Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Players who led their league in XBT% and a power stat in the same year

XBT% is the percentage of times a runner advanced more than one base on a single or more than two bases on a double. Baseball Reference has this.

They have it going back to 1916. It is at the AL Baserunning/Misc link. 

I sorted by XBT% and then looked for the first guy listed who had at least 3.1 PAs per game (that might not be the best way to do it since that is not a measure of base running opportunities but it was easy and it does limit it to full-time players).

Then I checked to see if that guy led in any one of the following power stats: HRs, SLG, isolated power, total bases, extra-base hits or AB per HR.

Here are all the cases I found. If you think any of them are wrong or if you think I missed any, let me know. I only show one power stat for each guy. Some of them might have led in more than one. The % is their XBT%. In a couple of cases I had to calculate XBT% to a few extra decimal places to determine the leader. 

NL
Chuck Klein 1932 70%. Led in SLG
Willie Mays 1954 73%. Led in SLG
Willie Mays 1957 69%. Led in SLG
Ernie Banks 1958 64%. Led in SLG
Dick Allen 1966 70%. Led in SLG
Larry Walker 1997 70%. Led in SLG
 
AL
Tris Speaker 1916 78%. Led in SLG
Ty Cobb 1917 65%. Led in SLG
Lou Gehrig 1926 69%. Led in XBhits 
Hank Greenberg 60% 1946. Led in HRs
Al Kaline 1955 65%. Led in TBs
George Brett 1980 72%. Led in SLG
Alfonso Soriano 2002 70%. Led in XBhits

In a couple of cases I had to calculate XBT% to a few extra decimal places to determine the leader. 

Cobb only has 20 opportunities in total in 1917 and Speaker has 22 in 1916, so maybe there was not much data from those years. 

Ruth was 2nd in XBT% in 1924 with 64% while Chick Galloway led with 65% (Ruth led in SLG that year).

Ken Williams in 1925 is the league leader in SLG but he came up a little short on PAs. But there is a rule that says if you charge a guy with extra at-bats and no bases, if his SLG is still the highest he is the league leader.  But if he had played more his XBT% could have fallen. Not sure what to do with a case like that.

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