I’m not as familiar with baseball as I am with hockey. The only 4th generation player that I know of would be Blake Geoffrion. He didn’t have much of a career and neither did his father. But his grandfather Bernie ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion and his great-grandfather Howie Morenz are both all time legends.
It would have been four had they held on to Dwight Smith Jr., too.
They could still get there, if not this year then next; in the minors, the Jays have Mark Leiter Jr., who would make it four. Leiter actually pitched for the Jays last year but has not yet this year.
The Jays’ pedigree is amazing too, of course; Guerrero and Biggio are both sons of Hall of Famers, and Bichette’e father had a pretty solid career.
Ike Witt:
The 1990 Royals had 5: Brian McRae (son of Hal), Danny Tartabull (son of Jose), Bob Boone (son of Ray) Kurt Stillwell (son of Ron) and Mel Stottlemyre, Jr. (son of Sr., obviously). While there was a point in the season where all 5 were on the active roster at the same time, no more than 4 of them ever appeared the same game.
Last night, Albert Pujols went 0 for 4 against the Yankees, leaving him at 3,196 for 10,655 in his career (.299953 BA).
This is the first time he has dipped below .300 for his career since April 6, 2001 (his fourth game in MLB). Pujols has since gone on to play a further 2,810 games - I wonder if any other player has had a longer period of maintaining a .300 career average before eventually dropping out of the .300 club?
Look for members of the 3000 club with just below a .300 average.
Albert will be the first player to drop out of the .300 club after recording his 3000th hit. Technically he’s still in until he drops below .2995, but that seems inevitable. Maybe Pujols should quit today…another negative WAR season like 2017 could drop him below 100. On the other hand, if he can maintain his pace of the past two seasons he would join the 700 club in doubles and home runs.
Alex Rodriguez came close to dropping in and then out. At the end of the 2012 season he had 2901 hits and a lifetime .300 average. By the time he reached 3000 hits in 2015, his career average had dropped to .299 and he finished a year later at .295.
I’ve used Baseball Reference to answer my own question (I don’t think that B-R’s Play Index can handle this kind of query - spent the last couple hours poring over the game logs and cumulative batting tables :eek: - I have way too much time on my hands!). Please note that I’m using a strict definition of .300 here (that is, not rounding up figures between .2995 and .2999… )
Pujols’ 2,809 consecutive games of averaging .300 for his career before falling below is indeed the MLB record. Only 22 others have even played that many games, so fortunately for me the amount of data to check was just about managable.
Among the 22 potential candidates:
Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Stan Musial and Eddie Collins didn’t drop below .300 in the twilight of their careers. Mays came close, finishing at .302, and would likely have fallen below .300 had he returned to play a full season in 1974. It looks like he played his last 2,618 games with a career .300 average or better, and so would have needed to maintain his average until well into the 1975 season to have had a longer streak than Pujols.
Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Harold Baines, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, Dave Winfield, Omar Vizquel, Rusty Staub, Adrian Beltre, Brooks Robinson, Robin Yount and Craig Biggio never reached a career .300 average at the end of any season.
As for the rest:
Looks like Al Kaline comes the closest; staying above .300 for 2,307 consecutive games between June 2, 1955 and May 29, 1972.
Rafael Palmeiro was sometimes over .300 during the early - mid '90s, but relatively low averages in 1992 and 1997 prevented him from staying there for a long uninterrupted stretch.
Rickey Henderson just barely got over .300 near the end 1981 before falling away, never to return, due to a 3 for 32 slump in April 1982.
Barry Bonds reached .300 late in 2004, spent maybe a few dozen games there during 2004 and his injury-shortened 2005 season (2,742 for 9,140 to this point - exactly .300), and dropped below the mark on opening day in '06.
Damn interesting, and great work!
Mickey Mantle played 18 seasons, but only 2,401 games. His lifetime BA was .298, and he only hit .235 his final year. If he’d retired in 1967, he would have ended up at .301, and still have hit more than 500 home runs.
Jesus! Does it get much worse than that, in the ninth inning of a one-run game?
If they win today, the Astros will clinch the division with 102 wins - that made me wonder what the largest number of wins a team has had when they clinched their division. First team I thought of was the 1993 Braves, who of course won their division on the final day with 104 wins. Then I remembered that the 2001 Mariners had won their division ahead of a 100-win A’s team, and so I dug around on baseball reference and it turns out they had 106 wins when they clinched their division on September 19, 2001. Then I started checking the other high-win teams: The 1906 Cubs clinched with their 105th win; the 1998 Yankees with their 102nd; the 1954 Indians clinched with their 107th win (the Yankees won 103 that year); the 27 Yankees with their 97th win; the 1909 pirates with 106 wins; the 86 Mets and last year’s Red Sox were not particularly close; and that pretty much covers it for teams with at least 107 wins overall. So it looks like the 1954 Indians own this fairly odd record.
I am enjoying the Cardinals and Cubbies series immensely.
And Jason Heyward breaks his bat over his knee.
Gawd that has gotta hurt. I can’t help but think it will hurt tomorrow also.
Seconded. Three impressive wins by the Cards in Wrigley. And the Brewers are still hotter than hell.
FOUR 1-run wins by the Cards in Wrigley. Cards are in the playoffs. Cubs are barely alive.
A few weeks ago, the Brewers were struggling to stay in the playoff picture, and when Yelich broke his kneecap, I figured they were done. In his absence, they’ve clearly been able to turn it up when it counted.
on the MSN sports section, they have " Astros win NL West again “” the link doesn’t go anywhere lol
gee wonder why… lol
wow the al standings are weird this year there’s like 2 teams in each division with a winning record (and even 2nd place is like 5 or more back from first) and everyone else is 10 or more games back
just because I feel for the poor orioles among others …whats the lowest wins by a team in a season with the current 165 game schedule?
I mean Detroit only won 46… I can’t see any less than 30 wins because you’ll get lucky and you will play other teams that suck as bad as you …
Current season is 162 games. As far as I know the 1962 Mets losing 120 is the record. But the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics 36 117 record in 153 games is a lowest percentage winning since 1900. The Cleveland Spiders went 20-134 for a .130 winning percentage.
In the “modern era” (i.e., 1900 and on), the record for fewest wins is 36, by that Philadelphia team in 1916 (and again in 1919).
In the 162-game schedule era, the '62 Mets, at 40 wins, is the low, followed by the 2003 Tigers (43-119), and last year’s Orioles (47-115).
Source: List of worst Major League Baseball season win–loss records - Wikipedia
wow . the tigers have last years orioles beat so far as this is the last week of the season…