Friday Stuff

Flash In The Pan Edition

(Note: This originally published with a note saying that Junior Caminero is STILL sitting on 26 double plays. I’ve been checking box scores daily and Baseball-Reference totals every morning, so I know that was his total. I’m not crazy, and I didn’t miss one. And yet BBRef is now showing him with 27, the latest one coming THREE DAYS AGO against the Yankees. What the hell happened? Was there a scoring change or something?)

Monday

When he was 24 years old, it looked like Tommy Davis was on his way to the Hall of Fame. He was on a very small list in baseball history, the one that featured only those players with multiple batting titles before turning 25.

• Ty Cobb, 5

• Pete Browning, 2

• Paul Hines, 2

• Ted Williams, 2

Hines and Browning made this list in the 19th century, when fielders didn’t have real gloves (or any gloves at times), and sometimes it took four strikes to strikeout, or walks counted as hits, so we should probably discount those. The only players since 1900 to winning multiple batting titles before their 25th birthday are Cobb, Williams, and Tommy Davis. That was true in 1963 and it remains true over 60 years later.

He was also on a pretty short list for RBIs. These are all the players in history who compiled more than 150 RBI in a season at the age of 23 or younger:

• Mel Ott, 151 RBI in 1929 when he was 20.

• Jimmie Foxx, 156 RBI in 1930 when he was 22.

• Hal Trosky, 162 RBI in 1936 when he was 23.

• Joe DiMaggio, 167 RBI in 1937 when he was 22.

• Tommy Davis, 153 RBI in 1962 when he was 23.