Hot Streaks: Ted Williams

THC likes to peruse Baseball-Reference.com.  Recently while looking for the best hitting hot streaks for several players he stumbled across an amazing performance by Ted Williams.

When the 1957 season began Ted was 38 years old (and turning 39 in August) and by any conventional standard in the downhill phase of his glorious career which began in 1939.

He got off to a fine start that year.  When the All-Star break came on July 8 he was hitting .343 with an On-Base Percentage (OBP) of .476, a Slugging Percentage of .645 along with 20 homers and 45 RBIs.  A terrific performance for any player of any age. 

It's what happened next that makes the season remarkable.  After the All-Star break, in 172 at bats (along with 60 walks) Williams hit .453, slugged 18 homers, with an OBP of .594, Slugging .858 and ended up hitting .388 for the year, the highest average in the majors since he'd hit .406 in 1941 (and only exceeded since when George Brett hit .390 in 1980 and Tony Gwynn .394 in 1994).

Within that second-half performance is embedded yet another incredible feat.  On September 1, 1957 Ted pinch hit, striking out and the next day was out of the line up with what was reported as a bad chest cold, not playing again until September 17 when he hit a home run as a pinch hitter.  The next day, pinch hitting again, he walked.  After a day off the Red Sox began a series with the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.  In the 9th inning of the first game, Ted hit a pinch hit homer off Yankees ace Whitey Ford.  On the 21st he finally started a game, bashing a grand slam in his first at bat against Bob Turley and then walking three times on 12 pitches.  The following day he walked in his first at bat and then whacked another homer against Tom Sturdivant.  In nine plate appearances Williams hit four homers and walked five times going on set a major league record by reaching base in 16 consecutive plate appearances.

In 32 plate appearances after returning to the lineup on September 17 through the end of the season, Ted hit .667, including five homers, with a OBP of .812 and Slugging % of 1.629.  Not too bad for a guy who was 39 years old by then.

After looking at the 1957 season, THC became curious about the What If? of the career of Ted Williams.  Ted lost three years in his prime (1943-5) during WWI; missed almost half of the 1950 season after breaking his elbow making a catch in the All-Star game and then after playing a few games at the start of the 1952 season (and hitting a homer in his last at bat) was recalled to active duty during the Korean War, becoming the only major league player to serve in both conflicts.  During WWII, Ted had trained as a naval aviator but never saw action; Korea was to be different.  As a Marine Corps jet pilot Williams flew 39 combat missions, on one occasion crash landing his plane after it was damaged by enemy fire.  On many of his missions Ted flew as wingman for John Glenn, the future astronaut and U.S. Senator.

Returning to baseball in August 1953, Ted appeared in 37 games (starting only 25), hitting .407 with thirteen homers in only 91 at bats.  By the end of 1953 Williams had missed the equivalent of five full seasons during what is considered a players prime; the twelve years from 23 to 34 years old.  Then, on the first day of spring training in 1954 he broke his collarbone diving for a line drive missing the first 18 games of the season and then being out of the lineup for 20 more games in June. That was followed by missing the first 41 games of the 1955 season to attend to personal matters as his marriage fell apart. 

THC decided to pull together an equivalent Williams season during that period by combining Ted's 1952, 1953 and 1954 seasons along with his first 14 games in 1955 to come up with a nominal complete season of 708 plate appearances.  Here is his stat line:

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG%
540	196	34	4	49	139	168	.363	.514	.713

 
For some context let's compare Ted's imaginary full season with the major league leaders in key categories for 1952, 1953 and 1954 [note: in 1954 for OBP and OPS the second place finishers are shown since Williams led the league even with his truncated season].

	HR	RBI	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	WAR
Williams	49	139	.363	.514	.713	1.227	11.0
1952	37 Kiner/Sauer	121 Sauer	.336 Musial	.440 Robinson	.541 Doby	.970 Musial	8.5 Robinson
1953	47 Mathews	145 Rosen	.345 Furillo	.437 Musial	.627 Snider	1.046 Snider	10.1 Rosen
1954	49 Kluszewski	141 Kluszewski	.345 Mays	.441 Ashburn	.667 Mays	1.078 Mays	10.6 Mays

 
The reconstituted Williams season would have led the majors in all of those three seasons in Batting Average, On-Base %, Slugging %, On-Base + Slugging % and Wins Above Replacement (WAR), tied for first in home runs with Kluszewski's 1954 performance and third in RBIs.   Williams was also older than most of his top competitors.  He was 32 to 34 during these seasons while most of the leaders were under thirty - the only exceptions being Stan Musial, two years younger than Ted, 33-year old Jackie Robinson and the one-dimensional slugger, Hank Sauer, 35.

Using a conservative extrapolation, Williams lost 60 home runs and 200 RBIs due to his service in Korea.  If you add in the WWII years he's missing 165 home runs which would have given him 686, second only to Ruth at the time, and 560 RBIs, a career total of 2399 which would still be the major league record.