Josh Hamilton and the 25 Greatest Hot Starts in MLB History

Josh Hamilton, the sweet-swinging outfielder of the Texas Rangers, is off to a tremendous start this season.

Even after a recent stretch in which Hamilton's bat has been moderately cool, he still leads the American League in virtually every major offensive category. The only things standing between him and a truly historic season are his health and the whims of the baseball gods.

As these things usually do, Hamilton's hot start got us to thinking. How does the first month-and-a-half of his 2012 season compare to some of the other hot starts throughout MLB history?

Well, I got to digging around on Baseball-Reference.com, and I came up with a list of 25 hot starts (by both hitters and pitchers) that I feel is pretty definitive.

Here they are, ordered from "pretty darn awesome" to "freakin' amazing."

Note: For the sake of comparison, Hamilton's hot 2012 start is included in the list.

25. Francisco Rodriguez, 2008

There was a time not too long ago when Francisco Rodriguez was the most dominant closer in baseball. 

K-Rod peaked in 2008, when he set a single-season record with 62 saves. He got roughly a third of those out of the way very quickly.

Rodriguez saved 11 games in April, and he was up to 21 saves by May 24 to go along with a 2.45 ERA.

When Bobby Thigpen set the record for saves in a season with 57 in 1990, he didn't get his 21st save until June 14.

24. Nolan Ryan, 1973

Nolan Ryan was just starting to establish himself as an ace when the 1973 season got underway.

There was no way of knowing that he was going to have the best season of his career.

Ryan won his first three starts in 1973, going the distance in all three of them. He would go on the pitch the first of seven career no-hitters on May 17.

At the end of May, Ryan had an unspectacular 6-5 record, but he did have a 2.66 ERA and 117 strikeouts in 98 innings pitched. For good measure, he mixed in a save as well.

Ryan went on to to win 21 games with an absurd 326 innings pitched.

23. Rickey Henderson, 1982

To paraphrase the great Forrest Gump, Rickey Henderson just felt like running in 1982.

That was the year Henderson swiped a career-best of 130 bases, and he got a lot of those thefts out of the way early on.

The Oakland A's started their 1982 season on April 6, and they played 49 games through May 30.

In those 49 games, Henderson stole 49 bases.

It's a wonder he didn't make it to 162 that season. Slacker.

22. Ted Williams, 1941

Ted Williams, as we all know, is the last man to hit .400 in a season. He did that over 60 years ago in 1941.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that he was hot from the first game of the season straight through to the end. 

The Red Sox started their season on April 15. By the end of May, Teddy Ballgame was hitting .429/.524/.681 with a 1.205 OPS. He had seven home runs and 27 RBI.

The truly impressive number? In 119 at-bats, Williams had struck out only four times.

21. Luis Tiant, 1968

Luis Tiant enjoyed the greatest season of his career in 1968, and it got off to a tremendous start.

Tiant made his first start on April 16. In six starts between then and May 12, he would go 5-1 with an ERA of 1.03. The last four of those six starts were complete-game shutouts.

Tiant's good work didn't stop there. He ended May with a pedestrian 7-4 record, but he had a 1.37 ERA in 85.1 innings pitched, with 81 strikeouts mixed in. 

He went on to go 21-9 with a 1.60 ERA and 264 strikeouts in 32 starts.

20. Lefty Grove, 1931

Lefty Grove had his greatest season as a pro in 1931. Naturally, he got off to a pretty hot start that year.

By the end of May, Grove had an 8-1 record and a 1.67 ERA. His last start of the month was a complete-game shutout in which he pitched 12 full innings, walking seven and allowing six hits.

That's not all Grove did in the season's first two months. He also had three saves and he struck out 10 hitters over eight innings in the one and only game he lost.

Grove ended up winning 31 games. He won the MVP, narrowly edging Lou Gehrig.

19. Babe Ruth, 1921

Babe Ruth was in a league of his own back in the day. Truth be told, I could dedicate a single list to his hot starts, and his hot starts only.

The one that sticks out the most, though, is the hot start the Bambino got off to in 1921. In 25 games from April 18 through May 26, Ruth was hitting .398/.500/.925 with a 1.425 OPS. He had 12 home runs and 32 RBI.

Heck, he even had three triples in those 25 games.

He went on to finish with a then-record 59 home runs and 171 RBI.

18. Jimmie Foxx, 1932

Jimmie Foxx was dangerous before the 1932 season rolled around. But that year, he made it abundantly clear early on that he wasn't taking any prisoners.

Foxx was batting .500 in the third week of April, and after the first game of a double-header on May 21, he was hitting .459/.535/.910 with a 1.445 OPS. He had 12 home runs and 39 RBI.

Foxx finished the season with a .364 batting average, 58 home runs, 169 RBI and a 1.218 OPS. He won his first of two straight MVP awards.

The so-called "right-handed Babe Ruth" had some great seasons in his 20-year career, but it's fair to say that he peaked in 1932.

17. Hank Aaron, 1959

Hammerin' Hank Aaron had better seasons than his 1959 campaign, but he never got off to a better start than he did in '59.

