Bryant Joins 1500 Hit Club; Dodd Climbing Jersey Leaderboards

In the 1st game after playing in his 6th straight All-Star game, August 12th, 2020,  Mikey Bryant did nothing new and had another 3-hit game, his 10th of the season.  In his 2nd AB he grounded a ball between 3rd and SS that found a hole into the OF for his 2nd single of the game.  What was special is that marked his 1500th career hit in just a shade over 7 total seasons in the big leagues.  

He became the 29th BSA player to reach that level, but by far has the most the hits between 2013-2020 than any player in the league.  There have only been 34 different times where a player has 208 or more hits in a season.  Bryant accounts for 6 of those.....all 6 full seasons he has been in the league.  That comes out to nearly 18%.  The man is a hitting machine.  He is on pace for 196 hits this season and I know everyone will be rooting him on to get that 7th straight season of 200 hits or more.  

Bryant turned 32 years old this year and though is OPS is down a little bit from the former glory years, Bryant looks to continue hitting in a  league where turning the age of 30 is like getting a death sentence. Though there have been a handful of players to succeed well into their 30's, the list of players to fall off is a lot longer than  of players who have faltered.  Hopefully we can see Bryant age like the great Sam Sagar has done, playing at a high level through age 35 and still putting up at least average numbers through age 37.  Hopefully 2500 hits will be within reach for Bryant.  He also sits at 279 HR.  A great 2nd half could have him near that magical 300 mark which only 8 players have accomplished thus far in the history of the BSA.  Are 400 HR out of reach?  Only time will tell at this point.

On the opposite end of the age spectrum, kinda, is Dave Dodd who turned 26 this season.  When Bryant was 26 he had ~1 year or so of BSA experience under his belt.  Dodd has 4+ at the same point.  Just this week Dodd passed former Jersey slugger Matt Doyle in hits and tied him in HR in a Jersey uniform.  With 1 more HR and 39 more hits he will plant himself in 2nd in both categories only behind Bryant.  Pretty crazy to think that he is already among one of the Jersey greats before his 27th birthday.  If he can stay healthy, he might be able to put up some very big numbers statistically.  Many people around the league believe he hasn't hit his peak yet, which could be scary for pitchers around the league.  Regardless of meaningless personal accomplishments, if you ask each player what they hope to accomplish most you can bet both of them want a championship more than anything.

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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

Another Milestone for Bryant; 200+ Hits in 5 Straight Seasons

Even though Jersey fell out of the playoff race earlier this month and will finish with the worst record in 7 years, there still are a few bright spots for the team.  One, of course, being 2-time MVP Mike Bryant.  While this season didn't match the previous two in which he was voted most valuable player, he did slug 40+ HR for the 3rd straight year, and finish in the Top 5, and possibly Top 3 in all Triple Crown categories.  

While Bryant doesn't walk and get on base as much as Jorge Martinez, no one can deny the talent Bryant has with the bat.  With his recent run of multi-hit games, Bryant's hit total stands at 206 with 4 games left to play this season for the D-Bags.  This marks the 5th straight year he has surpassed the 200 hit mark, making him the first player in BSA history to do so.  The only other player in the history of the league with five 200+ hit season is BSA great John Crowe.  Since Bryant's god awful April he has hit .350/.410/.630.  Not too shabby.  Bryant is also on pace to lead the BSA in total bases for the 4th time in 5 years.  There's no doubt he is the heart and soul of this offense.  At age 30, which seems to be the point of no return for hitters in the BSA, Bryant showed no point in slowing down. Jersey brass hopes he can kick that trend and remain one of the most feared hitters in the game into his mid 30's, but only time will tell on that front.

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Bryant Reaches Milestone; 1000 Hits

We celebrated for his 100th career HR, and on May 10th in St. Louis, Mikey Bryant celebrated his 2nd major milestone with his 1000th career hit.  It came in his 747th game at Gateway Stadium in St. Louis and was the 3rd hit in his 5th career 5 hit game.  It's also the game that got him started after a 5 week cold spell to start the season.  He becomes the 86th player in BSA history to reach the 1000 hit plateau and the first player ever to do it in a Jersey uniform.  He also becomes the first player to make his debut in 2013 or later to reach the 1000 hit mark.

Sitting at 996 hits before the game started, Bryant would need a big day to reach the mark.  On the mound was young "Beanpole" Gonzales who up until this time was posting a shiny 4.12 ERA to go with a 3-2 W/L record.  In the first Bryant would get an infield single, which Jersey would end up scoring 3 runs in.  Bryant would single the very next inning scoring a runner from 3rd, two batters before teammate Dave Dodd would hit a Grand Slam to completely break the game open at 9-0.  Bryant wouldn't have to wait long to get his 3rd chance.  In the 3rd inning he would come up with runners on a 2-2 count line a pitch between 1st and 2nd for his 3rd single of the day and his 2nd RBI.  3 innings, 3 AB, 3 hits.  He would actually have to wait an extra inning to get his shot at grand 1000 hit.  With Peter Larson standing on 1st base and MR Seung-Woo Yun on the mound, Bryant would foul off a 1-0 pitch before Yun left a 98 MPH fastball up in the zone.  A pitch like that Bryant usually doesn't miss, and he sure as wouldn't today.  The ball wouldn't clear the short CF wall by much, but 413 feet later, Bryant was 4-4 and his 1000th hit was a HR, which really shouldn't be that surprising.  Nearly 20% of Bryant's hits in his career have landed as souvenirs.  Bryant would double in the 7th for his 5th hit, giving him 5 RBI on the day.  He had a chance to join former 2-time MVP Jeff Cole as the only other BSA players to have 6 hits in a regulation 9 inning game, but lined out into Left-Center leading off the 9th inning.

The HR was the 188th in Bryant's career.  As of today, he sits at 1026 hits and 193 HR.  If he continues along his career pace, his 200th career HR will come sometime in late June or early July.  Teammate John Warner currently sits at 198 HR, but you never know with Mikey, 7 HR might not take as long as anyone could guess.  Currently Warner sits with 7 HR on the year and Bryant is 2nd in the CL with 14 HR.  

As Bryant and any other Jersey players climb career leaderboards and gain personal achievements tune in to the Bag Report to read the full breakdown!

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