Double Trouble

The Tiger’s Spencer Torkelson is off to a rough start this year. He’s hitting .224/.294/.333 with a wRC+ of 81 - that is, he’s 19% worse than league average. For a top ranked hitting prospect now in his third season, it’s not an encouraging start, despite a hot second half of 2023 where he posted a wRC+ of 121.

The one thing he’s done well is hit doubles. 13 of them, in fact - enough to lead the American League. This despite the fact that until yesterday*, he hadn’t hit any home runs. Naturally, one can’t help but wonder how often the league leader in doubles hadn’t hit any homers. Thankfully, the Lahman database makes it easy to get our answer. We’ll restrict our results to 1919 and after, since home runs didn’t really become a major part of the game until Babe Ruth started belting them out with regularity.

*He’s now at one, and hopefully he keeps going and can match last year’s 31.

library(baseballr)
library(gt)
library(gtExtras)
library(hrbrthemes)
library(Lahman)
library(tidyverse)

hitters <- Lahman::Batting %>%
  inner_join(Lahman::People %>% select(playerID, nameFirst, nameLast))

double_leaders <- hitters %>%
  mutate(name = paste(nameFirst, nameLast, sep = ' ')) %>%
  group_by(playerID, name, yearID, lgID) %>%
  summarise(AB = sum(AB),
            H = sum(H),
            BB = sum(BB),
            IBB = sum(IBB),
            X2B = sum(X2B),
            X3B = sum(X3B),
            HR = sum(HR),
            R = sum(R),
            RBI = sum(RBI),
            SB = sum(SB),
            CS = sum(CS),
            HBP = sum(HBP, na.rm = TRUE),
            SO = sum(SO),
            SH = sum(SH),
            SF = sum(SF),
            GIDP = sum(GIDP)
            ) %>%
  battingStats() %>%
  group_by(yearID, lgID) %>%
  mutate(double_rank = min_rank(desc(X2B))) %>%
  filter(double_rank == 1) %>%
  arrange(HR) %>%
  filter(yearID >= 1919)

double_leaders %>%
  select(playerID, name, yearID, lgID, PA, AB, H, X2B, X3B, HR, BA, OBP, SlugPct, OPS) %>%
  arrange(HR) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  select(-playerID) %>%
  gt() %>%
  gt_theme_espn() %>%
  cols_label(name = 'Name',
             yearID = 'Year',
             lgID = 'League',
             X2B = '2B',
             X3B = '3B',
             BA = 'AVG',
             SlugPct = 'SLG') %>%
  opt_interactive(use_pagination = TRUE)

As it turns out, Marty Marion led the NL with 38 doubles in 1942. Marion had a storied career, with six All-Star appearances and an MVP win in 1944, beating out fellow Cardinal Stan Musial, whose 172 wRC+ and 9.3 fWAR would have helped him beat Marion’s 92 wRC+ and 4.6 fWAR, had those statistics been invented at the time.

It’s not as though Marion was in a low home run environment - 1942 saw 9 players with 20 or more home runs, including Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. But Marion was a glove-first guy, generally hitting below league average and with only 36 home runs over a 13-year career. He went on to manage the Cardinals, Browns (who would become the Orioles), and the White Sox, with a career 356-372 record.

Three other players - Sparky Adams, Matty Alou, and Pete Rose - led their leagues in doubles while only hitting one home run, while Ferris Fain, George Kell (Tigers!), Wally Moses, and Ross Youngs did it while hitting only 2. Wade Boggs was among those who did it with 3 homers, that was never a part of his game though I (rightly) remember thinking when I was kid he was both one of the top hitters in the game as well as having one of the best mustaches.

Tork’s OBP is under .300. Two players - Cesar Cedeno in 1971 (NL) and Pedro Garcia in 1973 (AL) - led their leagues in doubles with OBP under .300. Cedeno would figure out things the next year, hitting .320/.385/.537 with a 163+ wRC, going on to terrorize pitchers for years to come. Garcia accomplished his task in his rookie year, and would play for five seasons total before leaving the game.

On the positive side, Albert Belle has the most home runs (50) of any player to lead his league in doubles (52), doing so with Cleveland in 1995 and being the only player to hit more than 50 double and 50 home runs in a season. He’s followed by Lou Gehrig from 1927, who hit 47 HR and 52 doubles while playing for the famous Murderer’s Row Yankees. Gehrig also had the highest SLG (.765) of any player to lead the league in doubles. Rogers Hornsby holds the NL record with .722 in 1922. Pete Rose has the lowest NL SLG with .354 in 1980, while Billy Gardner has the lowest AL SLG with .356 in 1957. Rose lead the league in doubles 5 times, which is a lot but still falls short of Stan Musial, who did it 8 times.

What does this all mean for Tork? Not much, if players as diverse as Marion, Gehrig, Todd Helton, Hank Greenberg, and Perdo Garcia can lead in doubles, then it’s not a very predictive number. Still, he has the chance to enter some interesting statistical territory - let’s just hope he gets the bat going and falls on the productive side of the ledger.