In 14 games in April, Aaron hit .508 with a .967 slugging percentage. He hit six home runs and drove in 15, striking out just three times in 61 at-bats.

Aaron kept rolling right into May. He hit a high-water mark on May 22, as his line stood at .468/.500/.872. His OPS was 1.372, and he had 13 home runs and 39 RBI in 33 games. 

Hammerin' Hank went on to collect a career-best 223 hits with a career-best .355 batting average that season. He finished with 39 home runs and 123 RBI.

16. Willie Mays, 1964

Opinions differ, but the general consensus is that 1965 was the greatest year of Willie Mays' career.

Maybe so, but the hottest start to a season he ever enjoyed came a year earlier in 1964.

Mays and the San Francisco Giants opened the season on April 14. From then through the end of the day on May 14, Mays put up the kind of numbers that make sabermetricians blush.

In 24 games over that span, Mays hit .449/.466/.929 with a 1.395 OPS. He slugged 13 home runs, drove in 34 runs and stole four bases.

Mays would cool off and finish the year with a sub-.300 batting average, but he did hit 47 home runs and drove in 111 RBI.

15. Matt Kemp, 2012

You know you had a good month of April when people like Jayson Stark of ESPN.com are going through the trouble of asking if you had the greatest April ever.

That's the kind of April Matt Kemp had this year. In 23 games, he hit .417/.490/.893 with a 1.383 OPS. Of his 35 hits, 16 went for extra bases, including 12 home runs. He drove in 25.

That's a pretty good April by any set of standards, and none of us should be too quick to forget it.

No, really. The spotlight soon shifted to Josh Hamilton in the month of May, but Kemp was the game's best player for the first month of the 2012 season. Per FanGraphs, he had a WAR of 2.3, which ranked him well ahead of every other player in baseball.

It's too bad his hammy had to start acting up.

14. Larry Walker, 1997

Larry Walker had one of the greatest Aprils ever in 1997, as he finished the month with a batting line of .456/.538/.911. He hit 11 home runs and drove in 29 runs.

Walker didn't slow down when the calendar turned to May. At the end of the day on May 29, he was hitting .415/.500/.777 with 15 home runs and 47 RBI.

It was to be Walker's best year as a pro. He finished the year with a line of .366/.452/.720 to go along with 49 home runs and 130 RBI. He won the National League MVP.

Believe it or not, Walker didn't achieve the bulk of his success at Coors Field. His home/road splits for that season are remarkably even.

13. Josh Hamilton, 2012

Josh Hamilton is in the midst of what could go down in history as the greatest contract year ever in any sport.

Hamilton, the 2010 American League MVP, was absolutely on fire from the start of the season through the end of the day on May 12, 2012.

At that point, Hamilton was hitting .402/.457/.877 with a 1.334 OPS, 18 home runs and 41 RBI. In the span of a week, he hit nine home runs and drove in 18 runs.

Per ESPN.com, only Hamilton and Philadelphia Phillies great Cy Williams managed to homer 18 times in their teams' first 34 games of the season.

Hamilton, however, only played in 31 of Texas' first 34 games.

12. Pedro Martinez, 2000

It was going to be pretty hard for Pedro Martinez to top the season he had in 1999, but he managed to do it anyway in 2000.

It was evident early on that Pedro was on his way to a special season. He won eight of his first 10 decisions and pitched at least seven innings in all 10 of his starts between April in May. 

In those 10 starts, Pedro had a 1.05 ERA and 104 strikeouts in 77.1 innings pitched. His WHIP was 0.77.

Pedro finished the season with an 18-6 record and a 1.74 ERA, giving him his second straight Cy Young Award.

11. Randy Johnson, 2001

Randy Johnson set a single-season record for K/9 in 2001 at 13.41, and he also finished with a personal-best 372 punch-outs that season.

The Big Unit got over 100 of those in his first nine starts of the season. He only had a 4-3 record and a 3.01 ERA in those nine starts, but he had 104 strikeouts in 68.2 innings pitched. That's a K/9 of 13.72.

Johnson arrived at that number by striking out at least 10 hitters in eight of his first nine starts, the highlight of which was a 20-strikeout performance against the Cincinnati Reds.

Ultimately, the Big Unit won the third of four straight Cy Young awards.

10. Stan Musial, 1958

Stan "The Man" Musial was never more manly than he was early in the 1958 season. He was hitting .528 at the end of April, and the hits kept coming for him in May.

Musial hit a couple high points in May. After a brief slump lowered his batting average below the .500 mark, he collected three hits on May 14 to get it back to an even .500. 

A few days later on May 17, Musial was sitting on a batting line of .485/.555/.842 with eight home runs and 23 RBI. He had a 1.396 OPS.

Musial leveled out after that, finishing the season with a mere .337 average and 17 home runs. From May 18 on, he actually hit under .300.

9. Paul O'Neill, 1994

Paul O'Neill won his one and only batting title in 1994, finishing the year with an impressive .359 batting average.

That average was down over 100 points for where O'Neill was in late May.

