Most Exclusive Trio In MLB History
- Thread starter LuteHawk
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I’m exclusive with OP’s mom...
...at least she thinks we are.
...at least she thinks we are.
Hank Aaron....3,771 hits, 755 home runs, .305 Batting average
Willie Mays....3,293, 660 home runs, .301 Batting average
Miguel Cabrera....3002 hits, 502 home runs, .310 Batting average
Willie Mays....3,293, 660 home runs, .301 Batting average
Miguel Cabrera....3002 hits, 502 home runs, .310 Batting average
Aaron is the only member of the 3,500 hit, 750 home run club.
Miggie and Pujols are contemporaries, but I consider Pujols to be a little better. 2 WS rings is better than 1 triple crown.
Miggy is in damn good company. The Hammer still doesn't get his due (at least not completely) as the man who passed the Babe, but he was so much more than that. He wasn't quite the "do it all" player that Willie was (and in my opinion, the Say Hey Kid was the GOAT) but he could do a little bit of everything and was a class act to boot. Willie, too.
Injuries are the great equalizer. Most MLB 'experts' projected Mike Trout to surpass them all, but injuries have derailed that train. Father time caught up to Griffey, Jr.. Drinking & whoring got Mickey. Age and PED withdrawl spanked ARod. Barry put up great numbers as he got older, but his accomplishments are tainted and he is not in the HOF yet. Plus he was not a team guy or a good teammate.
To be fair, Ruth would have had untouchable numbers - almost certainly 800+ HRs - had Boston not used him as a pitcher for five years.
Or, maybe, they realize what they have and hold on to him and he never plays with Murderer's Row.
Yeah...forgot about Alberto but he hasn't had a .300 season in over a decade. His last .280+ season was 2012.
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I think a lot of casual sports fans forget just how common - and debilitating - injuries can be in baseball. It's not a 'contact' sport in the sense of gridiron football, hockey or boxing, but there is still a fair degree of contact involved (good example would be what Pete Rose did to Ray Fosse when trying to score in the 1970 All Star Game - Fosse thankfully recovered but was never the same) and lots of arm and leg injuries happen when trying to make defensive plays.
I do agree about Junior, but unfortunately he also had his share of injuries - even in his prime. And he was having a tremendous season in 1994, perhaps what could have been the finest of his career (he had 40 HR in just over 100 games - 50 HR was an almost-certainty had he played 150+ games and could have come close to 60). And what's even more amazing is that he played the game clean (I have a much deeper appreciation for him now because of that) and was better than most players that were drinking the juice. And he was a likable fellow too, much more than Barry (who didn't have to juice, if he stayed clean he would have been a HOF'er anyway).
And while Trout is widely seen as the best (at least offensive) player today, he's not going to finish with a .300 average. Low-mid .290s is more likely. Nothing he can help of course, just a product of the current era where people whiff at all-time high rates and the "average" player is batting closer to .250 these days rather than .270 like those of us who grew up in the 80s-early 00s have become accustomed to. I'm starting to think it's going to be a matter of "when" and not "if" we'll see a league batting champion fail to hit .300. Yaz has the record of the lowest batting average while winning a batting title (I think it was .301 in either 1967 or 1968, which was definitely in a more pitcher-friendly era).
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With the number of career ABs Pujols has racked up, it’s going to be nearly impossible for him to get his average back up over .300. He’s currently at 11,140 at bats with 3,308 hits. If he gets 300 more ABs this year (he’s currently at 26 in 8 games), he’d have to hit .413 in those ABs (124 for 300) to get his career average to .300.
I get where you're coming from, but he was traded to NY in early 1920. That's the year most sports historians use as the beginning of the Live Ball Era (and the two eras literally used two different balls), so any additional home runs the Babe might have hit prior to 1920 as a positional player would have likely been relatively marginal. Prior to 1920, even the best home run hitters struggled to hit much more than 15 home runs a season. Even 1918 (the Babe's first full season, at least as a hitter) he hit "only" 11 home runs in approximately 400 at-bats. Certainly very good in his day, but even if Boston realized his penchant for power early on he still would have been well short of 800. I'd wager he might have tacked on 40, maybe 50 more.
Ted Williams would have easily made that list, and maybe have topped it, had he not lost 4-5 seasons serving the military in WWII and Korea.
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Pujols probably should have retired a couple of seasons ago. He has absolutely nothing left to prove.
He and KGJ have had some pretty comparable careers. They had phenomenal runs with their original teams (Cards and Mariners respectively) and after becoming free agents and signing with another team, they never could quite match their previous production (lots of factors to blame - age, injuries, playing in different parks/leagues, etc.) but still remained productive enough so as not to derail their chances of making it to Cooperstown. Junior had a lifetime average north of .300 prior to his Cincinnati stint, but finished with a disappointing (but still more-than-respectable) .284. Pujols had some crazy-strong seasons early on and had an average north of .320 at one point, but could never quite duplicate his production in LA (either as an Angel or Dodger) and will end his career sub .300 too. Again, nothing to necessarily be ashamed of, but certainly there is a degree of disappointment because while he was in St. Louis, he appeared all but destined to become the only player in MLB history to amass 3000 hits, 500 home runs, and a .315 lifetime average. Well, two out of the three ain't bad at least.
looking into a long term crystal ball, i'd think a guy like soto might have had a shot, except that the nats now suck so bad that he's got no one protecting him, and won't for some time.
Ted Williams is probably the greatest batter in MLB history (not necessarily hitter as IMHO they aren't 100% synonymous). He had a batting eye like no other, and was so good at the plate that he literally got on base every other time he stepped up to the plate (.482 lifetime OBP, which is the best in MLB history). There are some damn good hitters that don't have that high of a SLUGGING percentage.
