The Best Hitters
The greatest season ever by a hitter. . ..just my system. . .was by Babe Ruth in 1921 (.378, 59 homers, 171 RBI.) The greatest season by a hitter who didn’t hit .300 was by Mark McGwire in 1998 (.299, 70 homers, 147 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .275 was by Maris in 1961 (.269, 61 homers, 142 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .260 was by Mike Schmidt in 1979 (.259, 45 homers, 114 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .250 was by Adam Dunn in 2005 (.247, 40 homers, 101 RBI), and the greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .240 was Dunn in 2008 (.236, 40 homers, 100 RBI.) The best hitter of 2010 who didn’t hit .250 was Carlos Quentin (.243, 26 homers, 87 RBI), so the White Sox now have both the best hitter of 2010 and the best hitter of all time in sub-.250 seasons. The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .230 was Carlos Pena in 2009 (.227, 39 homers, 100 RBI).
For the greatest season by a player who didn’t hit even .220 we go in a different direction. Hugh Nicol in 1887 hit .215 with no homers, but stole 138 bases and scored 122 runs. If you consider the 19th century eligible, then Nicol wins this category; if not, it goes to Gorman Thomas, 1979 (.215, 32 homers, 87 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .210 was by Mark Reynolds in 2010 (.198, 32 homers, 85 RBI), which also qualifies as the greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .200, either. The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .190 was by Mark McGwire in 2001 (.187, but with 29 homers in 97 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit .180 was by Rob Deer in 1991 (.179, 25 homers, 64 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit even .170 was probably by Larry Lintz, one of Charlie Finley’s pinch runners, in 1976; Lintz went 0-for-1 on the season but stole 31 bases.
The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit 50 home runs was by Lou Gehrig in 1927 (.373, 47 homers, 175 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit 40 home runs, if you count the 19th century eligible, was by Hugh Duffy in 1894 (.440, 18 homers, 145 RBI). If you don’t count the 19th century it would be Ty Cobb in 1911 (.424, 8 homers, 127 RBI, 83 stolen bases.) Let’s not count the 19th century from now on; I don’t think it’s major league baseball.
In either case, whether we use Duffy or Cobb, that takes care of the players who didn’t hit 30 homers, 20 homers, or, using Cobb, 10 homers. The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit 5 homers was by Joe Jackson in 1912 (.395, 3 homers, 90 RBI.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 100 runs was by Rogers Hornsby in 1924 (.424, 25 homers, 94 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 90 runs was by Joe Jackson in 1911 (.408, 7 homers, 83 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 80 runs was by Jesse Burkett in 1901 (.376, 10 homers, 75 RBI), and the greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 70 runs was by Rickey Henderson in 1990 (.325, 28 homers, 61 RBI, 65 stolen bases, 119 runs scored.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 60 runs was by Woody English in 1930, setting up Hack Wilson (.335, 14 homers, 59 RBI, 214 hits, 100 walks, 152 runs scored.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 50 runs was by Tim Raines in 1985 (.320, 11 homers, 41 RBI, 70 stolen bases, 115 runs scored.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 40 runs was by Richie Ashburn in 1958 (.350, 2 homers, 33 RBI; led the National League in hits (215), walks (97) and missed by one of leading in stolen bases (30).) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 30 runs was by Lloyd Waner in 1927 (.355, 223 hits, 133 runs scored, 2 homers, 27 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in 20 runs was by Luis Castillo in 2000 (.334, 2 homers, 17 RBI, 62 stolen bases, 101 runs scored.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t bat 500 times was by Barry Bonds in 2001 (.328, 73 homers, 138 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t bat 400 times was Bonds in 2004, the year they walked him 232 times (.362, 45 homers, 101 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t bat 300 times was by Mark McGwire in 2000 (.301, 32 homers, 73 RBI in 236 at bats.