Luis Gonzalez
Gonzalez turned himself from a slap-hitting singles machine into a legitimate home run threat, peaking spectacularly with 57 bombs for Arizona in 2001. That season stands as one of the most dramatic single-year transformations in modern baseball — he'd never hit more than 26 homers before, yet suddenly became the third player ever to reach 57.
The timing was perfect. Gonzalez carried the expansion Diamondbacks to their improbable World Series title, delivering the championship-winning hit against Mariano Rivera. His .325 average that year proved the power surge didn't come at the expense of his pure hitting ability.
Beyond that magical season, Gonzalez was remarkably consistent, posting a career .283 average across 19 seasons. Five All-Star selections tell the story of sustained excellence, even if he never quite recaptured that 2001 lightning.
Career · Batting
19 seasons| Year | Team | G | AB | HR | RBI | AVG | OPS | OPS+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | HOU | 12 | 21 | 0 | 0 | .190 | .547 | 77 |
| 1991 | HOU | 137 | 473 | 13 | 69 | .254 | .753 | 106 |
| 1992 | HOU | 122 | 387 | 10 | 55 | .243 | .674 | 96 |
| 1993 | HOU | 154 | 540 | 15 | 72 | .300 | .818 | 111 |
| 1994 | HOU | 112 | 392 | 8 | 67 | .273 | .782 | 102 |
| 1995 | CHC | 133 | 471 | 13 | 69 | .276 | .812 | 108 |
| 1996 | CHC | 146 | 483 | 15 | 79 | .271 | .797 | 104 |
| 1997 | HOU | 152 | 550 | 10 | 68 | .258 | .722 | 95 |
| 1998 | DET | 154 | 547 | 23 | 71 | .267 | .816 | 108 |
| 1999 | AZ | 153 | 614 | 26 | 111 | .336 | .952 | 122 |
| 2000 | AZ | 162 | 618 | 31 | 114 | .311 | .935 | 120 |
| 2001 | AZ | 162 | 609 | 57 | 142 | .325 | 1.117 | 147 |
| 2002 | AZ | 148 | 524 | 28 | 103 | .288 | .896 | 120 |
| 2003 | AZ | 156 | 579 | 26 | 104 | .304 | .934 | 124 |
| 2004 | AZ | 105 | 379 | 17 | 48 | .259 | .866 | 114 |
| 2005 | AZ | 155 | 579 | 24 | 79 | .271 | .825 | 110 |
| 2006 | AZ | 153 | 586 | 15 | 73 | .271 | .795 | 103 |
| 2007 | LAD | 139 | 464 | 15 | 68 | .278 | .793 | 105 |
| 2008 | FLO | 136 | 341 | 8 | 47 | .261 | .749 | 100 |
| Career | 2591 | 9157 | 354 | 1439 | .283 | — | — | |
Every ball this hitter has put in play — how hard it left the bat, and at what angle. The red field behind the dots shows how much damage that kind of contact does, league-wide: the darker the red, the better things go for the hitter.
The field — league-average xwOBA (what a batted ball is typically worth: 0.0 is a sure out, ~2.0 a sure home run) for every exit-velocity × launch-angle combination, measured from 1.3 million regular-season balls in play since 2015. The dark ridge — balls hit 105+ mph at 25–30° — is the barrel zone, where contact becomes near-automatic extra bases.
The dots — this hitter’s career regular-season balls in play, grouped to a fine grid; a bigger dot means more batted balls at that exact combination. Dots piled onto the red ridge are damage; dots low on the pale field are weak or mishit contact. Spring training and the postseason are excluded.
Matchups, projections, comps — grounded in Lahman, Retrosheet, and Statcast.