(Or, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Batting Champion)
Suppose that we think of batting champions as "light" and "heavy". For example, in 1905 Cy Seymour led the National League in batting and Elmer Flick led the American League, but perhaps we might agree that Seymour’s season is much more substantial than Flick’s:
In 1911 Ty Cobb led the American League in batting and Honus Wagner the National League, both phenomenal players, but perhaps we could agree that Cobb’s work with the lumber was more impressive than Wagner’s:
In 1931 Al Simmons and Chick Hafey won the batting titles in their respective leagues, but perhaps we might agree that Simmons’ season is a little more impressive than Hafey’s:
In 1932 the more impressive batting champion was in the other league:
Ernie Lombardi won two National League batting titles, but in one season it might be said that he was no Jimmie Foxx, and, in the other, that he was no Ted Williams:
In 1944 the batting champions were Stan Musial and Luke Appling; perhaps I will let you decide which you would regard as the more impressive season:
In Win Shares, Appling actually beats Musial 40 to 39, so perhaps I misstated that. Appling’s value was equal to Musial’s in terms of games won for his team because Appling was a shortstop and because the White Sox were outscored by 20 runs but finished ten games over .500, but Luke Appling on the best day of his life was not the hitter than Stan Musial was. Musial and Ted Williams generally led their leagues in batting in those days, but in 1949 they finished second behind George Kell and Jackie Robinson. Kell’s batting average was a point higher, but Robinson’s season is still much more impressive:
In 1950 Musial was much more impressive than Billy Goodman:
Whereas in 1951 and 1952 he was much more impressive than Ferris Fain:
In 1954 Willie Mays won his only batting title, edging out his teammate Don Mueller, while Bobby Avila won his only batting title because a defective rule left Ted Williams ineligible:
In 1962 National League batting champion Tommy Davis had what we might say was a somewhat more impressive season than American League batting champion Pistol Pete Runnels:
After that season, by the way, Pistol Pete was traded to the Houston Colt .45s; I always wondered whether that made him baseball’s only two-gunned player. Probably not; he had a teammate called the Toy Cannon. In those days any player named "Pete" was at least periodically referred to as Pistol Pete. By 1969 Pistol Pete Maravich was scoring fantastic number of points for LSU, and Pistol Pete Rose was leading the National League in hitting, while Hot Rod Carew led the American League, a "rod" being a slang term for a pistol. Perhaps we might agree that Rose had the bigger guns?
In 1971 Joe Torre won the National League batting title and MVP Award, while Tony Oliva—Rod Carew’s roommate—limped to a batting title on knees that ached so bad that Carew would hear him moaning in the middle of the night from the pain in his knees:
In 1972 the batting champions were Carew and Billy Williams:
Carew hit just .318 with no homers, few doubles, not a lot of walks, only 61 runs scored in 142 games. In terms of Runs Created per 27 outs, Rod Carew in 1972 was actually the least productive batting champion in major league history, creating just 5.15 runs per 27 outs. Not picking on Carew; his 1977 season actually ranks as the 10th heaviest batting championship of all time, with 239 hits and a .388 average. By the way, the last ten times I have given you an impressive batting champion in one league and an unimpressive one in the other league, the impressive batting champion was in the National League. There wasn’t another year like that until 1996, when a 20-year-old A-Rod was much more impressive than a 36-year-old Tony Gwynn:
Although Gwynn then rallied to have an impressive season—a "heavy" batting championship—in 1997. 2003 was my first year with the Red Sox and everything that happened was very exciting for me, none more so than Bill Mueller’s coming out of nowhere to win the batting title, but even I would have to concede that National League batting champion Albert Pujols perhaps had a better season:
I sorted all batting champions since 1900 into "Heavy" and "Light"—actually, into "Heavy", "Light" and "Neither", with the odd man out being in the "Neither" category. In the way I have presented this data so far I may have given you the impression that there is one "Heavy" batting championship and one "Light" one each year, but this certainly is not the case; I just picked the years that that happened to illustrate the concept. There have been an equal number of years when there were two "Heavy" batting champions, like 2007:
Or two "Light" batting champions, like 2008:
Or two middle-of-the-road batting champions, neither light nor heavy, like 2009:
OK, by this point you should have some sense of what is a heavy batting championship and what is a light one, so perhaps I can explain now the technical definitions. This is one of those categories I make up, the purpose of which is not to use statistics to prove something, but rather, to put something into the statistics which is apparent anyway, but which we can formalize with statistics in such a way that point A can be used to move on to point B.
I defined heavy, light and neutral batting champions in this way. First, I gathered the statistics for all of the batting champions since 1900. This gave me a list of 226 player/seasons—two each for season 1901 through 2011 (222), plus one in 1900, plus the Federal League batting champions in 1914-1915, plus I included both Cobb and Lajoie in 1910, since history has failed to resolve the issue of which of them was the legitimate batting champion. I then ranked these 226 seasons one through 226 in three categories:
1) At bats. It is much, much easier to get a fluke batting average in 420 at bats than it is in 600 at bats, and it is surprising how much difference this makes in batting championship races (although, now that it’s come up, not nearly as much difference as it makes in ERA championships. ERA championships are very often won by pitchers who a) just skimmed over the qualification line, and b) weren’t really that good, and would have been exposed had they pitched more innings.) Anyway, a .300 hitter has a four times greater likelihood of hitting .350 by random chance if he has 450 at bats, as opposed to 670 at bats. A certain number of batting championships are in fact won by players who are good hitters, but who are .300 hitters as opposed to .350 hitters, but who have a season in which they a) miss a month with an injury, and b) hit 30 to 50 points above their real skill level. Carl Furillo in 1953. Furillo was a good hitter, certainly, but he was a .300 hitter, rather than a .340 hitter. In 1953 he missed a month with an injury and he hit .344, thus winning the National League batting title. Chipper Jones won his only batting championship in 2008, when he missed a month with an injury. Jose Reyes won the National League title in 2011 at .337; he hadn’t hit .300 since 2006, and he missed a month with an injury. There are a lot of players in history who have won their only batting title in a season in which they missed a month with an injury or didn’t play quite full time, like Chick Hafey in 1931, Billy Goodman in 1950, Andres Galarraga in 1993, Goose Goslin in 1928, Manny Ramirez in 2002, and Paul O’Neill in 1994. Not saying that these men weren’t very good hitters; it’s just a lot easier to get a batting average 40 points above your true level of ability in 450 at bats than it is in 650, and for that reason we treat a low at bat total as a "light" batting championship.
2) Extra Bases on Hits, Runs Scored and RBI. I ranked the 226 batting champions by the formula (TB – H) + (R + RBI)/2—that is, extra bases on hits, plus one-half runs scored and RBI. A batting championship is more impressive if the player hits 40 doubles and 30 homers and drives in and scores 120 runs than if he has no power and drives in 50 runs.
3) Batting Average. Of course, a batting champion is a batting champion, but it’s more impressive if the batting champion hits .370 than if he hits .320.
I ranked the 226 batting champions 1 through 226 in these three areas, and gave the top hitter 226 points in each category, in all cases using walks as the tie breaker. I then marked the 75 top-scoring batting champions as "heavy" batting champions, and the bottom 75 as "light". The heaviest batting championship of all time was Rogers Hornsby in 1922, while the lightest was Ernie Lombardi in 1942:
Hornsby scored four times as many runs as Lombardi, drove in three times as many, out-hit him by 70 points and had twice as many at bats.
Generally speaking, a "heavy" batting champion has three easily identifiable characteristics: 200 hits, 100 runs scored and 100 RBI. Most of the "heavy" batting champions meet these three standards, whereas few of the light batting champions do. The heaviest batting championship by a player who didn’t have 200 hits was by Ted Williams in 1941. But of the 75 heavy batting champions, 64 had 200 hits. If the 75 light batting championships, only one had 200 hits (Tony Gwynn in 1989). Of the 75 heavy batting champions, 67 scored 100 runs, whereas of the 75 light batting champions, only eight scored 100 runs, and of the 75 heavy batting champions, 53 drove in 100 runs, whereas of the light batting champions, only four drove in 100 runs.
