Saturday, September 29, 2018

2 more triple threat triple crowns

A couple of years ago I came up with what I called a "triple threat" triple crown. If a player led the league in a speed stat, a power stat and an on-base stat, he qualified.

I compiled a list of players I thought had done it and it is at this link

 https://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2015/07/triple-threat-triple-crowns.html

Please let me know if you think I missed someone.

Baseball Reference has a minimum number of SB attempts of .1 per team game to qualify for the league lead in SB%. So if a player has 16 attempts, he qualifies.

In 1976, Willie Davis is listed as the NL leader with 87.5% (14-2). In 1963, Lee Maye is also listed as the NL leader with 87.5% (14-2).

But The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition by Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer has 20 SBs as the minimum. If we go with that, then we will have different leaders in each of these two years, Hank Aaron and Joe Morgan.

In 1963, Hank Aaron had the highest SB% in the NL of anyone with 20+ SBs, 86.11% (31-5). He led the league in SLG with .586 and times on base with 279. So he won a triple threat triple crown that year.

In 1976, Joe Morgan had the highest SB% in the NL of anyone with 20+ SBs, 86.96% (60-9).  He led the league in SLG with .576 and OBP with .444.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

What 40 year old player led his league in OBP, SB% and was 2nd in Power-Speed #?

Willie Mays, 1971.

Here is what Baseball Reference says about Power-Speed #

"2 x (Home Runs x Stolen Bases)/(Stolen Bases + Home Runs) The harmonic mean of HR and SB. To do well you need a lot of both. Developed by Bill James."

Mays led the league in with a .425 OBP. The NL average was just .316

His SB% was 88.46% (23-3). The league average was 64.7%.

His Power-Speed # was 20.2. Only 25 year old Bobby Bonds (Barry's dad) was higher with 29.1 (Mays hit 18 HRs).

Mays is the only player at least 37 years old to have at least 15 HRs, 20 SBs, and a .400+ OBP. Only 1 guy did it at age 36 (Molitor).

Mays is the only player 40+ years old to steal 20+ bases with at least an 80% success rate.

He was 5th in the NL in WAR for position players with 6.3. The Giants won their division by a single game over the Dodgers.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Players with .600+ SLG, .400+ OBP, 20+SB, less than 5CS

Mays, AROD, Chipper Jones, Frank Robinson, Trout (2017). Trout could do it again this year. Trout only 1 with under 10 GDP (since 1933-some years came up when CS not kept)

From Baseball Reference's Play Index

Player SLG OBP SB CS Year GDP
Willie Mays 0.659 0.400 24 4 1955 12
Frank Robinson 0.611 0.404 22 3 1961 15
Chipper Jones 0.633 0.441 25 3 1999 20
Alex Rodriguez 0.645 0.422 24 4 2007 15
Mike Trout 0.629 0.442 22 4 2017 8
Mike Trout 0.636 0.460 24 2 2018 5

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Trout still has a chance to be the first player to win a "triple threat" triple crown in 40 years

In 2015, I did a post on "triple threat" triple crowns "triple threat" triple crowns.

Suppose that we looked for league leaders in stats that might represent three different skills:

Speed (triples, SBs, SB%)

Power (SLG, ISO, HRs, TBs, extra-base hits)

Getting on base (OBP, times on base)

So if a player lead his league one year in at least one stat from all three skills, he won the "triple threat" triple crown. The link above has a table with all the winners. The last guy to do it was Jim Rice in 1978.

Thru yesterday, Trout is 2nd in SB%, leads in Isolated Power (ISO) and OBP.

To lead the league in SB%, a player has to have .1 attempts for every game his team played (according to Baseball Reference). So they use a minimum of 16 attempts. Trout is 22-2 in stealing for 91.67%. Jackie Bradley is first with 92.86% (13-1). But if Bradley does not reach 16 attempts this season, Trout would be the leader.

Trout leads in ISO (SLG - AVG). He has .309 (.623 - .314). J.D. Martinez is 2nd with .301 (.633 - .332).