Mike Hessman, Minors Home Run Leader, Retires

Mike Hessman, Minors Home Run Leader, Retires

He's the real-life version of Crash Davis, with 433 career homers in the minors. After 20 years in professional baseball, he is still only 37 years old, but 37 is ancient for a minor leaguer.

In addition to his 433 minor league dingers, he also demonstrated some excellent power in his very brief stints in the bigs, especially when he played for the Tigers, for whom he swatted 9 homers in only 78 at bats. Unfortunately, he could never quite put it all together well enough to establish an MLB career. His major league weaknesses (tremendous power, anemic OBP) were reflected throughout a minor league career in which he batted only .233, with a .316 OBP. In 20 years in the majors, minors and foreign leagues, he never had a year in which he batted higher than .287, and some of those years were below the Mendoza line. There was one year when he was the International League MVP, but even that season was filled with negatives. He batted only .254, struck out 153 times in 117 games, and was successful on only 35% of his steal attempts, so as MVP seasons go, it was not likely to strike fear into Mike Trout's heart.