Tracking Mikey Bryant's Assault on the Record Books; Volume 4

For the 4th year in a row we will track where and how high 2B Mikey Bryant climbed in the career leaderboards.  In his 7th full season and 8th year in the BSA overall, it was the first time Bryant failed to hit for .300 in a full season as well as snapping his streak of 7 straight 200 hit seasons, where he only finished with 188 hits.

His power stayed in full force though as Bryant managed 36 doubles, 40 home runs while knocking in 133 runs.  You can tell age is finally starting to catch up with him a bit as he struck out a career high 142 times and swiped a career low of only 4 stolen bases.  His season was good enough for his 7th All-Star selection while finishing 3rd in MVP voting and help lead his Jersey Shore club to their 2nd World Series appearance.

With his first season below hitting .300, Bryant took a swift drop in career numbers going from .3288 to .3246. While this is still good for 2nd all time, Paco Rosas increased his lead after a season where he hit .348.  Bryant sits only 1 point ahead of Adam Mason who retired in 2013.  Bryant remained in 2nd in career OPS where he has been since we started doing this tracking report 4 seasons ago.  Jeff Cole and his crazy OBP lead by a healthy margin and Bryant dropped a few points, but Paco Rosas sits only 4 points behind Bryant while veteran slugger Shumei Yokoyama is the next active player in 5th.

A category where Bryant remained king though was in Slugging even though his .561 mark last season was the lowest of his career.  Bryant once was the only player to hold a .600 slugging percentage, but that number has slowly lowered to .586.  That number is still 23 points higher than the 2nd place Mel Fields and 33 points higher than the next active player in Jeff Cole.

Like I mentioned earlier, this was the first year since his rookie season where he only played a partial season that Bryant didn't reach the 200 hit plateau.  His 188 hits did take him to 27th on the all time list and 22nd on the active player list.  He reached the 1500 hit plateau in July and will reach the 300 double mark sometime early as he finished 2020 with 298 career 2-baggers.  As for total bases, even though he tallied the lowest number of his career in a full season, he still lead the BSA with 356 and edged closer to Top 10 All-time in this category.

For the 4th time in his career Bryant reached the 40 HR plateau and for the 5th time knocked in more than 130 runs.  With 297 career Homers, he looks to become only the 10th player to hit 300 in a career, following the latest player, CF Shizue Chouda who hit his 300th last May.  In similar fashion he became the 9th player to knock in 1000 runs in a career reaching this mark in the middle of September.  In both HR and RBI the only retired player ahead of Bryant is the leader John Crowe in both categories who retired in 2019.  Sam Sagar who is nearing the end of his career, needs 19 RBI to tie Crowe, while Yokoyama starts the season behind Crowe by 74.

Bryant turned 33 in Spring Training and while the scouts have his ratings dropping a little, we have yet to see anything steep.  He is to the point in the record books where not only his numbers matter but most of the players he is grouped with are also active.  What is interesting is this is the last year he remains under contract with Jersey Shore after spending his entire career in the organization after being drafted in 2010 and receiving the 6 year contract in the summer of 2015.  He has stated he would like to finish his career in Jersey and you have to assume D-Bag mamagement would love to watch their native son only wear one uniform for his career.

Current All-Time Rank.  (Previous 3 years are in parenthesis)  

BA: 2nd (2nd, 2nd, 1st): .3246

OPS: 2nd (2nd, 2nd, 2nd): .9673

SLG: 1st (1st, 1st, 1st): .5861

VORP: 9th (9th, 13th, 20th): 554.92

Hits: 27th (34th, 57th, 96th): 1582

Doubles: 42nd (57th, 82nd, NR): 298
Triples: 28th (46th, 75th, NR): 41

Total Bases: 14th (23rd, 41st, 73rd): 2853

HR: 10th (15th, 20th, 35th): 297

RBI: 9th (19th, 32nd, 53rd): 1012

Runs: 22nd (28th, 55th, 86th): 890

WAR: 11th (13th, 18th, 24th): 54.38

Tracking Mikey Bryant's Assault on the Record Book; Year 3

Since we have done this 2 years in a row.....why not make it 3?  After a slow start to the 2020 campaign Mikey Bryant had a hot summer, won Player of the Month for September and had his longest hitting streak at the major league level at 22 games.  But how high did he climb in the all time ranks this season?

With a 70.5 VORP, he had a classic Bryant season, but with waning defense as he ages, he saw more time at DH than ever before and fell out of the Top 5 of player WAR for the year.  Jeff Cole would go on to win the MVP in the CL, breaking the 3-way tie between himself, Cole and John Crowe with 2 MVP wins.

Before last season Bryant sat atop the all time list for batting average, nearly 5 points ahead of Greenville's Paco Rosas.  A giant year from Rosas which saw him win the batting the tittle with a .339 average.  At the moment he has squeaked by Bryant by 1/1000 of a point at .3289 to .3288.  Nothing changed in OPS as Cole still has a commanding lead with Bryant in 2nd by a healthy margin over the next active player in Shumei Yokoyama by nearly 14 points.  In Slugging percentage, nothing changed as Bryant has a large lead over 2nd place and retired vet Mel Fields and leads Toronto's German Rivas by 30+ points.