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t bat 200 times was by Smokey Joe Wood in 1921 (.366, 4 homers, 60 RBI in 194 at bats.) (Actually, one can make an argument for Willie McCovey in 1959, in 192 at bats; he had much more power than Wood, but drove in "only" 38 runs.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t bat 100 times was by Ted Williams in 1953 (.407, 13 homers, 34 RBI.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 150 games was by Babe Ruth in 1920 (.376, 54 homers, 137 RBI.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 140 games was by Rogers Hornsby in 1925 (.403, 39 homers, 143 RBI in 138 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 130 games was by Jimmie Foxx in 1939 (.360, 35 homers, 105 RBI in 124 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 120 games was by Jeff Bagwell in 1994 (.367, 39 homers, 116 RBI in 110 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 110 games was by Albert Belle, also in 1994 (.357, 36 homers, 101 RBI in 106 games.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t play even 100 games was by Ted Williams in 1955 (.356, 28 homers, 83 RBI in 98 games), and the greatest season by a player who didn’t play 90 games was by Ted Williams in 1950 (.317, 28 homers, 97 RBI in 89 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play 80 games was by Joe DiMaggio in 1949, the year of his heel injury (.346, 14 homers, 67 RBI in 76 games.) I believe this is our first mention of the 1940s in this article. The greatest season by a player who didn’t play in 70 games was by Reb Russell in 1922 (.368, 12 homers 75 RBI in 60 games.) Somebody should write a book about Reb Russell; he was kind of the Chuck Connors of the 1920s. The greatest season by a player who didn’t play in 60 games was by Ken Caminiti in 2000 (.303, 15 homers, 45 RBI in 59 games.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t play in 50 games—or 40 games—was, again, by Ted Williams in 1953 (stats given earlier.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw 100 walks was by Chuck Klein in 1930 (.386, 40 homers, 170 RBI.) Klein drew only 54 walks, so that protects us fairly far down the walk ladder. The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw 50 walks was by Ty Cobb in 1911 (stats given earlier.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw 40 walks was by Al Simmons in 1930 (.381, 36 homers, 165 RBI, 39 walks.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw 30 walks was by Nap Lajoie in 1901 (.426, 14 homers, 125 RBI, 24 walks.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw 20 walks was by Charles (Piano Legs) Hickman in 1902 (.361 with 11 homers, 110 RBI, only 15 walks.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t make it into double digits in the walk category was by Mariano Duncan in 1996 (.334, 8 homers, 56 RBI, only 9 walks.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t hit any home runs was by Eddie Collins in 1912 (.348, 0 homers, 64 RBI, 63 stolen bases, 137 runs scored.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t steal any bases was by Sammy Sosa in 2001 (.328, 64 homers, 160 RBI.)
The greatest season by a player who didn’t draw any walks was by Matt LeCroy, also in 2001 (.425, 3 homers, 12 RBI in 40 at bats, but no walks.) The greatest season by a player who didn’t drive in any runs was by Larry Lintz in 1976 (31 stolen bases, 0-for-1 as a hitter.)
The Pyramid
I don’t know why it took me until I was 61 years old to realize this, but. . .does it occur to anyone but me that it is very unnatural to have a minor league system which is not in the shape of a pyramid?
This occurred to me recently, when the discussions arose about a pyramid-shaped Hall of Fame, while I was also doing some work on the minor leagues. The minor leagues, as they arose in nature, were rather in the shape of a pyramid, in that there were a lot of bad leagues for each good league. The leagues in their early history did not have classifications or grades; that arose about 1905, when the leagues were organized into levels; there were more teams at the lower levels than at the higher levels.
