Batting .396 during the First Half puts Luis Arraez in Elite Company

Issue #103

Luis Arraez continues to hit at a high level. Not with much power of course—that isn't his game, and so he has only three HR at the half-way point in the 2023 season. But he is batting .396 after the Miami Marlins have played 81 games, a full 80-points higher than his AL-leading .316 average last year with the Minnesota Twins.

To put this great start into historical context, two questions came to mind. First, where does that batting average rank amongst other great first half-performances? Dating back to 1901, there have been 22 players with 3.1 plate appearances per team game (the minimum required to qualify for a batting average title) to hit .400 or higher in the first half of the season. Ted Williams in 1941 was one such player, as he was hitting .405 in the first half of the season in which he ended up batting .406 in the end—the last time anyone has hit .400 or higher for an entire season.

Of the 22 player-seasons, 19 of them came before Williams' 1941 first half. Rogers Hornsby did it three times—and two other times was hitting .399 at the half-way mark. Ty Cobb also hit .400+ three times in the first half, including by far the record of .446 in 1911 (second is George Sisler's .426 in 1922).

The only two times since 1941 that a player has been hitting .400 or higher at the end of the first half were Stan Musial in 1948 with a .403 average and Rod Carew in 1983 with a .402 mark. Here are all the AL and NL players, since 1941, who have hit .380 or higher during the first half—followed by what they ended up batting by the end of that season (* indicates they ended up leading their particular league in batting average that year):

• .403/.376 Stan Musial - 1948*

• .402/.339 Rod Carew - 1983

• .398/.366 Larry Walker - 1997

• .396/.352 Tommy Holmes - 1945

• .395/.363 John Olerud - 1993*

• .394/.388 Rod Carew - 1977*

• .394/.372 Tony Gwynn - 1997*

• .391/.370 Andres Galarraga - 1993*

• .389/.372 Nomar Garciaparra - 2000*

• .388/.369 Ted Williams - 1948*

• .384/.355 Darin Erstad - 2000

• .383/.394 Tony Gwynn - 1994*

• .383/.372 Todd Helton - 2000*

• .383/.353 Frank Thomas - 1994

• .382/.364 Rod Carew - 1974*

• .382/.359 Paul O'Neill - 1994*

• .382/.379 Larry Walker - 1999*

Some interesting names here, with Rod Carew's three seasons being the most on this list. His epic 1977 campaign saw him hit very consistently throughout the year, with a .394 average in the first half and a .388 average overall. In 1983, at age 37, he wasn't able to sustain his fast start of .402 in the fist half, as he then hit only .280 in the second half to end with a .339 mark.

The distance between Arraez and everyone else

Another interesting aspect of what Arraez is doing this year is just how much higher his batting average is than anyone else across MLB. As of the time of this writing, the second highest average of .331 belongs to Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves. That is 65 points behind Arraez’ .396 mark. Yes, Corey Seager of the Rangers is hitting .345, but injury has limited him to only 49 games and 224 plate appearances, so he doesn't qualify for the leaderboards yet. And even if he did, there would still be a 51 point difference between him and Arraez.

So this big gap between Arraez and the rest of the field made me wonder… what have been the biggest MLB batting average gaps? Going back to 1901, I found 24 seasons where the highest overall average was at least 20 points higher than anyone else (from either league). The most recent came in 2010, when Josh Hamilton hit .359 and Carlos Gonzalez hit .336—a 23 point gap. There appears to be a tie for the largest gap—Carew's previously mentioned 1977 season, and then way back in 1901 when Nap Lajoie hit .426 for the Philadelphia Athletics (while also leading the new AL in just about everything, including runs, hits, doubles, HR, TB, RBI, BA, OBP, SLG, OPS, and OPS+).

Here are the nine seasons that my research found ended with a gap of 30 points or more between the top two qualifying batting averages:

• 1977 - 50 points: Rod Carew .388, Dave Parker .338

• 1901 - 50 points: Nap Lajoie .426, Jesse Burkett .376

• 1941 - 47 points: Ted Williams .406, Cecil Travis .359

• 1924 - 46 points: Rogers Hornsby .424, Babe Ruth .378

• 1980 - 38 points: George Brett .390, Cecil Cooper .352

• 1970 - 37 points: Rico Carty .366, Alex Johnson .329

• 1935 - 32 points: Arky Vaughan .385, Joe Medwick .353

• 1917 - 30 points: Ty Cobb .383, George Sisler .353

• 1909 - 30 points: Ty Cobb .377, Eddie Collins .347

It is exciting to track Arraez this year, and it will be interesting to see where his batting average ends up—and if he leads MLB, will it be by more than 50 points, setting a new modern-era record?

All data is from Baseball-Reference.com, and also their subscription service Stathead.com. If you are a big sports fan, be sure to check out the latest features at Stathead and the Sports Reference family of sites. The state map, flag, flower, and bird images are from Wikipedia.

Did you know? I wrote a book with the same title as this Substack newsletter / blog: Now Taking the Field: Baseball’s All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises. It was published in early 2019, by ACTA Sports, the publisher of the annual Bill James Handbook and other popular titles. You can learn more about it at www.NowTakingTheField.com, or buy directly at Amazon and other booksellers.