Writing about the traditional Triple Crown of baseball — one hitter leading his league in batting average, homers and runs batted in in the same season — may seem like a corny throwback to some readers on this site, as many of you have long since learned to replace batting average and RBI with more nuanced statistics for evaluating player performance. But nostalgia and tradition have their own attractions, and perhaps once we become sufficiently comfortable with the fact that batting and RBI are simply eccentric old stats that are more trivia than important measures of talent, we can also relax and have a little harmless fun with them.
In that spirit, I propose to revive the old Triple Crown, which seems to have become well nigh un-achievable in its traditional, league-leadership form, by moving it to the division-leadership context, where a Triple Crown remains very difficult to pull off in contemporary baseball but is at least possible. It seems to me acceptable to treat the six divisions as the equivalent of the old pre-1969 leagues in this respect. After all, the divisions have served much the same purpose since 1969 as the leagues did from 1901 through 1968. The six divisions are the current settings for the race to first place over the long regular season, just as the leagues were before 1969. If a player can lead his division over a full season in BA, HRs and RBI, I would argue his achievement is reasonably comparable to the league-wide Triple Crown of pre-division days. Details, including the historical division Triple Crown winners, after the jump.From 1901, when the basic AL/NL structure of major league baseball fell into place , through 1968, the last year before the first divisions within leagues were established, the Triple Crown was achieved by 11 men a total of 13 times, nine times in the American League (twice by Ted Williams) and four times in the National League (twice by Rogers Hornsby). 1901 through 1968 is 68 seasons, and with two leagues per season, that means there were 136 chances for a hitter take a league Triple Crown. So with 13 successes, the Triple Crown was achieved just about once in every ten opportunities during the pre-division era of modern baseball.
It is well-known that no one has achieved a Triple Crown at the league level since the division era began. But what if we look at the division level instead of the league level? If I’ve counted correctly, there have been 11 division Triple Crowns achieved since 1969.
The first hitter to lead his division in batting average, homers and RBI all in the same season was Billy Williams of the Cubs, who led all NL East hitters in all three categories in 1972. Williams that season led the NL as a whole in batting average, trailed only Johnny Bench of the NL West Reds in RBI and only Bench and Nate Colbert, of the NL West Padres, in home runs.
The only other NL East Triple Crown winner that I have found was Vlad Guerrero of the 2000 Expos, who that season was third in the NL in BA, fourth in HRs and fifth in ribbies, but in each case trailed only NL West and NL Central hitters. The NL East in one form or another has now been around for 42 seasons (not counting 2012), so the average has been an NL East Triple Crown just once every 21 years.
On the AL East side, it’s been even sparser. The only winner of an AL East Triple Crown that I’ve found has been Jim Rice, in 1978. Rice led the whole AL that season by wide margins in both homers and RBI, and trailed only Rod Carew of the Twins and Al Oliver of Texas in batting average. Rice’s .315 BA just nudged out the .314 by Lou Piniella of the Yankees to give Rice the highest batting average in the AL East that year,completing his division Triple Crown.
In the 43 seasons of AL West competition, from 1969 through 2011, I have not found any year in which any individual hitter led the AL West in BA and HRs and RBI. So in 86 divisions races combined played by the AL West and AL East divisions since 1969, there has been only one division Triple Crown that I’ve found.
Turning to the NL West, through 2006 there had been only one division Triple Crown there. That was by George Foster back in 1977, when he led the entire league in homers and RBI and was fourth in the NL in batting average behind three NL East guys (Dave Parker, Rennie Stennett and Garry Templeton). But beginning in 2007, the NL West has erupted with three division Triple Crown guys in five years: Matt Holliday in 2007, Carlos Gonzalez in 2010 and Matt Kemp this past 2011 season. In ’07, Colorado’s Holliday led the NL in batting average and RBI while his 36 homers trailed only Prince Fielder and Adam Dunn from the NL Central and Ryan Howard from the NL East. In 2010, the Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez, who Colorado received in return for trading Holliday, led the league in BA, was second in runs batted in to Albert Pujols, and was behind only Pujols, Adam Dunn and Joey Votto (noe of them NL Westies) in the home run category. And then this past season, Matt Kemp took the NL HR and RBI crowns while coming in third in the league in batting average behind only Jose Reyes and Ryan Braun, both of whom played for teams outside the NL West.
We’ve covered the East and West Divisions of the NL and AL, which leaves just the NL Central and AL Central, each of which began play in 1994. Each Central Divisions has had two division Triple Crown winners. The NL Central had a division Triple Crown in its very first season of existence, 1994, when Jeff Bagwell led the NL in RBI, was second to Tony Gwynn in batting average and second to Matt Williams in homers. 1994 was a quirky year for stats because the season was cut short by the players’ strike. Whether Bagwell could have maintained his division Triple Crown status over a full season we’ll never know, and if you prefer not to count this truncated season as the source of a true division Triple Crown , I can understand. For purposes of this discussion, let’s include it for now.
The other NL Central Triple Crown came in 2008 when, after years of falling just short, Albert Pujols finally led the division in HR, RBI and BA in a single year, although he didn’t lead the league as a whole that season in any of the three categories and his 37 homers tied with Ryans Braun and Ludwick for the best in the NL Central (Adam Dunn had 40 homers in 2008 and played most of the year for the NL Central’s Reds, but hit only 32 before moving out of the division to Arizona).
In the AL Central, in 1998 Albert Belle of the White Sox took a division Triple Crown by coming in second in the AL in homers to Junior Griffey (from the AL West), second in RBI to Juan Gonzalez (AL West) and third in batting average to Bernie Williams and Mo Vaughn (both from the AL East). And the very next year, 1999, Manny Ramirez of Cleveland took the AL RBI crown, finished behind only AL Westies Ken Griffey and Rafael Palmeiro in homers and finished fifth in the AL in batting average but ahead of all other AL Central hitters, including his Indians teammate Omar Vizquel who trailed Manny by the tiniest margin (.33333 for Manny, .33275 for Vizquel).
That makes, all told, 11 different hitters with a division Triple Crown since 1969. That’s the same number of different hitters who won a league Triple Crown between 1901 and 1968. But there were 136 league pennant races from 1901 through 1968, while there have been 208 division races since 1969 (if you include the six unfinished races of 1994). So even though each of the divisions has always included a smaller number of teams than were included in the eight-team and ten-team leagues of 1901-1968, which presumably ought to improve the chances of there being a Triple Crown winner in any particular case, the number of Triple Crown winners per race has nevertheless declined in the move from league Triple Crown winners per league race in the pre-division era to division Triple Crown winners per division race since 1969. That’s another indication of how tough it has become in the last few decades of baseball to be simultaneously a season leader in batting average, homers and runs batted in.
Oof, Doug — I didn’t mean to trample on your post. We must have hit “Publish” at virtually the same time.
No worries. I’m trying to unpublish mine, but doesn’t seem to be working. Or, maybe it is working – can you see my post on the HHS page anymore?
Yeah, the unpublish did work. After I signed out, can’t see it anymore.
Rickie Weeks is having a horrible year. He is having a year as bad as Dunn had last year. He’s terrible.
Juan Pierre is having a solid year, even though he doesn’t play everyday. He has about 80 fewer PA’s than Shane Victorino, but I don’t think it hurts Pierre to not play everyday. His mindset at the plate is so simple I don’t think it matters.
I think that depends on the definition of the word “solid”. Yeah, he’s been decent so far for the Phillies, but he just doesn’t have the power a corner outfielder needs.
Almost all of his offense now is in batting average; both his walk rate and isolated power are lower than his career averages, which are quite mediocre to start with. He’s not stealing bases as prolifically, so all he’s got is the .324 BA. That sounds really good, BUT – his BAbip is at .348, higher than any other year of his career. Once that BAbip regresses to his career average (.314) he is going to be a well below-average offensive player.
Compared to the rest of the Phillies lineup (except Ruiz and Pence) he is doing rather well, though.
I don’t disagree, the Phils lineup right now is weak. Pierre looks more comfortable back in the NL. He’s never gonna walk much.
Timmy P,
Yeah, Juan Pierre is a decent short-term solution especially with Utley and Howard still out, but they’ll need to eventually upgrade in LF.
