B-Ref Top Ten: Batting Champs
One of the best ways to waste time online is by digging around on Baseball-Reference. This series explores the top ten Baseball-Reference pages in a given category for the purpose of gawking in amazement, curiosity, and wonder.These are not necessarily the ten best ever, but they are the ten most fascinating. Other installments can be found here and here.
Batting titles just aren’t what they used to be. Back in the early 20th century, batting average was practically the only stat that mattered. From 1911-14, the Chalmers Award- the earliest version of an MVP- was given to the batting champion in each league. (The award was actually a car!)
These days, we know that on base percentage is better than batting average, OPS is better than simple on base percentage, wRC+ is better than OPS, and so on. Batting average has been buried under so many improved metrics that it’s functionally irrelevant. Still, it retains its history and allure. When we say, “leading the league in hitting,” we aren’t talking about oWAR. It remains a special feat to win a batting title, if only for nostalgia’s sake. Here are ten batting champs whose Baseball-Reference page is worth your time.
10. Carl Yastrzemski
Carl Yastrzemski took over left field from Ted Williams, won his first batting title three years later, and remained in the Boston lineup for 23 years. He is, of course, an inner-circle Hall of Famer in his own right, and was arguably the best player in baseball during the latter half of the 1960s. Unfortunately, that was possibly the worst time in baseball history for a batter to peak. It was an extreme pitcher-friendly environment. Viewed through today’s offensively-tinged lens, his best numbers look merely great instead of stellar.
The most indicative sign of the times on his stat page is his 1968 batting average. .301 is a good year in any era, but shouldn’t bear the bold ink of a league leader. This was the “Year of the Pitcher,” in which Bob Gibson posted a 1.12 ERA and Denny McLain won 31 games. The other side of that coin is the lowest league-leading batting average in MLB history. Only five qualified AL batters managed to hit as high as .280, and Yaz was the only one above .290.
9. Bill Buckner
It’s amazing how one fleeting moment can obscure a lifetime of good work. Bill Buckner was indeed a batting champion, hitting .324 for the 1980 Cubs. His career spanned from 1969-1990, mostly with the Dodgers and Cubs. He also led the league in doubles twice and collected 2,715 hits in total. Offensively, he was sort of the Nick Markakis of his day- always good but never great, difficult to explain how he amassed so many hits.
That’s not why you know his name, of course. A hobbling, injury-addled 36-year-old fought through pain to suit up for the Red Sox, and couldn’t quite get his glove all the way down to collect Mookie Wilson‘s grounder. It wasn’t just the World Series that was lost in that moment; it was 22 years, 2,715 hits, and a batting title, too.
8. Joe Mauer
In 119 years of modern baseball history, there really aren’t many different players who have won a batting title. 20 players have led the league in hitting at least three times. Of these 20 men, Joe Mauer is unique because he was a catcher. In fact, he’s one of only three catchers to win even one batting title, and the only one ever in the AL.
In addition to the immense physical rigors of catching- which are often enough to suppress offense on their own– not many catchers even qualify for the batting title. Over a 162-game season, a player must accrue 502 plate appearances to lead the league in rate stats. In 2019, for example, only four catchers reached that threshold. Wilson Ramos‘ .288 mark was the highest of that group, which was nowhere near Christian Yelich‘s league-leading .329. In this light, Mauer’s three batting titles are that much more special. Before concussions moved him to first base in 2014, he owned an outstanding .323 career batting average.
7. Willie McGee
Willie McGee‘s first batting title, which he earned by hitting .353 in 1985, is emboldened in the customary black ink on his B-Ref page. His second one is a unique shade of dark gray. He paced the NL with a .335 mark in 1990, even though he finished the season in the AL following an August 29 trade from St. Louis to Oakland.
No one in the league he left behind could catch up to his fixed .335 average. Eddie Murray‘s .330 was the closest. However, McGee hit just .274 for the A’s, lowering his full-season average to .324. With George Brett‘s .329 leading the AL, he and McGee were the two league batting champs, and Murray was the overall MLB leader despite not technically leading either league.
6. Wade Boggs
With the possible exception of Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium, never was a batter and ballpark so perfectly matched as Wade Boggs and Fenway Park. Boggs’ sweet inside-out swing could have sprayed hits all over any ballpark, but he was ideally suited to pepper line drives off the Green Monster. From 1982-1989, he batted .383 in Boston. His home average surpassed .400 twice: .418 in 1985 and .411 in 1987.
Given that he also hit .322 on the road during the 80s, it’s no surprise he racked up five batting titles. His lowest single-season average in the decade was .325, and he hit at least .357 in each of his batting title years. He is the only player ever to achieve at least 200 hits and 100 walks in four consecutive seasons.
5. Tony Gwynn
When we’re talking about batting titles, we would be remiss to invoke Wade Boggs without Tony Gwynn. As a young player, he had a groundbreaking idea that watching video of himself hitting as well as opposing pitchers might give him an advantage. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine any athlete not using video, but it was a revelation in the 1980s.
Gwynn milked seven batting titles out of that video room. He batted .338 for his career, and his average never dipped below .309 in a full season. When the strike cut the 1994 season short in August, his .394 mark became the highest in a season by any player since…
4. Ted Williams
In some respects, batting average is one of the less impressive statistics on Ted Williams‘ ledger. He led the AL in on base percentage 12 times, surpassing .500 thrice. Walks, slugging percentage, OPS+, and even the conspicuous lack of strikeouts are well worth our focus.
.406. No one has reached the mythical .400 level since Williams in 1941. He slashed .406/.553/.735 that season- and didn’t win the MVP. Almost equally amazing is that, 16 years later, he hit .388 at age 38, then won another batting title the next year. Only Barry Bonds in 2004 would lead the league at a more advanced age.
3. Lefty O’Doul
“Lefty” is a nickname usually given to a pitcher, not an outfielder. Then again, Lefty O’Doul was a pitcher up through 1923- his age-26 season. He wasn’t a very good one, either. He featured a 4.87 ERA through 77.2 innings spread across parts of four MLB seasons, so he went back to the minors to reinvent himself as a position player.
This was a smart career move. He destroyed the Pacific Coast League over the next four seasons, garnering 973 hits. He returned to the major leagues in 1928 and hit .316. The following year, he led the NL with a .398 average in his first full MLB season as a hitter. He would earn another batting title four years later. Not bad for a pitcher.
2. Rogers Hornsby
Some players are just a cut above the competition. Rogers Hornsby won six straight batting titles (seven altogether) with comically, grotesquely high averages. Starting in 1920, he batted .370, .397, .401, .384, .424, and .403. Only an elite few batters from yesteryear topped .400 in one season, yet he averaged .402 over a five-year period from 1921-1925. He hit .382 for the entirety of the 1920s.
Let’s put this in context. Over the past five years, only two players have a higher on base percentage than Hornsby’s best five-year batting average: Mike Trout and Joey Votto (min. 1,500 PA). The highest batting average over that span belongs to Jose Altuve, whose .323 mark falls 79 points shy. Over the decade of the 2010s, Miguel Cabrera‘s .317 led MLB, 65 points less than Hornsby’s 1920s. However, his decade of dominance was still five points lower than the 1910s of…
1. Ty Cobb
No one in MLB has topped .366 in any season since Ichiro Suzuki in 2004. Ty Cobb averaged .366 over 24 years and 13,090 plate appearances. His career batting average and 12 batting titles are records that will never be broken- and he could have had even more! He hit .401, .389, .378, and .370 during years in which he didn’t lead the league. He posted batting averages of .350 when he was 20 and .323 when he was 41.
Getting hits by any means was Cobb’s true purpose, and he did his job better than anyone else ever. He remained superb at this function late into his career, even as Babe Ruth and home runs changed the game around him. Singles and stolen bases were no longer en vogue, as the long ball captured the attention of the baseball world.
Cobb bristled against the change in play. He believed smallball was “real” baseball, not a slug-fest with base-clearing blasts. It wasn’t for lack of ability, though. In an alleged effort to prove that he could hit home runs whenever he wanted, he supposedly told a writer that he would try to go deep for two games only. On May 5-6, 1925, 38-year-old Cobb went 9-12 with five home runs and a double, as the Tigers scored 25 runs in two games against the St. Louis Browns. He then returned to his old slash-and-run ways, finishing the season with a career-high 12 home runs.
