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.
|
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:
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