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.