Despite all the knocks he takes in “advanced stats” circles (which I mostly agree with), I am glad that there is still room for a deadball-era player like him in MLB today.
Bobby Murcer came oh so close in 1972. Led the AL East in HR and RBI, and finished 2nd in BA, less than a point behind Carlton Fisk, who barely qualified with 514 PA.
Speaking of close misses, in 1948 Stan Musial led the league in R, H, 2B, 3B, RBI, BA, OBP, SLG, TB, (and of course OPS+ and WAR), missing the triple crown by one HR.
It was once a famous season, certainly the most dominant performance ever with reference to the standard categories. I’m not skilled enough to search for how close any player has come since to duplicating it—a challenge for any of you stats guys who wants to take it up—but it is one of the reasons that I hold to the view that Musial was a better player than Ted Williams overall, notwithstanding Williams’ better career stats in OPS+.
Williams 1949 season, now that I look at it, might come the closest: R, 2B, HR, RBI, OBP, SLG, TB. Missed the batting title by a hair to George Kell. Not close at all in triples or hits.
In 1978 Jim Rice led the AL in G, PA, AB, H, 3B, HR, RBI, SLG, OPS, OPS+ and TB. His .315 BA placed him third behind Carew at .333 and Oliver at .324.
First of all, hello everyone. I haven’t commented in like a month (maybe more). Not sure why, just haven’t felt like it.
Anyway, if I were looking for similar seasons, I’d look to Ty Cobb’s 1909 and 1911.
In ’09, Cobb won the AL Triple Crown. And he led in R, SB, and H (only time a player has EVER led those 6 categories). He also led in OBP, SLG, and TB.
In ’11, he led in the exact same categories as Musial, except he missed OBP (Shoeless Joe edged him .468-.467) – but he led in steals instead.
Those two are probably closest, I would think.
Also, Honus Wagner, 1908: he missed leading in R by one, but nailed all the other categories, and added the SB crown.
The other option I can think of is Nap Lajoie, 1901. He missed leading the league in 3B, but he led in HR instead.
Now, if y’all want to discount all/most of these because they’re so early in the 20th century, that’s fine by me. But while Musial’s leadership was unique, there are three guys (Cobb, Wagner, and Lajoie) who led in the same number of categories, though each of them had one difference from Musial.
All great seasons, Dr. D.
Thanks for commenting.
nsb, Ted Williams in 1949 had 194 hits, his career high and only 9 hits shy of league leader Dale Mitchell. The fact Williams didn’t lead the AL in hits this or any other year is due primarily to the high walk totals he achieved year after year, a testament to his plate discipline and to the respect wisely accorded him by pitchers.
To me, Williams’ 1949 season is as dominant a campaign as you will find, not least for the unique achievement of compiling 150 or more of each of walks, runs and RBI, an accomplishment I fully expect will remain unique.
Doug:
I wasn’t suggesting that Musial’s season was the best ever, although it is certainly a candidate for the top 25. I was pointing out that he came within 1 HR of running the table in terms of the hitting categories minus walks, which are a slightly different skill.
If you are a worshipper in the church of WAR, Musial’s 1948 season was better than Williams’ 1949, but so were 3 of Williams’ other seasons, including 1957 (?). I agree with you that his ’49 was best‚ for him, and probably in the top 25 or 50 all time.
No worries, nsb. 🙂
Just caught my attention when you picked out the ’49 season and then said “but he wasn’t close in hits”, which to me hardly seemed the point given the massive total of walks he compiled. Had Williams been less selective at the plate, no doubt he too would have regularly surpassed 200 hits.
Doug: It was interesting to learn about that 1949 factoid about Ted Wiliams. I was sure that Babe Ruth would have also accomplished it.
Ruth had 170 and 150 walks, but ‘only’ 131 and 137 RBI those years. That makes sense, a huge BB total means less chances to drive in a run.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring and state that despite not winning the Triple Crown or having the all-time highest WAR, Ruth’s 1921 season is the most dominant batting season of all time.
birtelcom, Apart from the interesting detail of these individual performances you’ve uncovered, your evidence that Triple Crowns in *any* sort of league-like context have become far rarer is completely counter-intuitive and very interesting.
