500 Doubles Teammates

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Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez have both joined the 500 double club this year, Jeter on May 3rd against Kansas City, and Rodriguez yesterday (May 21st), also against the Royals.

How unusual is that? After the jump, I’ll take a look.

Here is the list of teammates in the 500 double club.

Rk Player 2B From To 6 Age G PA AB R H HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS Tm
1 Tris Speaker 792 1907 1928 19-40 2790 11991 10195 1882 3514 117 1529 1381 395 .345 .428 .500 .928 PHA
  Ty Cobb 724 1905 1928 18-41 3034 13078 11434 2246 4189 117 1938 1249 680 .366 .433 .512 .945 PHA
2 Al Simmons 512 1924 1938 22-36 2023 8880 8164 1450 2773 298 1749 578 663 .340 .385 .547 .932 WSH
  Goose Goslin 500 1921 1938 20-37 2287 9829 8656 1483 2735 248 1609 949 585 .316 .387 .500 .887 WSH
3 Al Simmons 539 1924 1943 22-41 2211 9512 8753 1506 2924 307 1825 615 737 .334 .380 .535 .915 BOS
  Joe Cronin 508 1926 1943 19-36 2045 8598 7380 1208 2236 165 1395 1022 679 .303 .390 .471 .861 BOS
4 Pete Rose 746 1963 1986 22-45 3562 15890 14053 2165 4256 160 1314 1566 1143 .303 .375 .409 .784 CIN
  Tony Perez 505 1964 1986 22-44 2777 10861 9778 1272 2732 379 1652 925 1867 .279 .341 .463 .804 CIN
5 Dave Winfield 540 1973 1995 21-43 2973 12358 11003 1669 3110 465 1833 1216 1686 .283 .353 .475 .827 CLE
  Eddie Murray 532 1977 1995 21-39 2819 11995 10603 1545 3071 479 1820 1257 1403 .290 .362 .482 .844 CLE
6 Tony Gwynn 543 1982 2001 22-41 2440 10232 9288 1383 3141 135 1138 790 434 .338 .388 .459 .847 SDP
  Rickey Henderson 503 1979 2001 20-42 2979 13040 10710 2248 3000 290 1094 2141 1631 .280 .402 .420 .823 SDP
7 Luis Gonzalez 570 1990 2007 22-39 2455 10144 8816 1382 2502 346 1392 1114 1175 .284 .368 .481 .849 LAD
  Jeff Kent 537 1992 2007 24-39 2177 9063 8058 1278 2338 365 1459 776 1470 .290 .357 .504 .861 LAD
8 Jeff Kent 560 1992 2008 24-40 2298 9537 8498 1320 2461 377 1518 801 1522 .290 .356 .500 .855 LAD
  Manny Ramirez 507 1993 2008 21-36 2103 9006 7610 1444 2392 527 1725 1212 1667 .314 .411 .593 1.004 LAD
9 Manny Ramirez 547 1993 2010 21-38 2297 9757 8227 1544 2573 555 1830 1329 1809 .313 .411 .586 .998 LAD
  Garret Anderson 522 1994 2010 22-38 2228 9177 8640 1084 2529 287 1365 429 1224 .293 .324 .461 .785 LAD
10 Derek Jeter 501 1995 2012 21-38 2467 11345 10043 1793 3148 245 1211 1007 1673 .313 .383 .449 .832 NYY
  Alex Rodriguez 500 1994 2012 18-36 2443 10809 9351 1846 2817 634 1908 1186 1948 .301 .386 .564 .950 NYY
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/22/2012.

So, this is only the 10th time that teammates have both been at 500+ career doubles.

Note that I omitted Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon of the 2011 Rays because, well, Ramirez is already all over this list and, more importantly, he had already announced his sudden retirement last year before Damon reached the 500 mark. Also, for the record, Tony Perez did not reach the 500 mark until after Pete Rose’s final game in 1986 but, according to a contemporary press report, Rose did not officially announce his retirement until after the following season, at the MLB winter meetings in December 1987.

