Quiz – all-time greats … and one other guy

Here is a list of all-time greats, plus one player who presumably doesn’t belong with this group. Except that he does belong.

These are the only players since 1901 to accomplish what feat.

Hint: the feat is in multiple parts.

I have managed to stump our esteemed panel here (a pretty rare feat). The answer is that the above players are the only ones with a season since 1901 of 120 runs, .600 slugging, and HRs of less than one-third of extra-base hits.

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Ed
Ed
11 years ago

All of them have more walks than strikeouts. Is that part of it? Or is that simply an artifact of the era when most of them played?

Mike L
Mike L
11 years ago

I don’t know, but I did find it fascinating that, in 1930, he tied (with Jimmy Foxx) for the AL lead in strikeouts with 66. That’s the lowest since the end of the Dead Ball Era, and the third lowest in league history. Now, you have players K’ing 66 times by June

Voomo Zanzibar
Voomo Zanzibar
11 years ago

???

A season with
120 runs
200 hits
40 doubles
115 rbi
ops+ over 1.000

and…?

Voomo Zanzibar
Voomo Zanzibar
11 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Morgan holds the record for:

Most at bats, extra inning game, 11, 7/10/32 (tied)

Voomo Zanzibar
Voomo Zanzibar
11 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

It was the Eddie Rommel, Johnny Burnett, Jimmie Foxx game:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE193207100.shtml

Voomo Zanzibar
Voomo Zanzibar
11 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Batted at least .349 while only having the third best BA on his own team?

bstar
11 years ago
Reply to  Doug

So how many multiple parts/parameters are there?

kds
kds
11 years ago

Obviously Ed Morgan is the odd one out. I doubt very much that it could be a career accomplishment since his career was so much shorter. (Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and many others have had BB > K.) So it is most likely either a seasonal feat or game level, or a combination. Morgan, in 1930, had 6 games with 4+ hits. (And a PI search shows that that isn’t it. It probably isn’t something that would show up in a game level PI search, since those only go back to 1918, after Lajoie had retired.)

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago

They all appear on a list with BA>.349, 2B>43, 3B>11 and BB<100 along with a bunch of other players. The trick now is to eliminate that bunch.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago

I did not see post 12 when I submitted post 13.

Brent
Brent
11 years ago

SH > 10 and OPS > 1.000????

bstar
11 years ago

Doug, can all three accomplishments be found in Standard Batting?

Brent
Brent
11 years ago

I think 350 Total bases or more has to be one criteria. Several of these guys (surprisingly in some cases) only did it once.

Nick Pain
Nick Pain
11 years ago

I thought I may have had it searching OPS > 1.000, hits > 200, and SH > 19. The players to do that are Morgan, Heilmann, Cobb, Hornsby, Speaker, Terry, Gehrig. No Lajoie, Musial, or Sisler though. Musial’s high in sacrifice hits was 10.

Brent
Brent
11 years ago

Blech, no matter what 3 criteria I put in the play index, Kiki Cuyler’s 1930 season follows me around like the plague.

bstar
11 years ago
Reply to  Brent

Hmmm, perhaps Kiki’s season gives us a clue that OPS > 1.000 is one of the criteria. Cuyler only OPS’ed a .970. Is that one of the criteria, Doug?

no statistician but
no statistician but
11 years ago

How about more doubles than triples and home runs in a season with OPS of over 1.000? That would be two out of three.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago

I ran R>121, HR<27, BB103. The top 11 guys were the ten on the list plus Al Simmons. I’ll keep manipulating.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago
Reply to  Doug

I came up with this but it’s more than three parts and it’s not round. I sorted by OPS and set R>121, HR<27, BB103. The top 13 on the list included the ten guys on the list (two guys appeared twice) and Al Simmons. All the OPS’s were above 1.000. Maybe someone else can proceed from that point, I have run out of patience.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago

Typo corrections: BB103 instead of BB103.

Doug: I know you said OPS is not part of the answer but I did the best that I could.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
11 years ago

Let me try again, BB is less than 95 and RBI is more than 103 instead of BB103.

oneblankspace
oneblankspace
11 years ago

More extra-base hits than strikeouts?

no statistician but
no statistician but
11 years ago

Doug:

Give in. you’ve got everyone flummoxed, you subtle devil.

Ed
Ed
11 years ago

I don’t think “give in” is the proper term. Doug should declare victory!

Voomo Zanzibar
Voomo Zanzibar
11 years ago

120 runs
45 doubles
10 triples

(That’s not the answer (Ruth, Dimaggio, T Williams and others did it as well), but those are among the remaining criteria that Doug has not eliminated)

Nick Pain
Nick Pain
11 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Can’t be runs and doubles, because in #9 Doug says only one of those in a parameter. This has proven to be a stumper up to this point.

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Nick Pain

Actually, Doug didn’t say that “only” one of those was a parameter. But I don’t think he would deliberately mislead us with a statement that is true by logic but false by common understanding.

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago

I’ve no idea of the answer, but I’m focusing on why Ruth and Williams don’t make the list. For a minute I thought that was a definite sign that doubles was a key factor, since neither Ruth nor Williams ever had more than 45 in a season (44 was the high for Ted). However, Terry made the list, and his high was 43 doubles. Assuming that Morgan’s 1930 season has to be the one involved in the feat, and comparing that to Ruth’s 1921, the Babe wins or ties in every Standard Batting category except AB and SH. Also interesting… Read more »

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Doug

Nice one, Doug!

P.S. Of all players since 1901, I think Jim Bottomley (1928) and Lefty O’Doul (1930) came the closest without making the list. Both qualified on R and SLG, but their HRs were exactly 1/3 of their XBH (not less than 1/3, as stipulated). Also, Al Simmons (1925) missed by 1 point of SLG.