What underscores this is that nearly half of the 13 pre-’68 TCs were, in fact, MLB TCs (Cobb ’09, Hornsby ’25, Gehrig ’34, Williams ’41-’42, Mantle ’56) – well spaced cases where one player led in all three categories over a field of 16 teams. That’s six cases over 68 MLB seasons, or ~ 1:11. We’ve had zero cases of a league TC winner since ’69 (43 seasons), with leagues averaging fewer than 16 teams (0 for 86).
It would be very hard to reach a convincing explanation by responsible analysis, since these are outlier performances and the initial step would be to collect data to discover patterns of deviation from norms in leaderboard competitions over the entire period, but the invitation to irresponsible speculation is almost irresistable. (I’m resisting now, but only because the dinner bell is ringing.)
Good points, epm. I will speculate on two reasons that we’ve seen no TC’s since ’67: (a) HRs are more plentiful, and (b) both HRs and RBI are more evenly distributed than they were in at least the first half of the 20th century, when batting orders tended to be much more conventional.
For example: Rogers Hornsby won two Triple Crowns, 1922 and ’25. In both those years, the MLB average for HRs per team game was less than 0.5, less than half our current rate. The scarcer an event is, the more likely are outliers such as Hornsby’s 42 HRs in 1922 (only 3 others in MLB with 30+, all in the AL), or his 39 HRs in ’25 (#2 in MLB had 33, #2 in NL had 24).
As for RBIs: In 1922, MLB cleanup men accounted for:
— 16.5% of all RBI;
— 19% more RBI than #3 men;
— 97% more than #2 men; and
— 102% more than leadoff men.
Compare that to last year’s NL: cleanup men accounted for:
— 15.5% of all RBI;
— just 7% more RBI than #3 men;
— 65% more than #2 men; and
— 63% more than leadoff men.
(Yes, NL leadoff men really did have more RBI than #2 men last year.)
Or just look at the 1922 Cardinals: Hornsby had 152 RBI, and the next guy had 79.
BTW, I used just the NL in the previous league comparison in order to compare apples to apples, i.e., no DH. But obviously, the DH in the AL is another reason that RBI are more broadly distributed now than in the past — not just because they’re spread over one more true hitter, but also because the absence of an “automatic out” at #9 has led to some evolution in the thinking about leadoff men. It’s no longer considered a “waste” to put a potent hitter in the top spot, at least in the AL.
Let’s take the RBI issue forward to 1967, the last TC: Batting orders hadn’t changed that much; RBI were still more concentrated towards cleanup men than they are now. In ’67, cleanup men accounted for:
— 16.4% of all RBI;
— 11% more RBI than #3 men;
— 78% more than #2 men; and
— 104% more than leadoff men.
That’s much closer to the 1922 distribution than to that of 2011.
John, This does not at all resemble the irresponsible speculation that had in mind. Now that dinner’s over, I was going to make the case that modern players lack the intangibles of the old time greats. Perhaps I’ll rethink that. . . .
Nice work, as usual!
Don’t give up just yet, e! Your theory is still tenable: If those power-hitting leadoff “men” had any cojones, they would demand further expansion so that they could assume their rightful place in a big-league batting order.
How about the Triple Frown? Leading the league in CS, GIDP, and Fielder’s Choice. Has anyone done that?
One hypothesis is that as more and more hitters have accepted the trade-off in which they get increased power in return for more strikeouts, batting averages for sluggers go down, reducing the chance of a Triple Crown.
I’ve tested this hypothesis as follows: Between 1901 and 1968, there were 101 batter seasons in which the batter hit 40 or more homers. The overall batting average by those hitters in those 101 seasons was .317. The overall batting average for all hitter-seasons from 1969 on in which a hitter had at least 40 home runs was .299, much lower than for the earlier period.
One might argue that this test is not comparing apples to apples because there have been many more 40-homer seasons since 1969 (203 to be precise) than there were in the 1901-1968 period, and that therefore we are not comparing the same elite level of sluggers. So I also looked at the group of 44-or more-homer seasons from 1969 on, so as to have a comparable size group (106 hitter-seasons) to compare with the 40-or-more homer 1901-1968 sample. The 44-home run season group for 1969-2011 had a .297 batting average, so the huge drop in batting average from the pre-division era remains.