Note also that this is only the second time that two teammates have both reached 500 doubles in the same season. The first time was Al Simmons and Goose Goslin of the 1938 Senators. Goslin reached 500 with the last hit of his career on July 28th against Detroit and Simmons followed him a couple of weeks later, on August 12th against Boston.

 

67 thoughts on “500 Doubles Teammates”

    3. Nick Pain

      The year before his brief stint in the Bigs, with the Nashville Volunteers of the Southern Association he hit 65 doubles. That could certainly be a reason.

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  2. Lawrence Azrin

    Hitting 500 doubles is a decent HOF indicator. It isn’t quite as dramatic as 3000 hits (56 to 30), but only six of the 41 players with 500 or more doubles who have been on the HOF ballot have not been elected, and one was because of PEDs (Palmeiro).

    All 11 eligible players with 600 or more doubles have been elected (Rose not eligible, Biggio and Bonds not yet on the ballot).

    Strange that no one has 50 doubles in a season since 1936.

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    1. Doug Post author

      Actually, Lawrence, there are lots of players with 50 doubles in a season. Among recent players, Brian Roberts had done this three times, and Pujols, Helton, Garciaparra, Biggio and Edgar Martinez have done it twice.

      Intersting, though, that you mention 1936. There were 7 players with 50 doubles that season, the most in any season since 1901.

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      1. Lawrence Azrin

        OOPS! –

        I meant _sixty_ doubles in season (last done in 1936), sorry. Fifty doubles in year used to be a fairly rare occurence, but in the past 20 years, it happens more often than not for league leaders.

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    1. Doug Post author

      Obviously you mean 3,000 hit teammates, John. Certainly aren’t many of them. Speaker and Cobb on this list (plus Eddie Collins) is another example.

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      1. John Autin

        Am I misinterpreting the table, Doug? Looks like the sum of doubles and HRs is over 1,000 for both Winfield & Murray as of 1995, when they played together with Cleveland.

        Hence, 1,000 extra-base-hit teammates. 🙂

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        2. Doug

          So, here are the 1000 XBH teammates.

          1928 PHA (Cobb, Speaker)
          1995 CLE (Murray, Winfield)
          2009 LAD (Ramirez, Thome)

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    2. Doug Post author

      Appears these are the only 3000 hit teammates.

      1927 PHA (Cobb, Collins)
      1928 PHA (Cobb, Speaker, Collins)
      1995 CLE (Murray, Winfield)
      2001 SDP (Gwynn, Henderson) Rickey got his 3000th hit in the final game of Gwynn’s career.

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  4. birtelcom

    According to the ESPN version of Bill James’ “Favorite Toy” career projection formula, Miguel Cabrera was predicted (as of the beginning of this season) to end up with around 626 career doubles, which would knock Hank Aaron out of 10th place on the all-time doubles list, assuming nobody else does so first. The same formula gave (when the 2012 season began) Cabrera a 13% chance of reaching 793 doubles, which would break Tris Speaker’s all-time career doubles record.

    But the same method had Albert Pujols with a head start on Cabrera as of the beginning of 2012, with a projected final number of 676 doubles and a 16% chance to pass Speaker. Speaker has held that all-time career doubles record for 90 years, having first taken it over in 1922.

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    1. Doug Post author

      Interesting that the chances are that high. I would have guessed Speaker’s record would be one that would never be broken, given that today’s hitters hit so many more HR than the dead-ball guys (after all, there are only so many AB in a season).

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      1. Lawrence Azrin

        Speaker was in the Top-10 for doubles in all but three of his full seasons, and #1 eight times. He also had a huge home advantage, which I cannot look up completely, but from 1918 till the end of his career, it was 290/179.

