Backup Outfielder #1 Brady Anderson (with Orioles from 1988-2001)
.257/.364/.430, 1759 G, 7464 PA, 110 OPS+ (with Orioles)
Brady Anderson was a 10th round draft pick by the Boston Red Sox in the 1985 amateur draft. It took him a few years to reach the big leagues. The Red Sox called him up in 1988, but traded him to the Orioles that July. Anderson was traded along with Curt Schilling for Mike Boddicker. This was long before Schilling would be known for his bloody sock and offensive tweets. In fact, Twitter hadn’t yet been invented.
Anderson didn’t become a full time player until 1992, when he was 28 years old. To that point of his career, he was a .219/.313/.306 hitter. Then something clicked in 1992 when Anderson made his first all-star game and hit .271/.373/.449. This would become his established level of production for the next few years. From 1992 to 1995, he hit .265/.367/.436 and averaged 34 steals per year.
Then came the 1996 season, one of the great fluke years of any player’s career. After never hitting more than 21 home runs in a single season, Brady Anderson broke out with a 50-homer, 110-RBI year that saw him slug .637. Amazingly, Anderson didn’t lead the league in any of those three categories. Mark McGwire had 52 bombs and slugged .730. Juan Gonzalez slugged .643. And there were 17 American League players who had more than 110 RBI. Anderson’s 50 HR/110 RBI season earned him a ninth place finish in MVP voting.
After reaching such great heights, Anderson regressed back to the player he had been in the four seasons before the 50 homer year. From 1997 to 2000, he hit .267/.384/.449 and averaged 20 homers and 23 steals per year. He played his final season with the Orioles in 2001, then finished out his career with Cleveland in 2002.
So, that 50-homer year is interesting. Below is an average season for Anderson in the four years before and the four years after his 50-homer year, with his 50-homer year to compare them to.
141 G, 647 PA, 94 R, 18 HR, 64 RBI, 28 SB, .266/.376/.442—Surrounding Years
149 G, 687 PA, 117 R, 50 HR, 110 RBI, 21 SB, .297/.396/.637—1996
Because it was such a fluky years, rumors of steroid use have always been there for Brady Anderson. Whether he used or not, we just don’t know. He was well-known in Baltimore as a health nut who was in tremendous shape through working out hard and eating right. Would that make him more or less likely to use PEDs?
In this column at The Hardball Times, Jeremy Greenhouse makes the argument that it’s odd for people to think that Anderson would use PEDs for one year, have a monster season, then quit using them the following year when he’s playing for a new contract. Greenhouse writes, “It’s fall of 1996, and Anderson, having realized the magic of performance enhancing drugs, is coming off a 50-homer year. He’s heading into his final year with the Orioles before he hits free agency. But he comes to the decision that he doesn’t want to be remembered as a cheat, so he dramatically throws all his pills and vials into the trash, possibly with the help of an intervention from Zack Morris. So Brady hits 18 homers in 1997, but he does it clean.”
It does seem unlikely that a guy would use PEDs and increase his season-high in home runs from 21 to 50, then stop using PEDs. And it’s not like Brady Anderson is the only player in baseball history with such a fluky year. Another Baltimore Oriole, second baseman Davey Johnson, had one of the flukiest of fluky years in 1973 when he suddenly hit 43 home runs and had 99 RBI, with a .546 slugging percentage. Other than this season, Johnson never hit more than 18 homers, drove in more than 72 runs, or had a slugging percentage higher than .443 in full-time play.
Anyway, Anderson is the choice as one of the backup outfielders on the Orioles all-time 25-man roster.