The drop of 18 to 20 points in batting average among top sluggers (compared to a drop of just two to three points or so in overall league batting average) from the pre-division era to the division era suggests why league-level Triple Crowns have disappeared in the division era, and why even division-level Triple Crowns are very hard to achieve: sluggers just don’t hit for average the way they used to.
I love how random division assignment can be in baseball. The 1972 Cubs and Cardinals played in the NL East, while the Reds and Braves were in the NL West — and Atlanta and Cincinnati are well east of Chicago and St. Louis. That’s fun. 🙂
Here are the guys who won 2 of the 3 TC categories and finished second in the other and have not yet been identified on this blog . I hope the columns line up OK.
Player Team Year BA HR RBI Spoiler
Seymour CIN 1905 .377 8 121 Odwell 9 HR
Cobb DET 1907 .350 5 119 Davis 8 HR
Cravath PHI 1913 .341 19 128 Daubert .350 BA
Hornsby STL 1921 .397 21 126 Kelly 23 HR
Ruth NYY 1923 .393 41 131 Heilmann .403 BA
Ruth NYY 1924 .378 46 121 Goslin 129 RBI
Ruth NYY 1926 .372 47 146 Manush .378 BA
Foxx PHA 1932 .364 58 169 Alexander .367 BA
Foxx BOS 1938 .349 50 175 Greenberg 58 HR
Rosen CLE 1953 .336 43 145 Vernon .337 BA
If one of the holy trinity in The Triple Crown were changed from BA to OBA, it would be a somewhat more accurate indication of true greatness. All of the current TC winners would _still_ be TC winners except Joe Medwick (OBA of .414, 32 points behind) and Jimmie Foxx, but the revised TC list would also read:
Babe Ruth – 5 times (the big gainer here)
Ted Williams – 3 times
Mike Schmidt – 3 times
(Rogers Hornsby – still 2 times)
Gavvy Cravath – one time
Willie McCovey – one time
Harmon Killebrew – one time
Dick Allen – one time
Barry Bonds – one time
Foxx and Medwick would lose a TC. I did not research this completely, I’m just trying to make a point. The TC would still be a crude indicator; Ed Delahanty, Honus Wagner, Speaker, Gehrig, Foxx, Ott, Musial, Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Frank Thomas and Pujols would still not make this list. Oh well, it’s not 100% accurate…
I someone else has pointed this out, I apologize, but there were ten teams in each league from 1962-8, and from 1961-8 in the AL.
But thanks for the fun topic!
Thanks for catching that, Mike — I’ve fixed the error in the text.
I was curious as to what the most “dominating” of the Triple crowns was, by each category and collectively.
Mantle led in home runs by 20 in ’52, which seems like quite a spread, other than the Babe Ruth dominance of the ’20’s.
Ducky Medwick led the NL in RBI by a 39 in 1937.
Nap Lajoie led the AL in batting by an astounding 86 points in 1901. He could have won the batting title that year with 186 hits in his 544 at-bats, but he put up 232 hits.
As far as collective dominance, Hornsby’s 2 TC’s were quite dominating:
1922: Led home runs by 16, RBI’s by 20, and batting average by 47 points.
1925: Led home runs by 15, RBI’s by 13, and BA by 36 points.
His ’22 stats are remarkably balanced between Home and Away, with a slightly higher sOPS+ on the road than at home (216-208). In 1925, however, home field played a huge role for him as he batted .478 at home, with 9 more home runs and 19 more RBI than on the road.
A little more modern than that, Ted Williams was probably the most dominating with his 1942 season. He led the AL by 8 home runs, 23 RBI, and 25 batting average points. Despite Fenway being a notoriously friendly hitting park, his sOPS+ was better on the road (255-224) than at home.
Cobb in ’09, Hornsby in ’25, Gehrig in ’34, Williams in ’42, and Mantle in ’56 led not only their leagues, but all of baseball in the TC categories. At first glance, it appears to me that Williams’ 1942 season was the most dominating in that regard:
Led the majors in HR by 6, RBI by 23, and batting average by 25 points. Of course, it’s only logical that he would finish 2nd in the MVP voting.
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