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        1. Ed

          Stan Musial “might” have had a chance to break the record had he not missed the ’45 season due to the war. He had 51 the year before, and 50 the year after. Penciling him in for 50 for his missed year leaves him 17 short of Speaker. Not sure he would have some back for another year in an attempt to break the record.

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    2. bstar

      birtelcom, I’ve been watching Pujols and Cabrera’s doubles totals for a few years now because I too am convinced they are the best choices to get to 700 doubles. Their chances looked even better a couple years ago before offense overall began to regress a bit back to more normal numbers.

      Both of these two players’ doubles rate should begin to decline in their 30s, but Pujols especially has a great career doubles rate, one every 16.41 PA. While this isn’t close to Tris Speaker at 15.14 or Joe Medwick at 15.08, Albert would need ~13,000 plate appearances to get to the 792 mark if he were to maintain his current rate of doubles. To get to 700 doubles for his career with the same rate, Pujols would need ~11,500 plate appearances, a number that Derek Jeter is creeping up to this season.

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  6. topper009

    I see the 1986 White Sox had Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver, both with over 300 wins. The next year Carlton joined Phil Niekro in Cleveland, also with 300+ wins. The 1891 Giants had Mickey Welch and Time Keefe, over 300 wins each.

    I’m not sure if there are any other instances of this.

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    1. Doug Post author

      I checked too Topper. I think that’s all there are.

      Good catch BTW on Welch and Keefe – like Seaver and Carlton, teammates only for part of one season.

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  7. Ed

    I’ve never been a Pete Rose fan but he led the league in doubles 5 times, all between the ages 33-39. And these weren’t chintzy doubles totals either, he had 42 twice, 45, 47, and 51.

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      1. Lawrence Azrin

        It’s a little low, but not unusually so for the era. I took the ten years before (1966-75) and after Rose’s 42 (1977-1987, skipped 1981/strike), and the NL average for the doubles leader was 44.8. The AL average over those years was 41.6.

        It _is_ very low recently; the only leader in the 2000’s lower is Votto last year (40), and the average is 51.5.

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  8. Dalton M

    It’s funny–the one pair I definitely thought would be on this list isn’t. The ol’ Killer B’s from Houston, Bagwell and Biggio. Turns out Biggio had 668 and Bags had 488. It is interesting to note though, that they combined for 1,041 doubles while playing together (1991-2005). Has anything like that ever been done? Two players playing for the same franchise accumulating 1000+ two-baggers?

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    1. bstar

      Dalton, you may have nailed the only pair. The next best I can find are Hal McRae and George Brett, who combined for 895 doubles for the Royals from 1973-1987. Robin Yount and Paul Molitor had 868 for the Brewers from 1978-1992. There’s got to be a few I missed out there.

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    2. Nick Pain

      I’ve got Red Schoendienst and Stan Musial at 1,077. Musial was on the Cardinals for all of Red’s time with them, from 1945 to part of 1956, and then 1961-63.

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      1. Richard Chester

        I think your Musial-Schoendienst total is over-stated. During their first overlap from 1946 to June 12, 1956 they combined for 732 doubles. Fot their second overlap from 1961 to 1963 they totaled 63 doubles. Their overall overlap total is 795 doubles.

        Their combined career total is 725 + 427 = 1152. From just 1941 to 1944 alone Musial’s total was 135 so obviously their overlap total is easily less than 1017.

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        1. Nick Pain

          Yeah, my mistake. I weeded out Schoendienst’s Cardinals doubles, but I then added them to all of Musials as opposed to the overlapping years. Serves me right for trying to respond at 7 in the morning.

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    3. richard chester

      As soon as I finish my breakfast I am going to check Pete Rose and Tony Perez unless somebody else wants to do it now.

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      2. Ed

        If I did the math correctly, Perez only had 339 doubles with the Reds. So I doubt he and Rose exceeded 1,000.

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          1. nightfly

            Thought I had one, but Aaron and Mathews (Braves ’54-’66) stopped at 884. Ruth and Gehrig (Yankees ’20-’34) were at 826. Is there any way to search for long-time teammates in the PI, or is it a matter of checking everyone and their twin page-by-page?

