44 Responses to “500+ Doubles & SLG% Under .471”

1. Gonzo Says:
   January 15th, 2011 at 11:35 pm

   Why choose .470 as a benchmark? Is that the line between good and bad? In a related topic, what's a good benchmark for OBP and OPS?

2. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 12:51 am

   @1, Gonzo -- I can't answer on Andy's behalf, but I'll guess that the .470 cutoff was chosen just to keep the list to a manageable size.

   If Andy had taken the 20 lowest slugging averages, the cutoff would have been .471, and of course, we all like round numbers.

   If he'd set the SLG cutoff at .480, the list would include 6 more people (4 HOFers), for a total of 25: Dave Parker, Paul Waner, Dave Winfield, Eddie Murray, Luis Gonzalez and Charlie Gehringer.

3. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 12:52 am

   I should have said, "I can't answer on Steve's behalf."

   (Sorry, Steve.)

4. Dr. Doom Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 12:55 am

   @2

   John, this post was by Steve. Just so you know.

5. Dr. Doom Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 12:55 am

   Dang it! Always refresh the page before posting. How have I not learned this by now?!?

6. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 1:25 am

   Since SLG captures all forms of total bases, I'll toss out some short variations on Steve's list, starting with the highest & lowest ratios of doubles to hits among the 500-doubles club:

   Highest ratio of doubles to hits:
   1. Todd Helton, 0.236
   2. Bobby Abreu, .232
   3. Luis Gonzalez, .230

   Lowest ratio of doubles to hits:
   1. Willie Mays, 0.159
   2. Hank Aaron, .165
   3. Rickey Henderson, 0.167
   (Yeah, but they'd still make one hell of an outfield.)

   P.S. In one of the Mays biographies, Willie is quoted as saying that, when he batted ahead of McCovey, he often deliberately stopped at first base when he could have had a double, to discourage teams from intentionally passing Stretch. I looked for evidence of that in Mays's doubles rates during the years that he and McCovey played together, comparing games when McCovey did and did not follow Mays in the order; I didn't find any evidence, but it was by no means an exhaustive study.

   My hunch is that Mays may have done that a few times, but not on anything like a regular basis. And I don't think Mays necessarily said that in order to puff up his stats; I think it was just a typical case of a former player unconsciously exaggerating how often they used "hidden strategy."

   Willie just didn't hit a lot of doubles. He reached 30 just 6 times in his 18 qualifying seasons: 43, 36, 33, 33, 32, 32. In his two 50-HR seasons, he hit 21 and 18 doubles, and he had 7 qualifying seasons with no more than 22 doubles. And this can't be traced to his home parks; his doubles rate at home was a little higher than on the road, whether per PA or per hit. Obviously, many of his 140 career triples would have been doubles for a less extraordinary player, but even if we switch half his triples for doubles, he would still have a very low rate of doubles per hit, 0.18. Besides, Stan Musial hit even more triples than Willie (177), and he still managed to rack up 725 doubles, 20% of his total hits.

7. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 1:30 am

   Fewest HRs among the 500-doubles club:

   1. Nap Lajoie, 82 HRs (657 doubles)
   2. Honus Wagner, 101 HRs (643 doubles)
   3. Paul Waner, 113 HRs (605 doubles)

   Waner has the fewest HRs of any 500-doubles hitter in the live-ball era.

8. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 1:35 am

   @5, Dr. Doom -- Don't sweat it. I'm a slow writer (and maybe just a bit long-winded), so it happens to me frequently.

   I wish the site had a "Save before posting" feature.

9. John Autin Says:
   January 16th, 2011 at 1:42 am

   Fewest triples among the 500-doubles club:

   1. John Olerud, 13
   2. Edgar Martinez, 15
   3. Manny Ramirez, 20

   Four of Olerud's 13 career triples came in 1998, his second "career season" -- and all four came in a span of 22 days.

10. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:00 am

    Ratios of doubles to singles among the 500-doubles club:

    Highest ratio of doubles to singles:
    1. Barry Bonds, 0.402
    2. Todd Helton, 0.393
    3. (tie) Jeff Kent and Luis Gonzalez, 0.379

    Lowest
    1. Tony Gwynn, 0.228
    2. Pete Rose, 0.232
    3. Rickey Henderson, 0.234
    4. Ty Cobb, 0.237

    I included four spots in that last one just so I could say this:
    It cracks me up that both Rose and Cobb had over 3,000 singles.

    Rose had 1,041 extra-base hits, 24th all-time -- and his singles alone would rank 14th all-time, between Lajoie and Ripken. Or to put it another way: Rose had 36% more extra-base hits than Tony Gwynn did, yet Rose still had more singles than Gwynn had hits.

    I'm not saying Rose was or wasn't a better player than any of those guys -- just saying, he had a lot of hits. Rose had more than twice as many hits as Mike Piazza, Duke Snider, and more than 50 other HOF hitters. (Yeah, I know that Piazza is not a HOFer yet. You know what I mean.)

11. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:01 am

    Clarification re #10 above: Rose's singles would rank 14th on the all-time hits list. Sorry for the confusion.

12. MikeTink Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:08 am

    Why have Honus Wagner's 1897, 1898, and 1899 and especially his great 1900 season not been included?

13. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:14 am

    Random asides:

    1. In his 20-year career, Tony Gwynn struck out 434 times -- exactly as many times as Mark Reynolds has done in the last 2 years.

    2. With 9 Ks of Gwynn, Nolan Ryan is the only pitcher who whiffed him more than 6 times. In just 4 seasons, Mark Reynolds has whiffed 10+ times against 6 different pitchers, with 17 Ks.

    3. Tony Gwynn faced Greg Maddux 107 times and never struck out. Maddux faced Reynolds 13 times over 4 games, with 4 strikeouts.

    P.S. Gwynn batted .415 against Maddux, with 11 walks for a .476 OBP. On the other hand, Gwynn never "went yard" against Maddux, and his 39 hits produced just 9 RBI.

14. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:27 am

    @12, MikeTink -- I'm not sure if you're asking why the years before 1901 are generally omitted from these discussions, or if you're merely miffed that Wagner doesn't get his just due on this list. Assuming the former....

    The Play Index defaults to 1901 as the first year of a season search.

    I'm not privy to the reasons behind that decision, but I think it's good to have some default that tries to separate the "modern era" from the formative years of the pro game; otherwise, a lot of search results would be dominated by pitchers who threw 600 innings in a season (for example).

    As to why the default is 1901, specifically, I'd guess that was a convenient compromise between the dates that compete for the title of "the dawn of modern baseball," with 1903 and 1893 being the leading contenders. There wasn't a particularly momentous change in the rules in 1901, as there were in 1893 (pitching distance moved back to 60' 6") and 1903 (foul balls are strikes), but 1901 was historically significant as the start of the American League (and thus the two-league Major Leagues). Also, I think 1901 is commonly termed the "dawn of the modern era" by non-historian baseball people.

15. Mike Felber Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 3:05 am

    These rankings selects for long careers, pitchers era, & low homers. But I really think if these lists are to be more than curiosities, to say meaningful things about the individual players, They should at least adjust for park & era. Why ever do something like this without the "+"?

16. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 3:35 am

    @15, Mile Felber -- Again, I wouldn't presume to speak for Steve's purpose in posting these lists, but I think it is pretty much a "curiosity" list, which can be fun.

    I don't see any sign that Steve meant to denigrate these players for their slugging percentages. And after all, 14 of the 19 are HOFers. And anyone who wants to know can find out that Pete Rose's .409 SLG was 19 points above the league average for his career.

    Besides, how would you rework it as a "+" list? Is there a readily-available stat called "SLG+"? You could use OPS+, but that would be a very different list, for obvious reasons.

    P.S. I don't think it's entirely true that the list selects for "low HRs," when the median is 234 and two of the 19 have over 400 HRs. Nine of the 19 rank among the top 200 in career HRs, and three rank in the top 61.

17. Jimbo Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 4:29 am

    The thing about Mays is not just the high triples, but the extremely high home runs. He's a 660 home run guy, Musial had 475 if I remember correctly. That might be 185 doubles there, so Mays primarily had "too much power" as well as having "too much speed" to be a major doubles hitter.

18. DavidRF Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 4:55 am

    Merging the pre-1901 data into the list gives the following adjustments:

    Cap Anson - 581 doubles - .445 SLG
    Honus Wagner - 640 doubles - .466 SLG
    Nap Lajoie - 657 doubles - .467

    Eddie Delahanty is the only other member of the 500-club who played pre-1901 (522) but he slugged too high (.505).

19. John Autin Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 4:58 am

    @17, Jimbo -- You may have something there.

    On the other hand, almost half the members of the 500-HR club had a doubles total at least 82% of their HR total, including Hank Aaron (755 HRs), Junior Griffey (630) and Frank Robinson (586).

