Derrick Goold wrote another fascinating blog post this week, this time on the idea of a decade Triple Crown. That is, players who lead in the traditional Triple Crown categories — batting average, home runs, runs batted in — over the period of any particular decade. Specifically, he looks at Rogers Hornsby, who in the 1920s was superlative in BA, HR and RBI in the National League in the 1920s. He then shows how another Cardinal great — Albert Pujols — is leading all competition in the 2000s.

Like Derrick, we are captivated by the concept of the Triple Crown. A few years ago, we coined what we called the Sabermetric Triple Crown: On-base percentage, total bases and runs created. We thought we’d apply those criteria to Hornsby and Pujols — and others — and see if the crown still fits. And for good measure, we’ll look at any 10-year period, not merely the years of a formal decade.

First, let’s consider The Rajah, whose career spanned 1915 through 1937:

Hornsby then won the decade Sabermetric Triple Crown in nine 10-year periods, including one in which he only played nine years. Pretty amazing, even for one of the greats of the game, since it wasn’t like he was playing in an era with a bunch of patsies (see Frankie Frisch, Zack Wheat, Ross Youngs, Highpockets Kelly, Kiki Cuyler and Edd Roush, Hall of Famers all).

Before we move to Pujols, let’s look at other Cardinals who might’ve won a decade Triple Crown.The last player to win a traditional Triple Crown in a season in the NL, Ducky Joe Medwick, might’ve won a decade Triple Crown (or two) if not for the habitually on-base Mel Ott, who locked up the OBP title for four of Medwick’s best 10-year runs:

And before El Hombre, there was The Man. As impressive as Hornsby’s nine decade Triple Crowns is, Stan Musial racked up 12 of them:

Again, Musial had no shortage of competition, playing against the likes of Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Ralph Kiner, Duke Snider and Eddie Mathews. Winning those 12 Triple Crown Decades is a truly amazing feat.

That brings us to Pujols and the current era. Like Medwick, Pujols has had stiff competition in the on-base category. So despite winning runs created and total bases, Pujols has yet to master a 10-year period or even a subset of a 10-year period, what with Todd Helton and Barry Bonds reaching base by natural and other means:

But Bonds is out of the game, and Helton isn’t far behind, so Pujols stands to inherit the OBP title for himself. The only rub is that, unless Helton keeps playing and suddenly loses the ability to get on base, Pujols won’t be able to overtake him for at least a couple of years. Actually, ceteris parabus, Pujols will have to wait until the 10-year period starting in 2004 to be able to garner all three Sabermetric Triple Crown titles:

So while it’s safe to say that Albert has been a dominant player in his era, if not the most dominant player, he hasn’t been as singularly great as Hornsby and Musial were. Of course, that’s no slight against Pujols. After all, The Rajah and The Man were two of the best players the game has ever known. Pujols may yet qualify.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.