1. On May 12th, 2006, Prince Fielder hit the 8th longest HR of the season, at 472 feet. For 2006 Prince finished 6th overall for Average Standard Distance at 404.5, almost 15 feet further than the NL average. For the 2006 Brewers, 8 of the longest 13 HRs left Prince's bat.
2. Prince received 2 points in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. He led all Rookies in HRs (28), finished second in BBs (59), and among rookies with at least 300 PA finished 5th in OPS (.831). With a couple of clear exceptions, the list of Brewers to receive votes for the Rookie of the Year Award seems to be more of a curse on a career rather than a blessing. If you ranked these careers first to last I think Prince is already in the middle somewhere after just over one season.
Milwaukee Brewers to receive Rookie of the Year votes: Scott Podsednik-2003, Alex Sanchez -2002, Jeff D'Amico -1996, Steve Sparks -1995, Jose Valentin -1994, Pat Listach -1992 (won), Doug Henry -1991, Don August -1988, Teddy Higuera -1985, Paul Molitor -1978, Pedro Garcia -1973, Bill Parsons -1971,
3. Prince was named 2003 USA Today minor league player of the year, he had turned just 19 years old a couple months earlier.
4. John Sickels, in his "just for fun" Crystal Ball Projection of Prince Fielder's career, predicts Prince to collect over 2,000 hits and 400 HRs. He has him down for only 20 SB bases, i'd wager he breaks that before he turns 24 years old.
5. It took Prince Fielder 628 ABs to hit his first 30 major league HRs. Let's, just for fun, have a look at the 6 active players in the top 30 for HRs all time, and see how long it took them, and how old they were.
| Career | First 30 HRs | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Rank | HR | AB | Age | G | AB | AB/HR | Date |
| Prince Fielder | 30 | 628 | 22.4 | 196 | 628 | 20.93 | 10/01/2006 | |
| Barry Bonds | 2nd | 734 | 9507 | 23.0 | 205 | 769 | 25.63 | 07/25/1987 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 10th | 563 | 8298 | 21.7 | 225 | 833 | 27.77 | 07/26/1990 |
| Frank Thomas | 23rd | 487 | 7422 | 23.2 | 168 | 587 | 20.20 | 08/11/1991 |
| Jim Thome | 26th | 472 | 6409 | 23.9 | 210 | 682 | 22.73 | 08/08/1994 |
| Manny Ramirez | 27th | 470 | 6575 | 22.9 | 138 | 440 | 14.67 | 05/26/1995 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 29th | 464 | 6767 | 21.0 | 162 | 595 | 19.83 | 08/07/1996 |
The first 3 columns show career stats for HR rank, HRs and ABs. The last 5 columns show stats at the time of player's 30th HR.
The Milwaukee Brewers all-time HR leader is Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount with 251. Yount did not hit his 30th HR until 6/1/1979, his 2,844th AB. At Prince's current pace, he'd need about 4,625 more ABs to take Younts place at the top of that list. That's 8 more healthy seasons as a Brewer simply maintaining his current HR rate.