When Branch Rickey began taking control of minor league teams to create an organized farm system (mid-1920s), his system was a pyramid. As late as the mid-1950s, the Dodger farm system retained a distinct pyramid shape. The switch from a pyramid-shaped to a tube-shaped farm system occurred from about 1945 to about 1965, as four things happened:
1. Large numbers of minor league teams died,
2. Expansion, urbanization and television ate up many of the minor league markets,
3. The major leagues gained full control over the surviving minor league teams, and
4. The major league teams, acting in concert, began to coordinate minor league policies.
When major league farm directors thought about a farm system, they thought it should be sort of like a school system, where a student proceeds from Grade 6 to Grade 7 to Grade 8; a player would proceed from Low A to High A to Double-A to Triple-A. They also thought that this would save them money; in fact, they still think that. If you talk to a farm director about adding a second team in Low A, what he will probably say is, "We don’t have enough real prospects to fill up one team in Low A. What do we need with a second one?"
I would argue that a tube-shaped minor league system is artificial, and that this constricts the flow of talent to the major leagues, and causes numerous other real-life problems. Let us say that a major league player is at level 100, a triple-A player at level 90, a Double-A player at 80, etc. A tube-shaped minor league system is artificial because, in fact, there are many, many more players at level 60 than at level 80, and many more players at level 80 than at level 100, and it is dysfunctional because, in fact, players do not progress normally from level 60 to level 70, level 70 to level 80. Some players progress from 60 to 70 and from 70 to 80, of course, but as many players do not progress from each level as do, so that if you have a hundred players at level 60, you’ll get 5 to 8 at level 100.
This simple fact—which I suspect few people would deny—makes it unnatural to have a tube-shaped minor league system, and this creates a system in which teams are always trying to force players up from the bottom, rather than allowing them to rise naturally. This allows "cavities" to form at the higher levels, which of course has happened. Since teams generally have only two to five minor league prospects who are near the level of major-league ready—two to five prospects at "90"—Triple A baseball has been taken over by non-prospects hanging around like vultures, waiting for somebody at the major league level to drop dead. This has caused the relative quality of Triple A baseball vs. the majors to slide backward, which has made the step up from the minors to the majors a larger step, which creates problems for major league teams. Even Double-A teams are largely populated by what could be called lower-class Triple-A players—players not quite good enough to hang around and hope at the Triple A level.
A second problem with the current system is that it cuts off the development of a certain type of player—what could be called the Enos Slaughter/Pete Rose type of player. In my youth there were players around, like Tony Gonzalez, Johnny Temple, Wally Moon, Dick McAuliffe, Bob Skinner, Smoky Burgess, Don Mincher and Cesar Tovar, who really didn’t seem to possess outstanding ability, and who would never have been high draft picks or received large bonuses in the current system. Pete Rose and Enos Slaughter were like that, although they had very successful careers. What made these players stand out was not that they ran terribly fast or threw tremendously well or were big and strong, but that, when you put them in uniform and let them play, they succeeded. They compensated in determination, adaptability and competitiveness for what they lacked in more obvious ability.
There are still some of those type of players around, like Jed Lowrie and Brandon Inge, but not so many of them; our system now is not good at identifying or developing that type of talent. This leads to a third problem with the current system: that it designates "stars" too early in their progress, contributing to an entitlement mentality among athletes who have been designated for stardom from an early age. There is a fourth problem, which I will get to shortly.
Here’s how the system could have evolved, that would have worked better. Teams now have at least six levels of minor league competition, really 7 for most teams (AAA, AA, High A, Low A, Rookie, Short-Season Rookie, and international development leagues.) Suppose that we had only four (A, B, C and D. Which was the original minor league structure, 100 years ago.) Suppose that, rather than running seven or eight minor league teams, teams ran 20—two at A level, four at B, six at C, and eight at D.
Of course, it would cost more money to sustain 20 teams than it does to sustain 7 or 8, but this could be and would be offset by other savings. In order to sustain 20 teams on the budget now used for seven, you would have to generate more money from local support for the teams. In order to generate more money from local support, you would have to allow those teams the integrity to conduct a meaningful competition.
