Baseball-Reference features a search tool where I looked to see who had the most PA with 0-1 HR from 1990-2019. The results were staggering.
The first 3 names that I noticed were all the same. They all read Juan Pierre. And then I thought, ” How many HR did this guy have in his career?” So I opened a new tab, and I searched it up on Baseball-Reference. As it turns out, in his 14 year career, he had 18. 18 HR! And that prompted me to another search attempt which I’ll cover later. But back to the 0-1 HR.
The 76th player, Michael Bourn, was the first player from 2015-2019. The first player from 2019 came in at number 161. Can you guess who it was? Billy Hamilton. That’s right, speedster journeyman Billy Hamilton did not hit a single HR in 2019.
Now let’s narrow down the players to 0 HR. Again, Juan Pierre came in first with 729 PA without a HR. Again, Billy Hamilton was the first player from 2019. But let’s narrow it down even further to 2015-2019. The results weren’t surprising. You have some bad, bad players in there. And I mean bad. Bad, bad. Lewis Brinson was one of the worst players in baseball with a .173 BA, a .239 OBP, and 0 HR to make up for it. Michael Bourn led the list.
But this is boring, let’s find a player with the lowest career HR total with 1000+ games and 1000+ PA who played from 1919-2019. Unfortunately for me, there was no one with 0 HR. But there were 3 people with 2 HR. Those players were Frank Taveras, Johnny Cooney, and Tommy Thevenow. Juan Pierre came in the top 100 with 18 career HR.
But now, let’s find the player with the most PA who never hit a HR. That player was Don Sutton, who actually was a pitcher.