From April 4 through May 25, O'Neill was hitting .472/.574/.824 with a 1.398 OPS. He had 10 home runs and 35 RBI, and he had 19 multi-hit games in the Yankees' first 37 games.

O'Neill was able to keep his batting average up over .400 until midway through the month of June. 

Hats off to B/R Featured Columnist Ely Sussman for the tip.

8. Lou Gehrig, 1927

Lou Gehrig had been in the league for a few years by the time the 1927 season rolled around, but that was the year he officially "arrived."

The Iron Horse was on fire early in the '27 campaign, and he reached an early peak upon the conclusion of a double-header on May 27th.

At that point, Gehrig was hitting .415/.494/.852 with a 1.345 slugging percentage. He had 48 RBI to go along with 11 home runs.

He ended the season with 47 home runs and 175 RBI, and he won the first of two MVP awards that he would win during his career.

7. Mickey Mantle, 1956

Mickey Mantle had one of the greatest seasons of his career in 1956, and it started off with a bang.

Mantle set a tone early by hitting two home runs in the Yankees' first game of the season, and he had truly absurd numbers after the Bombers wrapped up a double-header on May 30.

In 41 games, the Mick was hitting .425/.516/.882 with a 1.399 OPS. He had 20 home runs and 50 RBI.

Mantle finished the season with a then-career-best 52 home runs and 130 RBI, and he ultimately won his first MVP award.

6. Ubaldo Jimenez, 2010

Ubaldo Jimenez is living proof that hot starts can be easily forgotten. Thanks in large part to his present-day struggles, a lot of people don't remember just how dominant Jimenez was in the first two months of the 2010 season.

That year, Jimenez finished the month of May with a 10-1 record and an ERA of 0.78. According to the Associated Press, the only other two pitchers in MLB history to win 10 of their first 11 starts with an ERA under 1.00 were Juan Marichal in 1966 and Eddie Cicotte in 1919.

As if that wasn't awesome enough, one of Jimenez's 10 wins was a no-hitter against the Atlanta Braves on April 17.

Jimenez had 15 wins by the All-Star break, but would finish with just 19. He hasn't been the same since.

5. Barry Bonds, 2002

A year after Bonds set the single-season record with 73 home runs, he started by blasting four home runs in the Giants' first two games in 2002.

Teams decided to avoid pitching to him whenever possible, and that led to some pretty gaudy numbers.

At the close of the day on May 18, 2002, Bonds had a batting line of .386/.615/.921 and an OPS of 1.536. He had 15 home runs and 55 walks.

Bonds finished the season with a .582 on-base percentage, a new single-season record. It stood until he broke it with an OBP of .609 in 2004.

4. Fernando Valenzuela, 1981

A lot of sports crazes seem silly in retrospect. Goodness knows "Tebowmania" comes to mind.

"Fernandomania," however, was legit.

In 1981, Los Angeles Dodgers rookie lefty Fernando Valenzuela started the season with eight consecutive complete-game victories, five of which were shutouts. After eight starts, he had a perfect 8-0 record with a razor-thin 0.50 ERA.

Valenzuela went on to win the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, and his Dodgers would win the World Series against the New York Yankees.

It's worth noting that a strike that season robbed Valenzuela of a handful of starts. Had his season not been interrupted, there's no telling what kind of numbers he could have ended up with.

3. Barry Bonds, 2004

With all respect to Matt Kemp, Larry Walker and all the other fine April hitters throughout MLB history, the best month of April in the league's history was had by Barry Bonds in 2004.

In 23 games, Bonds achieved a batting line of .472/.696/1.132. 

Yup, he was on base nearly 70 percent of the time, and he had a slugging percent up over 1.100. His OPS was up over 1.800. He hit only 10 home runs, but he walked 39 times in those 23 games.

Nobody was getting him out. Period.

Bonds finished that season with an OBP over .600 and an OPS over 1.400.

2. Barry Bonds, 2001

Barry Bonds hit a career-high 49 home runs in 2000, which came courtesy of a much more brawny physique that nobody had any objections to at the time. 

Bonds' 2000 season was great, but little did we know that we hadn't seen anything yet.

Bonds started blasting home runs at a superhuman rate in 2001. By the end of April, he had 11. By the end of May, he had 28 home runs to go along with a batting line of .308/.466/.899 and an OPS of 1.366.

It was right around then that he started getting the so-called "Bonds treatment." He received eight intentional walks in the season's first two months and 27 intentional walks in the season's final four months.

He finished the season with a record 73 home runs.

1. Mark McGwire, 1998

Mark McGwire made a statement right out of the gate in 1998, homering in each of St. Louis' first four games while driving in 12.

The balls kept flying off McGwire's bat, and it was clear by the end of May that something was up. At the end of the month, he was hitting .322/.492/.839 with a 1.331 OPS. He had 27 home runs and 68 RBI next to his name.

McGwire, of course, went on to break the single-season home run record by hitting an even 70 home runs with an otherworldly .752 slugging percentage. 

That's good for the 10th-best slugging percentage in a single season in baseball history.