What that means, in practice, is that major league teams could not take players away from their minor league subordinates in the middle of the race—which they could not do originally. When free minor league teams made arrangements with major league teams in the 1930s and 1940s, those arrangements always sharply limited the ability of the major league team to move players up in mid-season. A major league team might be able to "move up" one or two players a year during the season—or none; otherwise, they left the roster alone. When a major league team did move up a player in mid-season, they were required to replace him with a player from a higher league. This was considered necessary, because how can a minor league team compete, how can they sell their product to their fans, if the interests of the minor league team are openly sacrificed to the interests of the major league team?
After a few years, the minor league operators looked around, and realized that they could not go home again. They could no longer opt out of the arrangements they had entered into, which meant that major league teams could—and did—dictate the terms of the next contract. By the mid-1950s major league teams generally had the legal right to move players whenever they wanted to move them, but even then—and into the early 1960s—it was considered bad form for a major league team to do this willy-nilly. If a minor league team had a player who was hitting .350 or hitting .300 with power—like Dick Stuart with Lincoln in 1956 or Steve Bilko with Los Angeles in 1956/1957—the major league affiliate was expected to leave him there and let him be the star, let him sell tickets, until the season was over.
By the mid-1960s even this courtesy had become a dead letter. Major league teams moved players up or sent them down whenever and wherever they felt like it, which made it difficult for minor leagues to have meaningful competitions or to sell tickets. If you think about it, the structure I am suggesting here is like the structure of college football or college basketball, in which there are many competitive teams at lower levels, few competitive teams at the highest level, but at any level, professional sports have no ability to invade the team and disrupt the competition in mid-season. Think what it would do the NCAA basketball if the NBA, in mid-season, decided that it liked Kemba Walker or Nolan Smith, and it would simply sign him to a contract in mid-season, to hell with the NCAA tourney. That’s what happened to minor league baseball. The major league teams started taking the best players off the minor league teams in mid-season, which made it impossible for the minor leagues to conduct a meaningful competition.
The major league teams were acting in their selfish best interests, which is a normal thing; all businesses normally do what is best for themselves, rather than worrying about what helps the industry. But by behaving selfishly, major league teams reduced the amount of money flowing into the industry, which placed (essentially) the entire burden of funding the minor league system on the major league team. Major league teams thus (predictably) cut back on the number of teams in their system. If they had allowed the minor league teams to run legitimate competitions that could sustain fan interest, thus generating income, they could have sustained 20 teams on the money that now goes to eight, but they would all have had to see the point of this at the same time. Enlightened self-interest.
Here’s the system I propose:
a) Two teams at A level, four at B, six at C, eight at D (you said that already.)
b) Each league runs a complete season of 150 or more games.
c) Every player going to the major leagues, without exception, is required to spend three full seasons in the minor leagues.
d) Minor league teams can trade at the same level for players who are not on the major league 40-man roster and not under the control of the major league team. Major league teams might be allowed to "control" an additional 25 to 30 players who are not yet on their 40-man roster, as they do in the current system.
e) Minor league teams are not allowed to "trade up" or "trade down" in mid-season.
f) D level teams are allowed to sign new players and release old ones without restraint, but no player from a D level team may be moved to a higher level in mid-season.
g) Some D level teams may be independent operators, unaffiliated with a major league teams.
h) C level teams again could sign players and release them in mid-season, and could "borrow" players from higher leagues for short periods of time with the consent of the higher-level team, but could not accept players promoted in mid-season from D level teams.
i) No more than two players per season could be designated for mid-season advancement from C level to B; however, those players would have to be publicly identified before the start of the season. The players identified would not HAVE to be promoted; however, only those two players could be promoted.
j) B level teams could sign and release players, could borrow players from A level teams for limited periods of time with the consent of those teams, could accept players promote in mid-season from C level, and could be forced to give up no more than one player per season to the A level team or the major league team, provided that that player was replaced by another healthy player who could play the same position.
k) A level teams could sign and release players, and could be forced to give up no more than two players per season (in season) to the major league team, provided that those players were replaced by healthy players coming down from the majors.