Of the players who won multiple batting championships, almost all had some batting championships that were heavy and some that were light. Alphabetically:
Wade Boggs won five batting championships, two heavy and none light.
Rod Carew had seven championships, one heavy and three light.
Roberto Clemente won four championships, one heavy and one light.
Ty Cobb had twelve batting championships, four heavy and four light.
Tony Gwynn won eight batting championships, two heavy and four light.
Harry Heilmann won four batting championships, all four heavy. He hit .393 or better all four times.
Rogers Hornsby won seven batting titles, five heavy and none light.
Nap Lajoie won four batting championships (or three and a half), two heavy and one light.
Bill Madlock won four batting championships, all four of them light, and two of them very light.
Stan Musial won seven batting championships, four of them heavy and none light.
Honus Wagner won eight batting championships, one heavy and five light.
Ted Williams won six batting championships, three heavy and one light.
There is no big point here; it’s just a little thing that I enjoyed doing, and I hope you got something out of it.
Tommy and Tony
Tommy Davis won the National League batting title in 1962 and 1963; Tony Oliva won the American League batting title in 1964 and 1965. Davis’ season in 1962 and Oliva’s in 1964 look like two seasons of the same hitter:
These are both very heavy batting championships. When Davis had 665 at bats in 1962, that was 27 at bats more than the previous record for at bats by a batting champion (638, Lefty O’Doul, 1929). Oliva broke his record by 7, upping the ante to 672. Oliva now ranks fourth on that list, behind two seasons of Ichiro Suzuki and one of Pete Rose. Of course the elongated schedule had something to do with that, but still, it’s a huge number of at bats. In the twenty years before Davis, only two batting champions (Stan Musial in 1946 and Henry Aaron in 1959) had come within 45 at bats of that number. Musial had 624 at bats, Aaron 629. Even with another eight games, neither one of them was going to get to 670.
Tony Oliva, as a rookie in 1964, led the American League in total bases by the margin of 374 to 329. No player had led the league in total bases by such a wide margin since 1948. Davis drove in 150 runs. No player had done that since 1949.
I refuse to believe, given that I am always looking for matches and similarities, and given the very large extent to which my mind still revolves around the baseball of my youth, that until this week it had never occurred to me to see the parallels between these two men and these two seasons. Both men were 23 years old at the time of their first batting championships (1962, 1964). Their strikeout and walk data is nearly identical (65-33 for Davis, 68-34 for Oliva). It looks like the same hitter.
The next season, both men repeated as batting champions, Davis hitting .326 with 16 homers, 88 RBI, and Oliva hitting .321 with 16 and 98:
Again, these would appear to be two seasons of the same hitter. Tommy Davis’ Dodgers won the National League pennant (and the World Series) in 1963; Oliva’s Twins won the American League pennant in 1965. However, while both players had won heavy batting championships at age 23, their batting titles at age 24 were light—not as many at bats, not as much power production, slightly lower batting averages.
Still, at age 24 anyone would have thought that both men were headed for the Hall of Fame. Davis finished third in the MVP voting in 1962 and eighth in 1963; Oliva finished fourth in 1964 and second in 1965. At age 25 both men had seasons that were not quite up to the standard of the previous two:
Still, both players were mentioned in MVP voting, Davis finishing 22nd in the National League vote in 1964, and Oliva finishing sixth in the American League voting in 1966.
