Baseball's Best Decade (36 page)

Batting and Slugging Averages, By Decade

Slugging percentage is the one hitting category where the later decades are clearly competitive with the 1920s and 1930s. While collective major league batting averages in the 1950s through 1980s never rose above .260, slugging averages for both the 1950s (.391) and 1980s (.388) were close to the titanic slugging characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s.

During the 1990s, the
combined batting averages for major league hitters finally cleared the .260 mark, and slugging surpassed all other decades by reaching .407. That slugging proficiency continued into the current century. Yet that higher slugging did not translate into more runs per game than were scored during the 1920s or 1930s, and resulted in only 0.05 more runs per game than in the 1950s.

So were the sluggers in the 1990s
and 2000s as good as those in the 1920s, 1930s or 1950s? Or just more frequent home run hitters?

Batting Champions’ Averages By Decade

This statistic was achieved by taking the at-bats and hits for each batting champion’s season and combining them to determine the overall winning batting average for each decade. This provides the opportunity to compare each decade by the standard of its best hitters.

After the 1930s, there was tremendous consistency among baseball’s best hitters, averaging above .340 except for the American League during the 1960s and the National League during the 1980s. While the amazing batting averages of the 1920s and even the 1930s overshadow the averages of the batting champions in the rest of the decades, it is easy to conclude that the game’s best hitters
have performed at a consistently high level in all decades. And if that is the case, then the drops in total decade averages must be attributed to a falling off in hitting efficiency by the rest of the lineups. The best of the best could hit any time against any pitching.

.300 Hitters By Decade

The 1920s and 1930s
averaged
more than 40 .300 hitters per season. Of the other decades, only the 1990s and 2000s come close.

The dominance of pitching during the 1960s is most evident in this statistical category, as only 47 batters in total hit .300 or better in the American League during that decade … the
combined major league per season average during the 1920s. Yet in 6 of the 9 decades, the American League had more .300 hitters than the National League.

Extra-Base Hit Averages By Decade

Major league batters not only hit more home runs with each decade, but also hit them with more frequency. Even without expansion, home runs would have increased to the point where, in the 1990s, major league teams hit more than twice as many home runs per 9 innings as did the teams of the 1920s. It is also interesting that the pitching-dominated 1960s had no shortage of home run power, tying with the 1980s for the fourth highest average per 9 innings.

Doubles gradually declined until the 1970s, and the
n were on an upswing until the 2000s, when there was a sudden drop with no obvious explanation. Triples make up the one category that has consistently declined over the decades, both in totals and in average triples per 9 innings. By the 2000s, the major leagues averaged less than one triple every 9 games.