Loyal friend and reader DaveBug recently asked via Twitter, "Using your Triple Crown def (RC/TB/OBP) who won it that didn’t win the old trio, and who won that that didn’t win the SABR version?" Ask and ye shall receive, DaveBug. We suppose being part of a limited readership has its benefits! We’ve actually been meaning to do a comprehensive post like this for some time now. After all, we first wrote about our so-called Sabermetric Triple Crown back in 2005 and revised it later that year, so it’s about time.

Major-league players have won the traditional batting triple crown 16 times, including 19th-century leagues. Due to the highly correlative stats in the Sabermetric version, it has been won 55 times. Of the four traditional triple crowns in the National League (three of which were by Cardinals, we should add) and 23 Sabermetic crowns, three have been both (in boldface):

Cardinal Stan Musial, who never won a traditional triple, gets his due with the Sabermetric triple crown (three), while Rogers Hornsby leads all senior-circuit players with five. While it’s been a long time in the National League since someone won a traditional triple crown, fans need look no further than Todd Helton’s 2000 campaign for the latest example of an all-around superior offensive season.

Now for the American League, which has seen nine traditional winners, 21 Sabermetric winners and seven cross-overs:

Babe Ruth, who was shut out out the traditional triple crown by high-average hitters like Ty Cobb, Harry Heilman and George Sisler (despite finishing with a career .342 BA, Ruth won only one batting-average title; he won 13 OBP titles), won the Sabermetric version five times. Carl Yastrzemski’s 1967 triple crown is often cited as the last triple crown in baseball, but his Sabermetric crown in 1970 is the more recent target for junior-circuit players looking to singlehandedly dominate their league.

And for those of you 19th-century aficianados and Federal League fans, the rest of the leagues:

# Meyerle tied with Ross Barnes for the league lead in total bases.

Only one of the nine Sabermetric winners won the traditional. Moreoever, only two — Anson and Brouthers — are in the Hall of Fame. Happily, SABR is holding a special "2009 Overlooked 19th Century Base Ball Legends Election," and Ross Barnes and Pete Browning are on the ballot (the others are Bill Dahlen, Jack Glasscock, George Gore, Paul Hines, Bobby Mathews, Tony Mullane, Harry Stovy and Deacon White; read more about them at the SABR Bio Project). We plan to vote for the two Sabermetric winners; please let us know if you’d like us to vote for anyone else.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under by the numbers. 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.