          2. Richard Chester

            Nightfly: I have a book which lists players who have been teammates the longest, that’s how I decide whom to search.

          4. bstar

            Wish I had that book, too. I just pulled up a list of anyone over 400 doubles and was just eyeballing it. It was a fun exercise. Aaron and Mathews were one of the first duos I checked but Eddie hit an amazingly low number of doubles for having such prodigious power.

          5. Richard Chester

            Reply to #49:

            That book is the SABR Baseball List & Record Book, March 2007 Ed. I don’t know if a later edition has been issued. I was at Barnes & Noble this morning and the same 2007 Ed. was still on the shelf. Perhaps you could try Amazon.

          6. Doug Post author

            This is fairly easy to do with P-I.
            – Use Season Finder and Totals for Multiple Seasons.
            – Select the date range of the player of interest with the shorter tenure with a club
            – Limit search to just that club
            – Display list sorted by statistic of interest (in this case, doubles)

    4. Lawrence Azrin

      Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke played together forever (1897-1915), but only got to 900. I’ve included all of 1897, even though Wagner started half-way through the year, and 1913-15, when Clarke made token playing appearances as a player-manager.

      Whitaker and Trammell played practically their entire careers together, but only got to 830. It’s harder than you think, there’s only been 56 players total with 500 or more doubles, and most spent considerable time with another team.

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          1. Lawrence Azrin

            Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke have 412 triples as teammates, with the loose definition of “teammate” I used in #40 above.

            Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford had 391 triples as Tigers.

            Since these are four of the top seven all-time leaders (and the top three), I don’t see any other teammates topping those two.

      2. nightfly

        Posada and Jeter ended up at 871, debuting together in 1995 and Posada hanging them up last October. If Jorge had gotten more than 70 games in his first three seasons, they could have gotten up around 950 or so. (Of course, nobody hangs around one more year to set a record like “most doubles as teamamtes,” so even if they knew I doubt Posada would be back now.)

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  9. nightfly

    Dalton’s really hit upon a great question – most doubles by teammates, as teammates. Researching the answer has led to some amazing tidbits.

    Take the Tigers. As it turns out, they had four of their top-nine franchise doublers playing simultaneously from 1914-1917: Ty Cobb (665), Sam Crawford (402), Harry Heilmann (497), and Bobby Veach (345). Cobb, Veach, and Hielman overlapped for ten seasons (!), 1914-1923. And yet, none of them topped 785 (Cobb with Hielmann). And number two behind Cobb, Charlie Gehringer, had 574 doubles as a Tiger, but debuted in 1924, giving him only three seasons with Cobb in his late 30’s.

    Pittsburgh and Paul Waner is a similar story: long stretches with Pie Traynor, Arky Vaughn, little brother Lloyd, and Gus Suhr, but nothing long enough to fully use enough of his 558 doubles to reach Biggio and Bagwell.

    For percentage, at least, I don’t think we’ll beat Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammel: they debuted together, and Trammel only had two doubles in his partial season without Lou, so combined, 830 out of their 832 total doubles were as teammates, 99.76%.

    (BTW, I erred with Aaron and Mathews, including Hank’s ’67-’74 totals after Mathews left, so they only got to 698 doubles, not 884. Math is hard!)

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    1. Lawrence Azrin

      I think that the most logical approach to finding teammates with 1000+ career doubles would be:
      1) look at the list of players with 500+ career doubles
      2) see which players were one-team (or close to that) players
      3) think of long-time teammates for these one-team players

      I think we’ve found most of the obvious candidates, the only new one I found was Jeter/Posada (492+379 = 871).

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      1. bstar

        So summing up everyone’s research so far, here’s the very unofficial list of career doubles by teammates:

        1. Bagwell/Biggio (1991-2005) 1,041
        2. Brett/F White (1973-1990) 963
        3. Wagner/F Clarke (1897-1915) 900
        4. S Rice/J Judge (1915-1932) 896
        5. Brett/H McRae (1973-1987) 895
        6. Jeter/Posada (1995-2011) 871
        7. Yount/Molitor (1978-1992) 868
        8. Rose/Perez (1964-76, 1983) 851

        Unless I left out a duo, which is entirely possible.

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        3. Doug Post author

          For Rose/Perez, should be 1964-76 and 1984-86. Subtracting Rose’s doubles with the Reds in ’64 (before Perez debuted), ’77 and ’78 and with Montreal in ’84, I get 471 for Rose and 339 for Perez for a total of 810, not 851.

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          1. Richard Chester

            Doug: I found from 1964 to 1976 with the Reds Rose had 458 and Perez had 313. With the Phils in 1983 Rose had 14 and Perez had 11. Then again with the Reds from 1984 to 1986 Rose had 29 and Perez had 26.That adds up to 851.

          2. bstar

            I just rechecked the math also and got 851. Perez did debut with the Reds in ’64, Doug.

          3. Doug Post author

            Thanks guys.

            I forgot they were teammates in Philadelphia.

            Here’s my tally.

            Rose
            64 to 76: 458 – 10 (before Perez debut in 64) = 448
            83 to 86 (excl. Montreal) – 43. Total = 491.

            Perez
            64 to 76 – 313.
            83 to 86 – 37 – 6 (when Rose was in Montreal) = 31
            Total = 344.

            Grand total = 835.

          4. bstar

            Ok, you’re subtracting Rose’s doubles pre-Perez in 1964. I’d wager we would have to do a lot of recalculating if we look at it that way. I think the general assumption we all used was that if they were teammates on the same team for any part of that year, all their doubles were counted (other than playing for another team for part of the year, e.g. Pete Rose’s doubles in 1984 with Montreal were not counted).

          5. Richard Chester

            Ref. my post #60: Perez had 6 doubles in 1984 prior to Rose joining the Reds, I missed that so my corrected value is 845.

            Doug: I think that 64-76 value of 458 already excludes the 10 doubles Rose got in 1963.

          6. bstar

            We’re going to have to re-do most of these duos, then. For example, George Brett had a similar cup of coffee with the ’73 Royals, so we will have to subtract Frank White and Hal McRae’s doubles that year before Brett got called up. Same thing with Jeter and Posada–looks like Posada had two cups of coffee in ’95 and ’96 and only a third of a season in ’97, so that’s going to decrease that duo’s total by quite a bit.

    2. Dalton M

      I thought I should check where a pair involving Speaker would rank, given that he finished atop the all-time leaderboard. As it turns out, my research has given me the pair of Speaker and Joe Sewell, combining for 564 doubles in 1920-26 with the Tribe. Certainly a bit lower than I had expected.

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  10. Dalton M

    Fun little tidbit inspired by the Rushmore threads and this one:

    Top doubles pairs for the 4 most recent expansion teams
    Rockies – Helton/Walker – 576 (1997-2004)
    Marlins – Lowell/Gonzalez – 422 (1999-2005)
    D’Backs – Gonzalez/Finley – 371 (1999-2004)
    (Devil) Rays – Crawford/Upton – 361 (2004-10)

    With how often the Marlins organization gets dismantled, I would have thought their pair would have an even lower total.

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  11. Ernesto

    I’m late to the boat on this, but I came up with 1022 for Cobb and Crawford.

    Crawford – 1905 thru 1917 – 357 doubles
    Cobb – 1905 thru 1917 – 665 doubles

    That puts them at #2 behind Bagwell and Biggio.

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    1. Doug Post author

      Thanks Ernesto, but I think you miscalculated on Cobb – I have him at just 376 doubles for those seasons. 665 were Cobb’s total doubles as a Tiger, from 1905 to 1926.

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