Will There Be Another .400 Hitter?
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By Jim Nettleton
Major League Baseball last had a player hit .400 for a season in 1941. Of course, he was The Splendid Splinter, Teddy Ballgame – the great Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox. At the time of this writing, it’s been sixty-seven years since that feat was accomplished and although some have come close, including Williams himself, no one has reached that lofty pinnacle since.
When you consider the history of the game and the number of players who have hit .400, you begin to realize just how difficult a feat it is. Consider, for example, that the .400 level has been reached just a total of thirty-five times from 1887 to today. And those achievements were not produced by thirty-five different players. Rogers Hornsby did it three times, as did Ty Cobb and Ed Delahanty. George Sisler accomplished it twice.
That means that only twenty-four different players have reached the .400 plateau in the one hundred and twenty-one years since 1887. Significantly, the game changed in enormous ways after the turn of the twentieth century and again after 1920. The .400 mark was reached twenty-two times before 1900 and only thirteen times all told since. Further, it was reached three times between 1900 and 1920, leaving only ten instances in baseball’s so-called Modern Era.
We also have to remember that during a portion of the 1800’s, a walk was considered a hit, a fact that greatly influenced the higher batting averages of the time. Of course, prior to the appearance of Babe Ruth, baseball was more of a “hit ‘em where they ain’t” game, in the immortal words of Wee Willie Keeler. When Ruth ushered in the power era, the ‘slap’ style of hitting began to take a backseat and overall batting averages tended downward.
Before Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, the most recent player to hit .400 had been Bill Terry, who reached that mark in 1930, eleven years before Williams. Now, it has been sixty-seven years since Williams, by leaps and bounds the longest elapsed time between .400 hitters in baseball history.
So we can legitimately ask, will it ever happen again? As the game stands today, odds are very definitely against it. With hitters today facing pitching specialists in the middle to late innings and lights out closers, hitting for that high an average becomes ever more difficult. Not very many players play every game in a season anymore as well, and many teams platoon much more often than they used to, cutting into playing time even more.
Today, hitting approaches are much different than in the years when .400 averages popped up relatively regularly. The big contracts are awarded on run production, and hitting home runs is the quickest way to produce those runs. Hitters that specialize in the Wee Willie Keeler style are becoming more rare by the day, although there are still a few around, such as Juan Pierre. But the overwhelming tendency is to ‘back leg it’ as it’s referred to, and try to power the ball into the next municipality.
So my prediction is no – there won’t be another .400 hitter. Baseball has most likely seen the last of a highly elite breed.
Jim Nettleton is a radio and TV professional who is a lifelong baseball addict and who played the game for decades. He highly recommends a proven training aid designed to vastly increase hitting prowess, Rotational Hitting - http://tinyurl.com/69e7ce and a training aid to develop a psychological advantage in the game http://tinyurl.com/6zxqcx.
Tags: 400 average, 400 hitter, Baseball, baseball hitters, baseball hitting, George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb