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.

Former Cardinal pitcher Dan Haren pulled off a remarkable feat last Tuesday: He had more hits as a batter — three — than he allowed as a pitcher — two. It seemed like a rare enough accomplishment, so we wondered if any pitchers had turned the trick while they were still Cardinals. As it turns out, at least seven have (since 1954):

Murry Dickson, 8/19/1956
Pitching the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs, Dickson threw a nine-inning shutout, striking out nine and walking only one to go with his two hits allowed. The first of his three hits in the game accounted for the biggest single play (+12% WPA), driving in the Cardinals’ second run in the second inning.

Mike Torrez, 4/15/1970
Torrez didn’t just top his opponent in hits, he tripled their total. Holding the Expos to just one safety in nine innings (33 batters), Torrez knocked three singles and scored twice. On the down side, he walked six (and struck out only three) and hit a batter.

Bob Gibson, 6/17/1970
Gibson tossed one of the most dominant games of his career, defeating the Padres with 13 strikeouts and only one hit. He also raised his batting average to .381 (he would finish the year with a .303 BA and .347 OBP) with a pair of hits, one of which was the game’s biggest play (+10 WPA). Incredibly, it was the second game in one season in which a Cardinal pitcher had had more hits than he allowed.

Bob Gibson, 8/14/1971
What more humiliating way to defeat an opponent than when your pitcher gets a hit and can say he had more hits than the entire opposing team? That’s what Hoot did back in 1971 when he fired off his no-hitter and slammed a two-run single in the process. And if that weren’t enough, he added a sac fly for good measure — and three total RBIs. (We’d be interested to know whether any other pitchers besides Gibson have pulled off the stunt twice.)

John Urrea, 9/21/1978
Urrea’s career was otherwise undistinguished, but on this day, he nearly singlehandedly defeated the Mets 6-2. He yielded only one hit over seven innings (31 batters faced), struck out four and walked two. He drove in two runs to the delight of the 3,912 fans at Busch Stadium who witnessed the feat.

Rick Ankiel, 4/20/2000
Once upon a time, Rick Ankiel was a promising pitcher, of course. In the 13th game of his career, back on April 20, 2000, he offered a preview of what would become of both his pitching and hitting careers. He held the Padres to only two hits over five innings, and blasted a home run and hit two singles. The only problem was that he walked seven batters, foreshadowing the wildness that would ultimately force him off the mound and into the outfield where he could hit more of those home runs.

Al Reyes, 9/25/2004
What is Al Reyes doing on this list, you ask? Back when the Cardinals were winning 100 games a year, Tony La Russa used reliever Reyes late in September to kick off a "bullpen start" in order to rest his starting pitchers. Reyes pitched three scoreless and hitless innings and batted only once. But he made it count, singling off the Rockies’ Joe Kennedy. Interestingly enough, Ankiel relieved Reyes and surrendered five runs. He struck out in his at-bat, then fellow hurler Woody Williams pinch-hit for him — and struck out.

Keith Hernandez is in the news again, so naturally we couldn’t bypass the opportunity to comment. The offensive hero of the Cardinals’ 3-1 win over the Reds Thursday night was Albert Pujols*, who in reaching base twice, tied Mex for consecutive games reaching base at least twice. Both legendary Cardinal first basemen have streaks of 15 games; only Stan Musial has more (since at least 1954):

Interestingly, the major-league record is shared by a pair of cheaters, Pete Rose and Barry Bonds, so perhaps it’s a dubious honor for Pujols to attain to:

The Cardinals face the Rockies’ Jorge de la Rosa tonight, against whom Pujols has a .417 OBP in 12 plate appearances. We like his chances, even if it means surpassing one Cardinal legend and tying another.

*Who has claimed on multiple occasions that he hasn’t used PEDs but has never volunteered to be tested to attempt to prove it.

Adam Wainwright tossed in a subpar outing Sunday in San Francisco in the Cardinals’ 5-3 loss to the Giants. Wainwright, who had brought a string of three games in which he struck out at least seven batters, fanned only three and walked two batters of the team who walks least in the league.

We noted last week that Wainwright’s release-point change was successful. Did his performance Sunday have anything to do with his release point? Did he regress?

It appears that, after taking a step forward beginning on May 16, Wainwright took a step back Sunday. From his May 26 outing to Sunday’s, Wainwright seemed to return to his higher, overhead delivery — about four to five inches higher and three to four inches more overhead (again, thanks to Brooks Baseball). As a result, his two-seam fastball (which he threw 49 times Sunday, averaging a horizontal break of -7.92 and a vertical break of 8.43) wasn’t quite as sharp, moving about halfway between its pre-5/16 break (-7.05, 9.46) and its post-5/16 averages (-8.92, 7.55). It also appears that Wainwright’s curveball suffered yesterday, breaking about an inch less horizontally (8.32 to 7.43) from his 5/26 performance, though that’s a relatively small change.

We trust that the pitcher’s advisors, among them Chris Carpenter, will note the subtle shift and bring it to Wainwright’s attention in time for his next start, though, of course, Carpenter now has other performances to pay attention to, such as his own.