    I checked the P-I for all seasons of 40 to 52 HRs; their median doubles total was 29. Mays had 6 seasons with 40-52 HRs, and averaging 25.5 doubles.

    But maybe, as you say, the power, combined with the speed that turned doubles into triples, may explain Mays's doubles total.

20. DavidRF Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 4:59 am

    Thread title doesn't quite match the search that was done in the PI link... Dave Parker slugged .4707.

21. DavidRF Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 6:23 am

    I think Jimbo is right. Mays' ratio is due to high triples and HR's. If you look at XBH per H, then Mays ranks 8th out of the 51 members of the 500-doubles club behind Bonds, Ruth, Gehrig, Ramirez, Griffey, TWilliams, FRobinson. (He's just missed seventh place, You need to go to six decimal points to break the tie with Robinson).

    Plus Mays had a lot of hits (3283) which is bad for a "per hit" metric.

22. Jimbo Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 7:13 am

    Glaring statistic.

    Garrett Anderson. Only 8 HBP's in his career.

23. Phil Gaskill Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 8:32 am

    Ever look at Mantle's and Maris's doubles in 1961? They each had 16. Sixteen doubles. I've always wondered how one hits 54 or 61 homers with only 16 doubles.

24. Steve Lombardi Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 8:59 am

    Why choose .470 as a benchmark?

    Pudge Rodriguez. I noticed the other day that he's the active leader for most career doubles. And, I thought that was interesting because he's not really a power hitter - esp in the post-PED-tesing days. So, I looked at his career SLG% and rounded up, hence the line of .470 in this sort.

25. Steve Lombardi Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 9:00 am

    I wouldn't presume to speak for Steve's purpose in posting these lists, but I think it is pretty much a "curiosity" list

    Exactly what I was doing here. It's just for fun, nothing else. Not trying to make a claim or prove a point, not at all.

26. barkie Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 9:41 am

    I've ALWAYS said this...

    Look at that list. Any one of them would be valuable for you team.

    AND, best of all.....

    They're cheap. Not one of them was ever overpaid like an Adam Dunn for instance. These guys were all great money values in their day. OK, please don;t try to destroy my list by finding one expensive guy. My point is, doubles hitters are a great bargain salary-wise.

27. LeeTro Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 10:23 am

    A note on the Oliver/Anderson comparison: Oliver was worth +223 batting runs over his career, Anderson -3. Not too similar at all, but most of us here already knew that.

    I wonder how possible it would be to get a similarity-score type comparison using WAR components. That would be a really fun tool to use.

28. Divad Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 10:44 am

    Interesting that only 2 are dead-ball era players (Wagner & Lajoie) as there weren't many homers hit then, but alot of doubles and triples.

29. Dave Huemer Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 12:34 pm

    Before you sort, guess the player in this group with the highest OPS. Answer below.

    John Olerud--did you get it right?

30. Johnny Twisto Says:
    January 16th, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    They're cheap.

    How do you figure? 12 of these guys are HOFers, 2 more are going to be elected, and 1 other is out for non-playing reasons. I'd say about 5 of them were considered the best player in baseball at one point. For the most part these aren't undervalued players but were recognized as greats and I presume were paid commensurately.

31. John Autin Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:33 am

    @23, Phil Gaskill re: Maris & Mantle 16 doubles each in 1961:

    Whatever it was, it wasn't unique to the M&M boys. Check out the rest of the Yankee regulars that year:
    -- Yogi Berra, 11 doubles in 437 PAs
    -- Bobby Richardson, 17 in 706 PAs
    -- Elston Howard, 17 in 482 PAs
    -- Clete Boyer, 19 in 578 PAs
    -- Bill Skowron, 23 in 607 PAs
    -- Tony Kubek, 38 in 658 PAs

    As a team, the Yankees were dead last in AL doubles, and by a pretty good margin. Their pitchers also allowed a pretty low number of doubles.

    I believe that Yankee Stadium was historically not a good doubles park.

32. bells Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:36 am

    John Autin - you're a factoid machine! Just wanted to say thanks, as someone who has actually gotten into baseball through this site and has just started really following recently, I'm fascinated by the history of the game and I love this blog for all the weird little nuggets that put some context around certain players.

33. John Autin Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:38 am

    P.S. to my last post -- Mantle and Maris both had extremely low doubles rates over their careers, averaging 23 and 22 doubles per 162 games, respectively (as compared to 36 and 30 HRs).