On May 1, 1965, Tommy Davis broke his ankle sliding into second base in a game against the Giants. It was a bad break; Davis missed the rest of the season, and wasn’t really ready to go at the start of the 1966 season. Although he hit .300 in 1966, his speed was gone and his power was limited. He was traded to the Mets in 1967, had a good year with the Mets in 1967, not a great year, and was traded by the Mets to the White Sox. He began a journeyman phase, which lasted until he landed in Baltimore in late 1972. The American League adopted the DH rule in the winter of 1972-1973, and Davis was the top DH in the American League in the first few years of the rule, reclaiming a little bit of his lost glory from almost ten years before. Oliva’s decline was more gradual; he had knee, leg and shoulder injuries periodically in the late 1960s, but played well through that period, made the All Star team every year until 1971, and was in the top 20 in the MVP voting every year from 1964 through 1971. In 1970 he was second in the American League MVP voting, behind Boog Powell. He won his third batting title in 1971. The Twins probably voted for the DH rule, in part, to allow them to get Oliva’s bat back in the lineup.
Now, I said a couple of things there that may not be exactly true, but I was just giving them a once-over. For one, Tony Oliva may not have been 23 years old in 1964; he may have been as much as three years older, playing—and living—on his brother’s passport. He may not be Tony Oliva at all; he may be Pedro Oliva. Second, I said that Tommy Davis was the top Designated Hitter in the first years of the rule, but this may not be true, either. Davis, unmentioned in MVP voting since 1964 except for a 1% share in 1967, popped back into the voting in 1973 (10th) and 1974 (26th), whereas Oliva dropped out of the voting at the same time. The Baltimore Orioles won their division in 1973 and Davis led the team in RBI, and the RBI leader on a championship team tends to do well in MVP voting. However, Oliva’s batting stats in those years were about the same as Davis’, and, as we would evaluate these things by modern methods, actually a little better than Davis.
Neither player, however, was anything great as a DH; they were both kind of .500 players in their DH periods. Both players limped through the 1976 season, Oliva playing his last major league game on September 29, 1976, and Davis playing his last game three days later.
Davis fell clearly short of Hall of Fame standards; perhaps he would have been a Hall of Famer, without the ankle injury, perhaps he wouldn’t, but in any case he wasn’t. This is a win shares/loss shares analysis for him:
Davis was a great player in 1962-1963, and the rest of his career he was substantially less than a .500 player. There is no Hall of Fame case for him.
Oliva had a substantially better career:
Oliva was a better defensive player than Davis, and he had many more years near the top of his game. His individual won-lost record in 1970, when he was second in the MVP voting for the second time, was 26-7, which is a MVP-type won-lost record. Davis’ best year was 26-8.
My standard for a Hall of Fame player is 300 Win Shares and/or 100 more Win Shares than Loss Shares. A player’s career is like a team, in that both are of similar size. A team consists of about 17 seasons of regular play, and a full career consists of about 17 seasons of regular play. The number of Win Shares and Loss Shares for a team in a season is about the same as the number of Win Shares and Loss Shares for a player in a full career.
If a team goes 100-62, they win the pennant. If a team goes 100-62, they will have 300 Win Shares and they will have 100 more Win Shares than Loss Shares (actually, 114 more.) Tommy Davis’ 196-187 Won-Lost record means that we attribute to him 65 wins for his team, over the course of his career, and 62 losses. Oliva’s 221-105 record is equivalent to 74 wins, 35 losses.
Well, 74-35, that’s 39 games over .500. A Hall of Famer is, in essence, a player who, in the season’s worth of games that we assign to him, won the pennant.
If a player meets both of those standards (300 Win Shares and 100 more Win Shares than Loss Shares) then, in my view, he is a Hall of Famer, and in fact virtually every eligible player who does meet those standards does eventually go into the Hall of Fame. If a player meets neither of those standards then, as a rule, I would argue that he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.
But if a player meets one of those standards but not the other one, as Oliva does, then, to me, it is a debatable point whether he should go in or not. Oliva’s career was short, but he played at a Hall of Fame level while he played, and he did do enough, in my opinion, to win a pennant for his team. I’m not advocating for him, but he was a better player than many who have been honored by Cooperstown.