List of Major League Baseball Batting Champions

List Of Major League Baseball Batting Champions

In baseball, batting average (AVG) is a measure of a batter's success rate in achieving a hit during an at bat. In Major League Baseball (MLB), it is calculated by dividing a player's hits by his at bats (AB). In MLB, a player in each league wins the "batting title" each season for having the highest batting average that year. Under current rules, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances (PA) per team game (for a total of 502 over the current 162-game season) to qualify for the batting title. However, if a player's lead in AVG is sufficiently large that enough hitless at bats can be added to reach this requirement and the player still would have the highest batting average, he wins the title. Tony Gwynn, for example, had 159 hits in 451 ABs in 1996 (.353 average) but only 498 PAs. Gwynn's batting average would have dropped to .349 (159 hits in 455 ABs) with four hitless ABs added to reach the 502 PA requirement, but this would still have been higher than the next-highest eligible player, so he was awarded the 1996 National League (NL) batting title.

The first batting average champion in the NL was Ross Barnes; in the league's inaugural 1876 season, Barnes batted .429 for the Chicago White Stockings. The American League (AL) was established in 1901, and Hall of Fame second baseman Nap Lajoie led that league with a .426 average for the Philadelphia Athletics. Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers, who also holds the highest career batting average of .366, led the AL in average in 11 (or 12) seasons. Honus Wagner and Gwynn are tied for the second-most titles, with eight apiece in the NL. It is unclear whether Lajoie or Cobb won the 1910 AL title, with some sources attributing the title to each man. If Cobb is credited with the 1910 title, he won 9 consecutive titles from 1907 to 1915 and 12 total titles for his career. Otherwise, Rogers Hornsby won the most consecutive titles, with six from 1920 to 1925. Without the 1910 title, Cobb still led the league in five consecutive seasons from 1911 to 1915. Cobb holds the record for highest average in two and three consecutive seasons (.414 from 1911 to 1912 and .408 from 1911 to 1913), but Hornsby holds the record for four and five consecutive seasons (.404 from 1922 to 1925 and .402 from 1921 to 1925). Wagner, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, and Gwynn have each won four consecutive titles. Lajoie also had a streak of four league-leading seasons from 1901 to 1904 if he is credited with the contested AL title in 1902.

Barnes' initial NL-leading average of .4286 in 1876 set the single-season record which stood for a decade. Tip O'Neill topped this total with a .4352 average in 1887, and Hugh Duffy set the current record mark in 1894 by posting a .4397 batting average. Under the current 3.1 PA qualification, players have posted a .400 batting average for a season 28 times. Ted Williams' .4057 in 1941 the most recent such season, one of 13 to occur since 1900. George Brett in 1980 is the only player to maintain a .400 average into September since 1941. Additionally, only Brett and John Olerud in 1993 maintained such an average into August. With the modern scarcity of .400 hitters, recent players who have been above .400 early in the season, such as Chipper Jones in 2008, have drawn significant attention in the media. Brett's .390 in 1980 and Gwynn's .394 in 1994 are the only seasons in which a player reached .390 since 1941. Carl Yastrzemski's .301 in the 1968 American League was the lowest batting average ever to lead a league. Willie Keeler's 1897 and Zack Wheat's 1918 are the only two title seasons in which the winner hit no home runs. Joe Mauer's 2006 title made him the first catcher to ever win an AL batting title, and his third title in 2009 surpassed Ernie Lombardi's previous record of two titles for a catcher in any league.The most recent champions are Miguel Cabrera, at .330 in the AL, and Buster Posey, at .336 in the NL.

The closest finish in a batting race came in 1945 when Snuffy Stirnweiss batted .309, topping Tony Cuccinello's .308 average for the American League title by .00009. George Kell beat out Williams in 1949 by .00016 points. The closest race in the National League came in 2003 when Albert Pujols held off Todd Helton on the last day of the season by .00022. The closest National League race before that was in 1931 with Chick Hafey edging out Bill Terry by .00028. Lajoie's .426 average in 1901 was 86 points higher than runner-up Mike Donlin's .340, the largest margin of victory for a batting champion. Cap Anson's .399 in 1881 was 71 points higher than Joe Start in 1881, the widest margin in the National League. No player has definitively won batting titles in both the American and National Leagues. However, Ed Delahanty has if he is credited with the disputed 1902 American League title, as he was also the 1899 National League champion. The only other player to win titles in multiple leagues was Pete Browning, who won American Association titles in 1882 and 1885, along with the lone Players' League championship in 1890. Ross Barnes and Deacon White each won National Association and National League titles, but the National Association is not regarded as an official league.

In 1990, Willie McGee posted a .335 average over 542 at-bats in the NL before being traded to the AL on August 29th. Although McGee finished the season in the AL his performance qualified him in the NL, and he won the league batting title narrowly over Eddie Murray's .330. However, McGee batted .273 that season in the AL, bringing down his overall average and allowing Murray to lead the majors in batting average.