> Assuming he stays healthy, it will
> be cool to see him hit the career
> leaderboard in HRs next year and
> it will be fun to watch him climb the
> chart in years to come. I see him
> #2 someday almost for sure, but
> #1 seems like a tough spot to crack.
> He would need to average around 38
> a year all the way thru age 39 to
> break the record. That's doable but
> would take some incredible durability
> to achive. Are there going to be
> any more deadball era's or stadium
> mods that will slow him down any I
> wonder?
The park (Tiger Stadium) helps him a great deal. There are no changes to that park in the works. I don't think Goose will ever trade Kress.
All of his career will take place prior to the 60s taking offense into the tank.
At the same age, Oscar had 174 HR. Kress has 217, and is 43 HR ahead of his pace.
We are entering a period where Oscar hit 47-59-53-59 HRs, 218 in four years. Kress has yet to reach his max of 10 Power - he's still stuck on 9. He could hit 45 HR a year through this stretch and still come out ahead 397-392. I personally think (barring injury) that Kress will hit *more* than 180 HR in the nest four years.
Oscar then dropped down to 33-35-19-17 before getting a War bump of 23-26 before crapping out at 12. The current version of OOTP seems to be a lot more friendly to hitters in the 35 to 36 range than older versions. Rhino has set career highs in the past few seasons despite aging.
Where Kress may have a problem is with those 61 HR that Oscar hit at the age of 39-41. The 23-26 are almost certainly the record for that age range, and while the current OOTP lets people keep power a long time, I don't know if we've run into another 39-40 year old holding on that long. Moe fell off. Ditty is slowing down right now, and certainly isn't going to hit 61 at that age. Rauch will be one to watch. Lonny isn't a good comp because of the park, but probably would be worth watching.
So I think Kress will need to stay *well* ahead of Oscar prior to the age of 37.
I'm pretty confident he will get to 500 HR. Whether he gets to Oscar depends on him busting a few 50 HR seasons in the next four years... and staying healthy.
> He's also only .001 away from the AVG
> career leader board. Given his current
> 10con 10eye ratings, he my make it on
> there next year and stay put for a while.
He might make it within the first month if he has one of those monster months of his:
"Won BOM award on 9/1/1950, hitting .388 with 11 HR, 27 RBI..."
> I'm such a Kress fanatic I actually
> named one of my WOW characters
> after him.
John