It’s not a secret that the big Cuban galoot can hit. He has already had several excellent seasons, and his lifetime OPS is .977 – the same as Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. But this year, he’s reached a new level, and is running away from the rest of the American League. (Aaron Judge’s injury kind of cleared the path for him.)
1) He’s leading the AL in all three triple crown categories.
2) He’s leading the league in OBP by 40 points
3) He’s leading the league in slugging average by more than 70 points.
There has been only one triple crown winner since 1967. (Miggy Cabrera, 2012) It would be even more impressive if Alvarez were doing it in the the National League, where the last Triple Crown was in 1937! (Ducky Medwick)
The triple crown pretty much punches a ticket to Cooperstown. Every man to win the triple crown in the lively ball era (1920-present) is in the Hall of Fame if eligible. It’s an impressive list:
2012 AL Miguel Cabrera DET .330, 44 HR, 139 RBI
1967 AL Yaz BOS .326, 44 HR, 121 RBI
1966 AL Frank Robinson BAL .316, 49 HR, 122 RBI
1956 AL Mickey Mantle NYY .353, 52 HR, 130 RBI
1947 AL Ted Williams BOS .343, 32 HR, 114 RBI
1942 AL Ted Williams BOS .356, 36 HR, 137 RBI
1937 NL Joe Medwick STL .374, 31 HR, 154 RBI
1934 AL Lou Gehrig NYY .363, 49 HR, 166 RBI
1933 AL Jimmie Foxx PHA .356, 48 HR, 163 RBI
1933 NL Chuck Klein PHI .368, 28 HR, 120 RBI
1925 NL Rogers Hornsby STL .403, 39 HR, 143 RBI
1922 NL Rogers Hornsby STL .401, 42 HR, 152 RBI
Notes:
Miggy Cabrera is not yet eligible to be in the Hall, but I assume he’s a first-ballot shoo-in, given back-to-back MVPs, 3000 hits, 500 homers, almost 1900 RBI.)
Chuck Klein probably doesn’t belong in the Hall with a lifetime WAR of 47. He was voted in when people didn’t study stats the way they do today. He played in a very silly home park, the Baker Bowl, where his lifetime average was .395 (not a typo; three-nine-five). On the road he was a .286 hitter with 20 homers per 650 plate appearance – a good hitter, about equivalent to Fred Lynn (.283 lifetime, with 25 homers per 650 plate appearances, a comparable number of plate appearances to Klein, and a WAR of 50). That’s good, but not really at Hall of Fame level. But Klein is in, so the triple crown list is at 100%.
Medwick was an unlikely triple crown winner. Don’t get me wrong; he was a helluva good hitter. He had no trouble with the batting average portion of the feat, since he had topped .350 multiple times and had a career average of .324. And he had no trouble with the RBI section because he was a great hitter in the middle of the high-scoring Gas House line-up, and thus led the league in RBI several times. The surprise was his home run lead, because (1) 31 homers is a low total for a league leader; and (2) he was a line drive hitter who never hit more than 23 homers in any other season. With all the great, powerful hitters that have passed through the NL in the past 90 seasons, it’s surprising that the only triple crown winner was not a slugger on the level of Mays or Bonds or Aaron or Pujols, but Ducky Medwick, who hit only 205 homers in 17 seasons.
Look at that season Gehrig had in 1934! It shows how quickly and unexpectedly ALS can strike, and how fragile our lives are. He was an absolute titan in 1934. By 1939 he struggled to walk. By 1941 he was dead, age 37.
FWIW, I find listing TC & HOF winners a far better way to waste time than comparing players on the basis of stats. The latter, IDGAS at all. Your opinions of Klein, Gehrig & Medwick are all insightful. The one virtue of the HOF is the pushback against letting players in too frivolously. I think it still tends to be too bloated. Please do take me with a grain of salt. Which you do.