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I was watching Pedro Alvarez yesterday, smasher of 400-foot home runs and manufacturer of golden sombreros. Alvarez is one of a few streaky hitters who have excellent 2-3 game stretches of power, followed by long stretches of bat contact amnesia. I wondered which hitters hit home runs on back-to-back days most often, so I fired up our database and looked for games where any hitter homered. Then, I tabulated their performance the day after and took the leaders (data since 2011):

Name

G

PA

HR

Giancarlo Stanton

61

264

24

Albert Pujols

63

283

20

Josh Hamilton

61

267

20

Adrian Beltre

65

271

19

Jose Bautista

62

276

18

Jay Bruce

65

266

18

Chris Davis

50

203

17

Curtis Granderson

62

270

16

The “HR” column is essentially the number of times that the hitter homered on back-to-back days. So Giancarlo Stanton homered in 61 games and played a game the day after. In 24 of those subsequent games, he homered again (24 or less, depending on multi-homer games).

Here’s everyone whose slugging percentage is over 600 in “day after games” (minimum 25 “before games”):

Name

G

AB

TB

HR

SLG

Adam LaRoche

36

126

99

15

0.786

Chris Davis

50

176

129

17

0.733

Giancarlo Stanton

61

232

162

24

0.698

Buster Posey

29

98

63

8

0.643

Troy Tulowitzki

44

168

106

14

0.631

Matt Kemp

52

197

123

15

0.624

Josh Hamilton

61

237

148

20

0.624

Ryan Braun

62

243

151

15

0.621

Dayan Viciedo

26

98

60

7

0.612

Jay Bruce

65

236

144

18

0.610

Albert Pujols

63

252

153

20

0.607

David Ortiz

51

193

116

12

0.601

Most of these players are just plain good at hitting. Alvarez came in at 29 games, 99 at bats, with 5 home runs and a 545 SLG.

For fun, here are the MLB-wide performances after one, two, and three homer games:

The day after a…

G

AB

TB

HR

SLG

1 homer game

8466

30611

13619

1212

0.445

2 homer game

484

1787

733

72

0.410

3 homer game

18

71

41

5

0.577

The day after Ike Davis homered three times, he went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts. That sums up Ike Davis.

Thank you for reading

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chabels
6/09
Is there any difference between back-to-back games vs. days in the data?
AndrewKoo
6/09
Yes, it's back-to-back days only. Games taking place two days apart aren't included.
Psychedelic
6/11
Ike Davis follows every home run with 5 strikeouts, how many players do that? lol