Over his last 28 Days, Gamel has hit .391-.427-.483. He's hot, it goes without saying.
But is he AL Player of the Month hot (if we were talking about a single month's worth of games)? Turns out he isn't. Oh, his Avg. and OBP. get him there, but PotM's have to hit homers, usually lots of them. Gamel hasn't hit one in the last 28 days.
I went back and looked at the past 25 years of AL Players of the Month award winners; only twice since May of '93 has a player won that award with less then 4 HR's in the month. Joe Mauer did it with 1 HR (.452-.528-.624) in June of '06 and Pudge Rodriguez hit 3 in June of '04 (.500-.542-.733).
But the very interesting thing is that in the 4 months immediately prior to May of '93 EACH winner hit fewer than 4 HR's.
April '93: John Olerud (3)
Sept. '92: Frank Thomas (2)
August'92: Edgar Martinez (3)
July '92: Edgar Martinez (3)
And in April of '92, Robbie Alomar did it with 3, HR's as well. So it happened 5 times in one calendar year, then twice in 25 years.
Before April of '92, you have to go all the way back to Paul Molitor, who did it with 2 HR's in April of '89.
Before '89, guys like Carney Lansford, Scott Fletcher, Wade Boggs, Alan Trammel, Lou Whitaker, Rod Carew (x5), Hal MacRae, George Brett, Ron LeFlore, Robin Yount and Al Kaline were PotM's, with less than 4 HR's. April of '74 is the 1st PotM award, that I can find at B-R) for the AL. The NL went back further. The only guys in the AL to ever win the PotM Award with ZERO homers in a month were Willie Wilson (Sept. '81) and Alfredo Griffin (Sept. '79).
By my best count, 20 AL players have won the Player of the Month Award for a month in which they hit less than 4 HR's. Of those 20, 10 are in the Hall of Fame: Rodriguez (will be this summer), Thomas, Alomar, Molitor, Boggs, Trammel, Carew, Brett, Yount and Kaline.
Edgar should be. 'Nuff said.
Joe Mauer has a MVP, 3 GG's, 5 Silver Sluggers, 3 batting titles, 51 WAR and a .307-.390-.444 career line. He will get HoF votes. A lot of them. Considering that he won all his awards as a catcher, he might just get in. Led the league in OBP twice, once in Slugging (Edgar never did that) and once in OPS. He's a 50/50 bet.
Lou Whitaker was a 5x All Star, a 4x Silver Slugger at 2B, a 3x GG'er and worth 75 WAR over his career. Cano has been worth 64 over his career. Whitaker has one more GG and one less SS than Robbie. There is a strong argument that Sweet Lou belongs in the Hall.
Olerud was a .295-.398-.465 CAREER hitter. He's not quite a HOF'er (maybe, see below), but he was terrific. 58 WAR playing 1B.
Carney Lansford? DaddyO remembers him. Doc and G, too. He won a batting title and was a 120 OPS type of player, over his 9 or 10 mid-career years.
Hal McRae? .290-.351-.454 for his career. Only 28 WAR, because he spent so much time as a DH, but he was a heck of a hitter.
Scott Fletcher? Who he? A good glove IF with a total of 34 HR's and 32 WAR for his career. What's he doing on this list?
Ron LeFlore twice led the league in SB's (topping out at 97) and was a decent CF. Only 1 All Star appearance for him, so he's an outlier on this list, too. But he was a pretty good player for a number of years. Over a 4 year span, '76-'80, he hit .316, .325, .297, .300.
Wilson won a GG in CF, two SS's and a batting title. From '79-'82 he hit .315, .326, .303, .332 and then hit .301 in '84. He led the league in SB's once, and in 3B's FIVE times. In his prime, Willie Wilson was a superb ballplayer.
Alfredo Griffin was a RoY, has 3 World Series rings and a SS GG. But over a long career he was only worth 3 WAR. I am surprised at that. Fletcher, never regarded as a player of Griffin's caliber, has 32 in his career. Such is the regard that comes with those WS rings.
Anyway, I found out that you basically can't win the PotM with 0 HR's, and unless you're bound for the Hall (or can sniff it from where you finish) you almost can't win it with less than 4 HR's. 20 guys have done it, 10 are HoF'ers and 4 more (Edgar, Cano, Mauer, Whitaker) should be in or are border-line. 1 more, Olerud, can just faintly smell the HoF from his neighborhood. You can argue that he had as good a career as Billy Williams and Jim Rice, better than Tony Perez. In fact, this article does: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/john-oleruds-hall-of-fame-case/
That WOULD make 15/20. 75%.
Weird, no? I find it really weird.
So assuming Gamel has had a 0 HR, but still a PotM-type of the last 28 days (really, he hasn't), then he is bound for glory or he's Ron LeFlore*. And even that's dang good.
*Your mileage may vary.