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One Of Baseball’s Rarest Achievements!
Yes…It’s time to put on your thinking caps.
Thanks to one of our readers, Don Jennings, I think I may have uncovered one of the rarest achievements in all of baseball, something you probably haven’t really thought much about.
Before I tell you what it is, consider this: It’s even rarer than hitting .400, throwing a perfect game, making an unassisted triple play, hitting for a “natural cycle,” or even hitting for a “reverse natural cycle.”
What I’m talking about has happened only four times. And two of those we might be able to discount, if you get my drift. Or maybe I should put it this way: If you eliminate the steroid era, it’s only happened twice…
To give you a little perspective, there have been 23 perfect games, 12 seasons in which players have hit .400 (since 1900), 15 unassisted triple plays, 14 natural cycles, and 5 reverse natural cycles. These are all pretty rare, but not as rare as:
The .800 slugging average for a single season
To date, in the entire 144-year history of the major leagues, a .800 slugging average has been achieved only four times. Only two players have achieved it: Barry Bonds in 2001 (.863). Babe Ruth in 1920 (.847), the Babe again in 1921 (.846), and Bonds again in 2004 (.812). That makes it one of the rarest, if not the rarest, achievement in baseball history. As you can see, Ruth was the only player to achieve it in the 20th century, while Bonds is the only player in the 21st century.
And, as I said, I think two of those seasons can either be eliminated from the discussion or at least should have asterisks attached to them. That puts the Babe in a class by himself among the game’s greatest sluggers.
(In the featured photo we see two of the greatest sluggers in the history of the game, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, with their manager Joe McCarthy.)
Slugging average is sometimes a hard stat to relate to, and for that reason is often overlooked. It’s really an index of a player’s power. It’s simply the sum of the number of bases reached on each hit, divided by the total number of at-bats:
“Unlike batting average, slugging average gives more weight to extra-base hits such as doubles and home runs, relative to singles. Plate appearances resulting in walks are specifically excluded from this calculation, as an appearance that ends in a walk is not counted as an at bat. The maximum numerically possible slugging percentage is 4.000. A number of major leaguers (117 through the end of the 2016 season) have momentarily had a 4.000 career slugging percentage by homering in their first major league at-bat” [Wikipedia]
So what’s a good slugging average? In 2018, the mean slugging average among all teams was .409. That means an outstanding “slash line” for batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging average would be .300/.400/.500.
Here’s some interesting tidbits about slugging average Don Jennings shared with me:
- The Bambino holds the major league record for lifetime slugging average at .690.
- Ruth was age 25 and 26 when he slugged .800. Bonds was 36 and 39.
- Prior to Bonds, Rogers Hornsby held the National League record for highest career slugging average (.577) and highest single season slugging average (.756).
- Only six players in major league history have had career slugging averages over .600: Ruth (.690), Ted Williams (.634), Lou Gehrig (.632), Jimmie Foxx (.609), Barry Bonds (.607), and Hank Greenberg (.605). See list of the top-25 below.
- Pre-PEDs, the highest Bonds ever slugged was .688. His highest home run total pre-PEDs was 46 in 1993.
Don makes a convincing case that the Bambino was the greatest slugger ever, reminding us that Hank Aaron had nearly 4,000 more at bats than Ruth. Don quotes historian Lawrence Ritter:
“At the pace Ruth hit homers (on average one every 11.8 times at bat), 4,000 more times at bat would have generated another 340 Ruthian round-trippers, for a total of 1,054. Pure speculation [but interesting to consider nonetheless].”
How significant is Babe Ruth’s .690 career slugging average? Consider this information Don Jennings provided:
“The following sluggers never reached Ruth’s lifetime .690 in their best years: Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks, Reggie Jackson, Harmon Killebrew, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Hank Greenberg, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Kluszewski, Jim Thome, Duke Snider, and Joe Adcock. Ralph Kiner led the National League in home runs for seven consecutive years. His best season effort was .658 in 1949. Mickey Mantle managed it only once, and that in his Triple Crown year of 1956 when he slugged .705. Albert Pujols did it once with a .6905 slugging average.
In addition to the two years when he slugged better than .800, Ruth slugged .700 or higher nine times. He led the league in slugging percentage thirteen times, another record. For the uninitiated these stats can be a bit overwhelming, nonetheless, they’re essential for an understanding of Ruth’s stature as the best ever.”
Babe Ruth’s lifetime slugging average of .690 means that he averaged nearly seven total bases every ten times at-bat. That would mean something like a single, a double, and a home run every ten times at bat — over a span of 22 years.
To close, here’s a list of the top-25 leaders in slugging average. Again, this “slugging” stat puts the Bambino in a class by himself, with a slugging average 56 points higher than his closest competitor, the great Ted Williams:
| Slugging Average All Time Leaders‘Top-25 |
||
| Name | Slugging Average | Rank |
| Babe Ruth | .690 (.68972) | 1 |
| Ted Williams | .634 (.63379) | 2 |
| Lou Gehrig | .632 (.63242) | 3 |
| Jimmie Foxx | .609 (.60929) | 4 |
| Barry Bonds | .607 (.60689) | 5 |
| Hank Greenberg | .605 (.60505) | 6 |
| Mark McGwire | .588 (.58817) | 7 |
| Manny Ramirez | .585 (.58540) | 8 |
| Mike Trout | .581 (.58111) | 9 |
| Joe DiMaggio | .579 (.57880) | 10 |
| Rogers Hornsby | .577 (.57653) | 11 |
| Larry Walker | .565 (.56522) | 12 |
| Albert Belle | .564 (.56381) | 13 |
| Johnny Mize | .562 (.56201) | 14 |
| Juan Gonzalez | .561 (.56071) | 15 |
| Stan Musial | .559 (.55906) | 16 |
| Willie Mays | .557 (.55749) | 17 |
| Mickey Mantle | .557 (.55678) | 18 |
| Frank Thomas | .555 (.55495) | 19 |
| Hank Aaron | .555 (.55451) | 20 |
| Hank Aaron | .555 (.55451) | 20 |
| Jim Thome | .554 (.55414) | 21 |
| Vladimir Guerrero | .553 (.55254) | 22 |
| David Ortiz | .551 (.55150) | 23 |
| Alex Rodriguez | .550 (.55016) | 24 |
| Albert Pujols | .549 (.54861) | 25 |
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Gary Livacari
Photo Credits: All from Google search
Information: Comments on slugging average from Don Jennings; excerpts edited from slugging average Wikipedia page
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