by Rany Jazayerli
September 20, 2000

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=783


First off, a nod to readers Paul Drye and Stephen Roney, who both took me up
on my triple-dog-dare from last week. Referencing Dazzy Vance’s strikeouts
and Babe Ruth’s homers, I challenged readers to find another instance in
which one player so thoroughly dominated his league in any significant
category.

Both Drye and Roney rose to the challenge, pointing out the following
leaderboard in stolen bases for the NL in 1962, the year Maury Wills broke Ty
Cobb’s single-season stolen base record:


Name             Team   SB

Maury Wills      LA    104
Willie Davis     LA     32
Vada Pinson      CIN    26
Julian Javier    STL    26
Tony Taylor      PHI    20

Wills more than tripled the stolen-base total of the runner-up, and
quadrupled the total of the third-place finisher. Now that’s dominance.

Statistical Oddities: The Wes Covington Club

Ever consider the relationship among the three components of a player’s
extra-base hit line: his doubles, triples, and home runs? (I’m going
somewhere with this. Trust me.) As a statistic, the home run tells a story of
raw power, while the triple sends a message of blazing speed, at least since
the end of the dead-ball era. The double is a neutral party, essentially a
standard for the other two statistics.

The vast majority of hitters--7,906 of them with 400 or more at-bats since
the clean-ball era began in 1920--hit more doubles than either triples or
home runs. Of the 7,906, 5,198 hit more homers than triples, 2,285 hit more
triples than homers and 423 three-bagged and four-bagged equally well.

Only 1,302 hitters in the same set did not finish with more doubles than
either homers or triples. Of this group, 1,289 of them finished with more
homers than doubles. Call them the Mark McGwire behemoths; McGwire came into
2000 with more than twice as many career homers (522) as doubles (240), the
highest ratio ever (minimum: 1000 AB).

Only 13 hitters have ever finished with more triples than doubles. Call them
the Lance Johnson whippets; Johnson was the last player to turn the feat in
1994. (David Hulse and Luis Polonia are the only other players to turn the
trick since 1975.)

It stands to reason that the twain shall never meet. It takes power at the
expense of speed to rack up more homers than doubles, and that it takes speed
at the expense of power to rack up more triples than doubles. To combine the
two--to hit more triples and more homers than doubles--would require a skill
set that doesn’t exist, right?

Right. Sort of. One player in major league history has done so in a full
season, but it was a 19th-century player. What a season it was, though. In
1899, Buck Freeman, a 27-year-old rookie outfielder for the Washington
Nationals (in their final season as a National League franchise), almost lit
the home-run spark around baseball 20 years before Babe Ruth. Freeman hit
just 19 doubles, but roped 25 triples and 25 home runs, an absolutely
phenomenal feat.

Not only was Freeman’s homer total the second-highest in history to that
point (the record holder, Ned Williamson, set his mark in a park with a
right-field fence only 240 feet from home plate), but his triple total also
ranked tenth in the record books! Freeman combined for 50 hits of three bases
or more, which smashed the old mark by a margin of 10 and would remain the
record until 1920, when Ruth would break the record with his homers alone.

Unfortunately for Freeman, no one knew any of this at the time, because no
one kept any record books; no one even knew who held the single-season homer
record until the Babe’s assault in 1919 made the question a national story.

In the live-ball era, no player has accomplished the feat in a season of more
than 328 at-bats. Which brings us to Wes Covington:


Name             Year  Team              AB   D   T   HR

Wes Covington    1957  Milwaukee (NL)   328   4   8   21
Deion Sanders    1992  Atlanta          303   6  14    8
Jerry Lynch      1954  Pittsburgh       284   4   5    8
Fred Kendall     1972  San Diego        273   3   4    6
Andy Pafko       1955  Milwaukee (NL)   252   3   5    5

Covington’s season stands out even among the freaks. Covington and Freeman
are the only players in history to hit at least three fewer doubles than
either triples or homers. His power surge, freakish as it was, helped the
Milwaukee Braves win the World Series. Well, that and Hank Aaron. And Eddie
Mathews. And Warren Spahn.

While it’s tempting to forge a link between the presence of two Braves on
this list with a two-year span (a strange ballpark effect?), I suspect the
prime culprit is blind luck. Neon Deion did not consult the Wes Covington
manual when he made this list; Sanders, who had six triples by April 18, had
the highest ratio of triples to at-bats (minimum: 200 AB) since 1915.

Why bring all this up now? Step right up and see Roger Cedeno and his
freakish stat line:


Name             Year  Team              AB   D   T   HR

Roger Cedeno     2000  Houston          249   2   4    6

Cedeno has hit a career-high six home runs in just 249 at-bats, which could
be blamed on Enron Field, except that he has as many homers on the road (3)
as at home. What’s truly freakish about Cedeno’s line is the absence of
doubles. Only nine times since 1900 has a player hit fewer than two doubles
in a season of at least 230 at-bats, the last being Rafael Belliard in 1988,
the year he had four triples and no other extra-base hits.

Does all of this really mean anything? Not really. Is it fun to play around
with? Sure. And there are dozens of freak stats like this one just waiting to
be discovered, which is just another reason why no sport gives the ardent fan
more to do during the off-season than baseball.