Nolan Ryan is in the most exclusive club. 7 no hitters. If you want to let Koufax in and make the club 4 or more no-hitters, fine. But OP club is pretty damned impressive.
They hand out WS rings every year.
Only 10 players have a triple crown, and it’s only happened 12 times.
Pujols is a HoFer, and I’m a Cardinals fan, but being on a winning team isn’t an accomplishment in the same league as individually mastering your craft to the degree a triple crown winner has.
When Boston gave Ruth more at-bats in 1918, he tied for most HR in MLB. Boston started using him primarily as a hitter in 2019 and he hit 29 HR...more than double the guy who finished second. That was with the dead ball...spitters and scuffing allowed....balls rarely changed during the game. Even at an avg of 25/year for his first five years, he's over 800 easily. Regardless, Aaron wouldn't have gotten close. Ruth was literally a freak of nature at the plate.
OTOH, if Boston has a guy in his sixth year batting a career .320+ with ~100 HR and they trade him...to the Yankees???
It's hard to extrapolate what his power numbers would have looked like from 1915 through 1918 had he been a slugger and not a pitcher. On one hand, yes the 1919 season was a bit of a transitional season as he hit 29 home runs (good for 1 HR every 15 AB) which was double what anyone else hit that season, but he also hit a grand total of 7 home runs between 1914 and 1917 in 361 at-bats, which isn't all that impressive, even using that era's standards. In 1918 his ratio was about 1 home run per 30 at-bats (minor correction - he hit 11 home runs in 317 at-bats, he had nearly 400 plate appearances). He was also a lot less burly during his pitching stint (he was about 200 pounds as a pitcher, or maybe just a few pounds north of that) and was probably still developing his upper-body strength before being traded to the Yankees.
I still stand by the 50 extra home runs because I don't really count the 1914 season as the Babe was there for little more than a cup of coffee. 1915-1918 he hit a total of 18 home runs in just under 700 at-bats. I'd imagine that he'd have probably gotten about 1,000 more at-bats in that time frame purely as a slugger (for sake of simplicity I'll give him an even 1700 at-bats in those four seasons) and adding 50 to 18 is 68, so that equates to exactly one home run per 25 at-bats which I think would be perfectly reasonable for him given the era and the fact that he'd have still more or less been getting his feet wet at that point. And since most players tend to have some sort of a "learning curve", the ratio would probably have been closer to 1 HR/30 AB in 1915 and would have been closer to 1 HR/20 AB by 1917 (1918 at the latest).
My uncle was an outfield coach for the A's when Henderson first came up. Yeah, his club of one (which will remain a club of one given the death of the art of baserunning) is the real exclusive one. I've never seen anyone start as explosively and run as powerfully, and that includes tailbacks. The timing data basically indicated that unless he screwed something up or you guessed right on a pitch out, he was impossible to throw out.
Went to a game in Baltimore, with tix on the A's batting circle when uncle was coaching. These three O's fans were giving Ricky unmitigated shit to start the game ("hey Ricky, you gonna steal first base"?), and Ricky being Ricky, he was more than happy to engage them. So to start the game, Ricky walked, stole second, stole third, and scored on a shallow sac fly to left field. As he trotted to the dugout, he gave them a little wink.
I agree with this. The "most exclusive" clubs shouldn't have more than one player. Nolan with career Ks or no-hitters, Bonds with the career and single season HR records, Ripken with games played, Pete Rose w career hits, etc. If there's three players, it's not that exclusive.
At first my reaction was that with the move to three true outcome and shifts, this might be something that could be done again. Then it occurred to me that with the counter-move to reliever specialization, it won't. So yeah, Nolan Ryan and Ricky Henderson. (Or, say, Cy Young and Ricky Henderson)
I wouldn't know how to do it with no hitters, but for most stats using a nice round figure is easier and cleaner. 700 (or 750) HRs, 4000 hits, 5000 Ks, .300 (or .350) BA, 2000 straight games, etc.
Maybe with no-nos you use 5. But going with a round number is just cleaner, even if it's more than 1 person. 5k strike outs and 5 no hitters...Nolan Ryan.
Amazing to think that if his HR's are removed that he's still in the 3000 hit club.
After you turn 40 it's pretty tough to keep that average up. Now that he's 50 it's probably not going to happen.
Cleaning out my dad's place last weekend, found a hank aaron autographed ball my uncle had given to my dad.
I think they lowered the mound in or after 1968 to put some offense back into the game. Bob Gibson's ERA was something like 1.15. Pitchers dominated. Then Seaver and Ryan came along in '69 and the Cubs choked.
Only about 3% of MLB players get a WS ring every year. That's pretty elite. Nobody just hands those babies out.
Maybe that's the curse of being a TC winner in modern times. Yaz never got a ring, either. Or Barry.
Yaz won a TC, but he's not held in the same breath (except in Booooston) as contemporaries like Aaron, Mays or even Frank Robinson. Winning a TC doesn't give you a special trump card from scrutiny. Yeah, I know it's dangerous to use that word/name on this board.
After a game against the L.A. Dodgers, I got an autograph
of Hank Aaron outside the Milwaukee Braves locker room.
It was free and I thanked him for it. He stood about 5' 11"
and weighed about 180 lbs. His wrists were big and that is
where he got the torque speed to hit home runs. He was
not a muscle bound athlete.
of Hank Aaron outside the Milwaukee Braves locker room.
It was free and I thanked him for it. He stood about 5' 11"
and weighed about 180 lbs. His wrists were big and that is
where he got the torque speed to hit home runs. He was
not a muscle bound athlete.
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