Though it took the most plate appearances of his career, Bryant reached 200 hits for the 6th straight year of his career and as far as we could look, he is the only player to even have 5 straight.  Those 213 hits took him from 57th all the way up to 34th, where he sits 3 hits shy of 1400 and if he stays healthy should hit 1500 sometime in July after the All-Star break and would likely be the 30th or 31st player in the league history to hit that milestone.  Another big season would push up him to the lower 20's, but anything beyond that is unobtainable this season.

After 5 straight years of 37+ HR, Bryant fell back and only hit 36, his lowest total of any full season he has had in the big leagues.  Last season he sat at #20 and those 36 pushed him up to 15th all time.  He is done passing retired players as the only one ahead of him on the list is all-time leader John Crowe.  Ahead of him is teammate John Warner, 2 ahead of him and current free agent Erroll Hughes who sits 6 ahead of him at 263.

After having a career low in RBI in 2018 with 119, he followed up with the 2nd lowest of his career at 126.  While this is by no means a small number, it's a far cry from the 130+ numbers he put up in the 1st 4 years of his big league career.  None the less he jumped from 32nd to 19th in RBI and 126 this season would put him over 1000 for his career.  As of this point only 8 players have hit the 1000 RBI mark in BSA history.  39 doubles for the 2nd straight year moved him up 25 spots to 57th and 129 runs, the 2nd biggest mark in his career, helped him crack the Top 30 and number 28.

Bryant turned 32 during spring training and is no spring chicken when it comes to the BSA.  We can only help he keeps up his good health and ages gracefully hopefully joining the Top 10 of BSA history in the upcoming years.  But for now, we can only wait, watch and enjoy one of the best players of his era.

Current All-Time Rank.  (Previous 2 years are in parenthesis)  

BA: 2nd (1st, 2nd): .3288

OPS: 2nd (2nd, 2nd): .9730

SLG: 1st (1st, 1st): .5884

VORP: 9th (13th, 20th): 486.87

Hits: 34th (57th, 96th): 1397

Doubles: 57th (82nd, NR): 262

Total Bases: 23rd (41st, 73rd): 2500

HR: 15th (20th, 35th): 257

RBI: 19th (32nd, 53rd): 879

Runs: 28th (55th, 86th): 785

WAR: 13th (18th, 24th): 48.22

Tracking Mikey Bryant's Assault on the Record Book; Year 2

Last year we started a topic where Mike Bryant stood on the All-time batting lists at the beginning of last season.  With a new season about to be underway, it's time to update this and see how far he climbed the Leaderboards during the 2018 season.

With another big year, he added and passed many players in several categories.  Though with a down April and a huge year from breakout star Jorge Martinez, he wasn't able to secure coveted 3rd straight MVP and remains 1 of only 3 players to ever win 2 MVP awards along with Jeff Cole and John Crowe.

Before last season Bryant sat behind only Todd Church on the All-Time batting average list, but a sub-par year from Church pushed Bryant back to the top where he holds a career average mark of .330, over 5 points higher than the 2nd place Paco Rosas of Greenville who is at .3249.  Bryant remains 2nd in career OPS still sitting behind only Jeff Cole.  Bryant still remains on top of the career Slugging % list, but dropped from a 31 points lead over Toronto's German Rivas to a 27 point margin.

As for the compiling categories Coffin is positioning himself inside the Top 50 of almost every major category out there.  With his 5th straight 200+ hit season he catapulted almost 40 slots to 57th place and with 2 more 200 hit seasons, 1500 career hits is within reach during the 2020 season.  Cuurently only 20 BSA players have reached the 1500 hit mark.  With a lot of active players ahead of him, even a big season might only push him up on the list 15-20 spots.

As for HR, his 42 last season pushed him into the Top 20, at No. 20, and only 3 behind teammate John Warner and former St. Louis Brown Carlos Valle.  With 29+ HR this season Bryant could join an elite group of players who have hit 250 or more BSA HR.  That list is currently at 11 players and shouldn't be added to much this year with only a few threats between Bryant and those 11.  

As for RBI, Bryant's 119 was the lowest total since his rookie season, but still good enough to jump 21 places on the all time list and put him in 32nd place.  39 doubles pit Bryant into the Top 100 in 82nd place with 223 career two-baggers, and scoring over 110 runs for the 5th straight year moved Bryant up 31 spots to 55th on the All-Time list.  

With Bryant's birthday coming this week, he will turn 31 for the 2019 season.  While he is old by no means, the BSA historically has been a young mans game.  Many players have hit the magical age of 30 and have fallen off, will this be the case with Bryant?  He can only hope not and continue to track his progress among the elite names and all time greats of the BSA.  

Current All-Time Rank. (Last season's rank in parentheses.)

BA 1st (2nd): .3300

OPS 2nd (2nd): .9771

SLG: 1st (1st): .5937

VORP 13th (20th): 417.58

Hits: 57th (96th): 1181

Doubles: 82nd (NR): 223

Total Bases: 41st (73rd): 2125

HR: 20th (35th): 221

RBI: 32nd (53rd): 753

Runs: 55th (86th): 655

WAR: 18th (24th): 41.87