Players who led their league in either AVG, OBP or SLG who had no other top 10 finishes in that stat

I wanted to check on this when I saw that Harold Baines led the AL in SLG in 1984 but, according to his Baseball Reference page, that was his only top 10 finish in SLG (more on this at the end in the technical note because it has to do with qualification rules).

I wondered how rare this might be, for a player to lead the league in a given stat but to have no other top 10 finishes in his career in that stat. It seems fairly rare.

In this post I look at AVG, OBP & SLG. I will probably do another post on HRs, TBs, RBIs, and hits.

Here are all the players since 1900 who led their league in average with that being their only top 10 finish in AVG.

Player	Year	Lg.	Avg	Next Best Rank	Avg
Lew Fonseca	1929	AL	0.369	22	0.319
Bill Mueller	2003	AL	0.326	20	0.295
Derrek Lee	2005	NL	0.335	11	0.317
Freddy Sanchez	2006	NL	0.344	14	0.304
Josh Hamilton	2010	AL	0.359	11	0.304
Jose Reyes	2011	NL	0.337	15	0.287
Michael Cuddyer	2013	NL	0.331	26	0.284
Yuli Gurriel	2021	AL	0.319	12	0.299

Also included is their next highest or best rank in Avg. and what their Avg was in that season. Fonseca, for example, had his next highest rank in Avg in 1925 (actually in the NL). He batted .319. that year. Gurriel actually had two seasons with a rank of 12 and he batted .298 in the other case.

Now for OBP

Player	Year	Lg.	OBP	Next Best Rank	OBP
Walter Christensen	1926	NL	0.426	None	0.330
Harry Walker	1947	NL	0.436	17	0.361
Eddie Lake	1945	AL	0.412	11	0.369
Melvin Mora	2004	AL	0.419	34	0.348
Milton Bradley	2008	AL	0.436	15	0.421

Christensen had only one other season and he did not qualify. His OBP that year was .330. For Bradley, his next best rank is the AL in 2003. He actually did not qualify because he had only 451 PAs. But if we give him 502 (an additional 51 PAs), his OBP would fall from .421 to .378, which would still leave him at 15th.

Now for SLG

Player	Year	Lg.	SLG	Next Best Rank	SLG
Tommy Holmes	1945	NL	0.577	11	0.424
Harold Baines	1984	AL	0.541	11	0.465
Ruben Sierra	1989	AL	0.543	12	0.502
Joe Mauer	2009	AL	0.587	16	0.476
Daniel Murphy	2016	NL	0.595	11	0.543

I will have to type up the technical note relating to qualification issues later. 

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. could be listed here in both OBP & SLG but he is fairly young and will likely make the top 10 in each of those stats again. Same for Luis Arraez in Avg. Gurriel is still active but at 38 he might not make the top 10 again in Avg. Right now he is hitting .256 and does not qualify. If he did, he would rank  44th.

Technical note: I started doing this using the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia since it allows you to easily call up the top 10 in a league for all years.

But it uses the minimum of 3.1 PA per game rule for percentage qualifications. It shows Baines being 10th in SLG in the AL in 1989. Baseball Reference does not have Baines in the top 10 that year.

Sierra • TEX	0.543
McGriff • TOR	0.525
Yount • MIL	0.511
Esasky • BOS	0.500
Davis • SEA	0.496
Jackson • KCR	0.495
Tettleton • BAL	0.509**
Mattingly • NYY	0.477
McGwire • OAK	0.467
Carter • CLE	0.465

Here is what BB Ref says about this (the ** on Tettleton's .509):

"A ** by the stat's value indicates the player had fewer than the required number of at bats or plate appearances for the BA, OBP, SLG or OPS title that year. In order to rank the player, the necessary number of hitless at bats were added to the player's season total. The value printed here is their actual value and not the value used to rank them, therefore some numbers may appear out of order.

For batting rate stats, generally a minimum of 3.1 Plate Appearances/G, 1.0 IP/G, 0.67 Gm and Chances/Team Game (fielding), 0.2 SB att/Team Game (catchers), and 0.1 SB att/Team Game (baserunners only since 1951), and 0.1 decision/G for single-season leaderboards generally needed for rate statistics. For pitcher fielding the minimums are reduced by a third. For LF, CF, RF fielding stats, we only have reliable data since 1901, so all leaders are since 1901. Explanation of min. requirements"

Tettleton had only 489 PAs in 1989. If we add 13 ABs to his actual total of 411 that gives him 424. He had 209 total bases and 209/424 is .493. So he would be just above Mattingly and just below Jackson.

So then, since looking at the top 10s from the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia was not getting me the results I wanted, I simply went to the annual leader pages at BB Ref. I only had to check players who only appeared once. Seeing Ty Cobb several times means he had more than one top 10 finish.

Then I clicked on a one appearance name. At that player's page you can scroll down to see all the cases of him finishing in the top 10. If the only one listed was his league leading year, then he made my list here.

One complication came up when trying to find the next highest rank for players who had no other top 10 finishes. I used pages like the following

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/1989-standard-batting.shtml

If you go to the Player Standard Batting table and click on "BA" for example, it will rank everyone in batting average from highest to lowest. The default setting is that when you do that a box is checked that says "When table is sorted by rate stats, hide non-qualifiers." That means it excludes a player like Tettleton. You can uncheck that box and rank everyone, but you get guys with just a few PAs. 

But that is what I did when I tried to find the next best rank for each of my players listed here. Then I could go upwards and look for players in the 400s in PAs who ranked higher than they did. If I gave any such higher ranking players the appropriate number of PAs or ABs I could check to see where they would rank if they were brought up to the 3.1 PA per game qualifying status (502 PAs).

Usually this did not make much difference. But in the case of Baines, doing so brought Tettleton back in. Did that show Baines at #11 in AL SLG in 1989? No.

The reason why is that in the Player Standard Batting table, it only uses 3 decimal places. Both Joe Carter and Baines had a .465 SLG that year. Since Baines comes before Carter he is listed first.

But Carter had a slightly higher SLG if we go to more decimal places (and this is why Carter is 10th in the table above).

Baines) 235/505 = .4653

Carter) 303/651 = .4654

Here is a screen shot of what I discuss above: