The Best Season in A's History
The A's have had a number of great players throughout franchise history, from Rickey Henderson and Reggie Jackson to Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley, the team has been filled with equal parts greatness and characters.
Just a couple of days ago, we talked about the most underrated player in A's history. Today, let's talk about the best season an A's player has ever had.
A lof of A's fans may know the name Jimmie Foxx, but may not know the full scope of just how great he was with the Philadelphia Athletics from 1925-1935. He led the A's to two more World Series wins in 1929 and 1930, giving the team five in total. At that point, the New York Yankees had three rings, the New York Giants had three, and the Boston Red Sox had three. The A's led baseball in championships until 1936 when the Yankees won their fifth. By 1962 they had 19.
In 1932, the A's didn't win the title, but Jimmie Foxx (a.k.a. Double X) put together the best single season in A's history. By advanced stats, he had a 10.4 bWAR season that included 58 home runs and 169 rbi. He also hit .364 with a .469 OBP and should have won the Triple Crown that season, but the rules back then didn't have the same qualifiers, so Dale Alexander of the Boston Red Sox won the batting title after hitting .367 in 124 games. Foxx had roughly 250 more plate appearances than Alexander.
The 58 home runs in a single season is still a franchise record, and Mark McGwire is the only other player in A's history to hit over 50, bashing 52 in 1996.
According to his SABR bio, Foxx felt that he was cheated out of a few home runs thanks to some new screen additions to the fields in Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland which were introduced in the five years between when Ruth hit 60 and Double X launched 58. The screens apparently reduced the number of home runs in those ballparks, and Foxx guessed that he lost six homers in St. Louis alone.
It's also important to note that there was two games that were called due to rain that Foxx had homered in, which wiped two home runs he hit that season off the books. Those two would have tied him with Ruth. It's hard to imagine A's history being terribly different if Foxx had reached that milestone in 1932, since Connie Mack started dismantling that team following the season, but perhaps people's perception of the club would have been different if it had been The Great Bambino and Double X in the record books until 1961 when Roger Maris broke the record.
Regardless of the missed batting title and falling short of the home run record, Foxx won the MVP award easily over a 29-year-old Lou Gehrig.
The next-best season in A's history came from Rickey Henderson in 1990 when he swiped 65 bags and racked up 9.9 WAR. It should be noted that he only played in 136 games compared to Foxx's 154 in '32. On a per-game basis, Henderson had the better season. Over the same number of games, he would have finished with 11.2 wins, but since Foxx missed out on the Triple Crown (he'd win it along with a second MVP in 1933), we'll give him the nod for the best season in A's franchise history.
By WAR, Foxx had five of the ten best seasons in the team's 122 year history. Reggie (1969) and Jason Giambi (2001) ranked third and fourth, with Foxx holding the 5th, 7th, 9th, and 10th spots. Marcus Semien (6th in 2019) and Sal Bando (8th, 1969) round out the top ten.