What [sic] is the last team to have an infield with each player hitting 20+ HR in the same season?
The answer, which, admittedly, I did not know, is the 2005 Texas Rangers. If I recall correctly, they weren't much of a pitching ballclub, but they could hit.
In any event, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling attempted to guess those infielders with the sterling accolades:
Ron: Teixeira.
Gary: Teixeira. Young. Kinsler.
Ron: A-Rod.
Gary: He would be good.
Ron: Blalock.
Let's sort this out.
Mark Teixeira is correct - he is good at hitting home runs. He had 43 of them for the 2005 Rangers while playing first base.
Michael Young, the Texas shortstop not renowned for his power, would also be correct - he had 24 taters.
Hank Blalock, the recently injury-riddled third baseman, did hit 25 home runs for that team as well.
Now here's where it gets interesting:
Ian Kinsler, currently the Rangers' second baseman, made his major league debut in 2006, a full year after this powerful infield's prominence, and in that year he hit only 14 home runs. He hit 20 in 2007.
A-Rod is a great guess - after all, he won the MVP in 2005! Surely he must have hit 20 homers! In fact, he hit 48, playing for the New York Yankees, for his second year. Anyone who followed baseball might have remembered the 2004 ALCS, which happened to feature A-Rod. So, yeah, Ron, about two years late on that one. It's not like you're a baseball analyst for a New York team, or even make appearances as an analyst on national TV.
And, of course, you guys strangely agreed on an infield of five men, only three of whom played for the Texas Rangers in 2005 – you might have left out that homer-hungry former Hiroshima Carp legend Alfonso Soriano, who walloped 36 dingers in his second and final season in Texas.
Hey, it wasn't like Soriano was traded to a team in the Mets' division right before 2005 - and Ron Darling certainly wasn't the Nationals' analyst before becoming getting the SNY gig, or anything.
Keep up the good work, guys.
