Very productive run-producers
Posted by Andy on June 10, 2007
Those of you who collected baseball cards in the 1980s will recall an oddity on the back of Tom Herr's card, specifically his stats in 1985. He drove in 110 RBIs while hitting only 8 HR.
Here's a list of the most recent seasons fitting the criteria of at least 100 RBI with fewer than 10 HR:
Cnt Player Year RBI HR Age Tm +---+-----------------+----+---+--+---+---+ 1 Paul Molitor 1996 113 9 39 MIN 2 Tom Herr 1985 110 8 29 STL 3 George Kell 1950 101 8 27 DET 4 Dixie Walker 1946 116 9 35 BRO 5 Dixie Walker 1945 124 8 34 BRO 6 Bob Elliott 1945 108 8 28 PIT 7 Billy Herman 1943 100 2 33 BRO 8 Bob Elliott 1943 101 7 26 PIT 9 Cecil Travis 1941 101 7 27 WSH 10 Lou Boudreau 1940 101 9 22 CLE
You'll notice that other than Herr and Molitor, nobody has done it since 1950. In fact it's been done a total of 101 times, mostly back in the era when home runs were fairly rare unless your last name was Ruth. It was done the most times by Pie Traynor (6 times), Sam Crawford (5) and Tyrus Cobb (5). The 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates had 3 players to do it: Traynor (106 RBI/5 HR), Paul Waner (131/9), and Glenn Wright (105/9)