Each minor league would have a designated officer—a local fan or a local mayor, for example—who had to consent to a player being loaned to a lower-level team. The idea is that if a minor league team has an injury to a key player, when there is a player in the system who is warming the bench at a higher level and who could play regularly for the lower-level team, then the team could "borrow" the higher-ranking player to get them past the injury. But the major league team can’t move players up and down just because they feel like it; it has to be done because it works for both minor league teams.
A fourth problem with minor league baseball as it is is that nobody at all cares about the lower-level competitions. If you go to a game in the Gulf Coast League or some of the other low-level leagues, you will notice that there is nobody there. The attendance at the game will consist of wives, girlfriends and parents of the players, a handful of scouts, perhaps ten or fifteen retirees, and that’s it; those teams have no fan base whatsoever. It creates a very desultory atmosphere at those games, with the appearance at times that the players are just going through the motions.
I see this system as having the following advantages for major league teams:
1) That it would allow minor league teams to gradually re-build their fan base, thus increasing the amount of revenue flowing into the game,
2) That it would create more opportunities for players with marginal skills but high determination to succeed at the lower levels, thus increasing the flow of talent to the majors,
3) That the three-year mandatory minor league buffer would slightly reduce the pressure on major league teams to pay bonuses to amateur players, and
4) That the three-year minor league buffer and the increased regular flow of talent to the majors would significantly reduce the pressure on major league teams to do international scouting and to pay high bonuses to international players.
Under the current operating arrangement major league teams are limited as to the number of minor league affiliates they can have. The thinking was that by limiting the number of minor league affiliates MLB would control the costs of operating a minor league system, but this hasn’t worked at all; what has happened is that the money that would otherwise have gone into operating a larger minor league system has been diverted into international scouting and international player development. Those costs would not simply go away with a more robust minor league system, but I would predict that they would gradually atrophy, as teams would gradually see more talent rising through their farm systems.
Yes, it would "disadvantage" the major league teams in that they would no longer be able to swap out the major league roster with the triple-A roster in mid-season, as teams do now, but, as it would disadvantage all of the teams in the same manner, it would disadvantage none of them in competition with the others.
In a farm system you would have 20 minor league shortstops—8 at level D, 6 at C, 4 at B, 2 at A, each one of whom had had a full minor league apprenticeship and full seasons at each level of competition. The gap between the highest level of the minors and the majors would shrink back to something more like it was in the 1950s. If you needed a shortstop you would automatically have two candidates to step in. If they were both weak, you’d have 58 trade candidates from the other systems. The fear of being left without a shortstop would diminish as the tide of talent rose.
I would also argue that this system might—might possibly—work to depress major league salaries, as it would create more competition for major league jobs, thus driving down marginal salaries. A team now can pay $1.5 million for Jeff Francoeur or whoever because there’s a perception that there’s nobody else there who can do the job.
Of course, there will be people who will argue that increasing the number of minor league shortstops would not increase the number of good shortstops. You only have so many players who have the ability to play in the majors; increasing the number of minor leaguers won’t change that. That’s a side argument and this isn’t the place to get into that, but those people are simply and flatly wrong. Competition produces players. If you increase the number of players who get an opportunity to play, you will increase the number of major-league ready players who come out of the system—not proportionately, but you will increase them. If you increase the number of minor league teams by 150%, from 8 to 20, you won’t increase the number of major league-ready shortstops by 150%, but you will increase it by 50 or 60%.
More to the point, since talent in baseball is naturally a pyramid, if you make a farm system a pyramid it will produce more players who are able to advance naturally through that system—rather than cutting off opportunity at the lowest level by making premature decisions about who has the "talent" to advance consistently through a tube-shaped system. Talent in the major leagues is the far right-hand side of a bell-shaped distribution curve. If you cut off the right-hand side of a bell-shaped distribution curve and stand it on its side, it’s a pyramid.