the Ruth

It's no secret that Babe Ruth took the baseball world by storm via the home run, but this race does a great job of showing that visually. In 1918, the infamous Wally Pipp was the Yankees career leader with 27 home runs. By 1921 he had doubled that total, but Ruth had amassed 115 home runs in three seasons as a Yankee to dwarf him on the career list. Then it goes from ridiculous to absurd. Over the next 10 years or so, Ruth's lead on the career list gains so much steam that most of the names below him aren't even legible on this graph. Ruth became bigger than baseball with the Yankees, causing people to forget entirely about the players that came before him, just like we see in this graph. That is, until this guy Lou Gehrig shows up, which brings us to our next point...

The top five says it all

If you were to poll fans to name the top five Yankees in the franchise's history, with the exception of a few Jeters, Whitey Fords and Mariano Riveras sprinkled in, the consensus would certainly be the five names you see at the top of this graph. Remember, we're only looking at career home runs here, but that's it. They tell the whole story. It's undeniable that the Yankees have historically been most successful when they feature superstars who bash home runs at record rates. For all the talk these days about the Yankees being too reliant on the home run, it sure didn't seem to be a problem when Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle were doing that in their time. And if you don't believe it, well just observe that...

This place is a ghost town in the 1970's and again in recent years

In 1969, Joe Pepitone jumped to 11th on the career Yankee home run list, and the graph remained unchanged for the next nine years until 1978 when Graig Nettles appears on the list for the first time. Is it any coincidence that this drought shares a considerable overlap with one of the worst periods in Yankee history? Probably not. Similarly, as most are aware the Yankees just completed their 12th consecutive championship-less season, one of the longest streaks in franchise history. Unsurprisingly, that streak is also coinciding with another drought on the graph above as there has been no movement since Mark Teixeira snuck on to the bottom of the list during the 2016 season. It seems likely to stay that way for at least the immediate future. Aaron Judge is probably two seasons away from surpassing Robinson Cano's 204 Yankee home runs. That's if he doesn't suffer a significant injury and assuming the Yankees sign him to a contract extension. No safe bet given their recent penny-pinching ways.