Hank Aaron's amazing combination of durability and hitting excellence (part 2)

In Hank Aaron's amazing combination of durability and hitting excellence from January of 2025, I showed that Aaron has the most seasons with at least a 140 OPS+ & 140+ games and the most seasons with at least 150+ games played and at least a 150 OPS+.

Here I look at how he was consistently in the top 10 of 8 different stats for 19 straight years. All data is from Baseball Reference.

The first table has his year by year numbers for the 8 different stats.

Red stats are when he led the league

Blue stats are when he ranked 2nd thru 5th

Green stats are when ranked 6th thru 10th

 

As you can see, he was among the leaders quite often. There will be some summary stats on this after the second table. 

 

Season	H	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB
1955	189	27	0.314	0.366	0.540	0.906	141	325
1956	200	26	0.328	0.365	0.558	0.923	151	340
1957	198	44	0.322	0.378	0.600	0.978	166	369
1958	196	30	0.326	0.386	0.546	0.931	153	328
1959	223	39	0.355	0.401	0.636	1.037	183	400
1960	172	40	0.292	0.352	0.566	0.919	156	334
1961	197	34	0.327	0.381	0.594	0.974	163	358
1962	191	45	0.323	0.390	0.618	1.008	170	366
1963	201	44	0.319	0.391	0.586	0.977	179	370
1964	187	24	0.328	0.393	0.514	0.907	153	293
1965	181	32	0.318	0.379	0.560	0.938	161	319
1966	168	44	0.279	0.356	0.539	0.895	142	325
1967	184	39	0.307	0.369	0.573	0.943	168	344
1968	174	29	0.287	0.354	0.498	0.852	153	302
1969	164	44	0.300	0.396	0.607	1.003	177	332
1970	154	38	0.298	0.385	0.574	0.958	149	296
1971	162	47	0.327	0.410	0.669	1.079	194	331
1972	119	34	0.265	0.390	0.514	0.904	147	231
1973	118	40	0.301	0.402	0.643	1.045	177	252

 

This next table shows all the ranks he had in these stats with the same color code.

 

Season	H	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB
1955	2	10	5		9	9	10	6
1956	1		1		3	5	3	1
1957	2	1	4	9	3	3	3	1
1958	3	5	4	6	3	4	3	3
1959	1	3	1	2	1	1	1	1
1960	6	2			2	5	4	1
1961	3	6	5	8	3	3	2	1
1962	6	2	5	5	2	2	2	3
1963	2	1	3	2	1	1	1	1
1964	8	9	3	3	8	6	6
1965	10	6	2	5	2	2	2	4
1966		1			6	8	8	4
1967	6	1			1	3	3	1
1968	10	5			4	5	5	2
1969		2		7	2	2	2	1
1970		5			7	6	6
1971		2	5	3	1	1	1	2
1972		4		4	5	5	7
1973		4			2	2	6

 

Aaron had a total of 124  top 10s out of a possible 152 (8*19 = 152). That is about 81.6% of what was possible.  Yes, if a hitter is good at HRs it will help his SLG and OPS. We could say this about a few other stats. But this is still very impressive.

 

He was in the top 10 of all 8 stats in 7 different years and he had 7 top 10s in 2 other years. He was never in fewer than 4 top 10s.

 

He was in the top 5 96 times. That is about 63.2%. He was in the top 5 in at least 1 stat every year and he was in the top 5 in at least 2 stats in 18 of the years.

 

Baseball Reference shows him as 2nd in SLG in 1973. He actually did not qualify for the batting title that year but if we give him an extra 37 ABs to get to 502 PAs without any additional hits, his SLG would still have been .587 and that would have been 2nd in the NL that year.

 

I show him with a 177 OPS+ in 1973 and I rank him 6th. I estimated his OPS+ assuming those additional 37 ABs with no hits and came up with 148. That would tie him for 6th with Ken Singleton. Maybe it would be 7th but I did not redo Singleton's OPS+ to additional decimal points to see who would be ahead. But 7th is still in the top 10.