34. John Autin Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:55 am

    @32, Bells -- Thanks!

    When I discovered B-R, I was like a kid in a candy store. Three years later, I still feel that way, only more so. And I know there are still many things that can be done on B-R that I haven't even touched yet.

    Enjoy!

35. John Autin Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 2:03 am

    P.S. to Bells -- There have been 28 MLB players with the last name "Bell," including 7 All-Stars. But the only Bell in the HOF never played in the majors: Negro Leagues great Cool Papa Bell.

36. fourfriends1679 Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 10:38 am

    @#27: I used war rankings in my all-time dream team selections. Come by and take a look. (Name linked to blog.)

37. JSE Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    If he stays healthy, Brian Roberts could end up pretty high on this list -- at 32 he's got 332 doubles, and has been a safe bet for 45 2B every time he plays a full season. Career SLG now at .419.

38. Lawrence Azrin Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 1:55 pm

    #6/#17/#19- Willie Mays' doubles totals - I don't think they were unusually low; there were just fewer doubles hit in the NLof the 50s and 60s, than other eras that produced high single-season doubles totals.

    Here is where he ranks on the Giants in doubles for his full years (1954-71), he is usually first or second on the Giants:
    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
    YEAR../RANK../Leading doubles total on the Giants
    '54 2nd 35
    '55 4th 21
    '56 1st 27
    '57 2nd 31
    '58 2nd 38
    '59 1st 43
    '60 2nd 36
    '61 1st 32
    '62 1st 36
    '63 2nd 33
    '64 2nd 27
    '65 1st 30
    '66 1st 29
    '67 3rd 26
    '68 1st 20
    '69 4th 26
    '70 5th 35
    '71 4th 32

    Perhaps someone with better P-I abilities than myself can determine if the Giants' home park had below-average doubles totals for these years...

39. topper009 Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 6:02 pm

    Surprising Eddie Collins did not make the list, 438 2Bs out of 3315 hits, only 13%, lower than Mays' rate.

    Sam Rice was very close, with 498 2Bs and a .427 SLG%. He missed 500 2Bs by 2 and 3000 hits by only 13. If he would have only played 1 more month he would probably be remembered much more.

40. topper009 Says:
    January 17th, 2011 at 7:19 pm

    Looks like the worst HOF non-pitcher in terms of 2B% is Wee Willie Keeler with only 241 2Bs out of 2932 hits for 8%. I guess he could only hit singles where they aint.

41. TheIronHorse Says:
    January 18th, 2011 at 10:51 am

    Before Willie Mays' catch in the 1954 World Series against Vic Wertz, the greatest catch in Series history was considered to be Sam Rice's catch in the 1925 World Series for the Senators against the Pirates. He caught the ball and tumbled over the outfield wall, re-emerging with the ball triumphantly held high.

    Naturally, no video exists. It was debated for years whether Rice held the ball. An interesting sidebar was that Rice had written his recollections in
    a letter to be opened upon his death. The HOF knowing of the existence of this letter, searched vainly after his death in 1965 but could not find it.

    Finally, an attorney in New York City, reading of the search, announced that he had the letter. In it Rice wrote that he, "had a death grip on it."

    So not only was Rice improperly remembered because he ended up 13 hits shy of 3,000, he also lost his spot as the best WS catch ever to Mays catch and the power of video.

42. John Autin Says:
    January 19th, 2011 at 3:38 am

    @38, Lawrence Azrin -- Good point. I checked the rate of doubles (as a % of total hits) in the NL for two 3-year periods during Mays's career, and compared to the last 3 years:

    NL -- Doubles as % of total hits:

    1954-56 -- 15.8%
    1966-68 -- 15.1%
    2008-10 -- 20.2%

    P.S. I had read somewhere that doubles accounted for about 20% of hits on a pretty consistent basis throughout the live-ball era. Not so!

43. John Autin Says:
    January 19th, 2011 at 3:43 am

    P.S. to Lawrence Azrin -- The Polo Grounds was definitely a bad doubles park, due to extremely short foul lines.

    In 1954, for example, there were 127 doubles in the Giants' home games, but 200 in their road games.

    The flip side of that was all the cheap HRs (which you somehow never hear about when people are guesstimating how many career HRs Mays lost to Candlestick Park): In '54, there were 187 HRs in the Giants' home games, just 112 in their road games.

44. Johnny Twisto Says:
    January 19th, 2011 at 4:20 pm

    I smell an Andy graph brewing on those doubles % numbers...