The AL had Carew & Boggs in the 70's and 80's-strange to not mention them, esp. since there were no triple crown winners during their peaks.

And despite the park being very homer happy, they don’t actually seem to have huge home run hitters, which is kind of weird

.

Not strange at all if you understand the Devil's Theory of Park Effects.

A: Hitting for the triple crown is really difficult and thus rare.

Goldschmidt is starting to fade already - no one could keep up that pace for long. I predict he wins none of the three titles with average going to Freeman, RBIs to Alonso and HRs to Schwarber. He has one advanatge which is that the rest of the team around him is hitting and one big disadvantage which is hitting in Busch.

He's now also got Arenado coming around the clubhouse bend looking to take the MVP trophy. Goldy is getting mightily screwed by dWAR this year even though he has had a stellar year defensively.

In that amazing 1948 season, Musial lost a homer when rain ended the game prior to the 5th (and didn't hit one in the make-up), thus losing a chance to be tied for dingers. Some might carp at a 3-way tie, but few did so with Yaz/Killebrew in 1967.

Some might carp at a 3-way tie, but few did so with Yaz/Killebrew in 1967.

I've always found those objections to be silly. Yaz led in all three categories in '67. That he shared the lead in one category doesn't change that. The league leader in homers title wasn't vacant that year.

Rockies should have traded for Miguel Cabrera when the Marlins were selling. If he could win a triple crown in Detroit with their 420 foot CF fence, he definitely would have won a few in Coors.

Timing is a lot of it, Frank Robinson had one of each lifetime, all in 1966. Funny the article mentioned Musial and Aaron but not Barry's godfather (https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mayswi01.shtml), who surprisingly never led in RBI.

The author pretty much glosses over why the National League never bequeathed a Triple Crown winner between 1938 and 1992.

but not Barry's godfather (https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mayswi01.shtml), who surprisingly never led in RBI.

It's interesting that Mantle got the Triple Crown, despite not being a huge RBI guy most of his career. Mantle only had 100+ four times, vs. ten for Mays.

Goldschmidt is starting to fade already - no one could keep up that pace for long. I predict he wins none of the three titles with average going to Freeman, RBIs to Alonso and HRs to Schwarber. He has one advanatge which is that the rest of the team around him is hitting and one big disadvantage which is hitting in Busch.

August totals:

HR:
Goldschmidt- 9
Schwarber - 3

RBI:
Goldschmidt- 27
Alonso - 26

Average:
Goldschmidt - .343
Freeman- .327

Odd way to fade. Will he win the TC? Who knows. But it's not due to fading

Both Mays and Mantle often batted third, behind a lot of ungifted #1 and #2 hitters, and as mentioned they won only one RBI title between them: Mantle's in his Triple Crown year (1956). The good hitters in those lineups tended to bat behind them, so that Mays led twice in Runs Scored and Mantle four times.

Oddly enough, in 1956, Mantle was typically batting behind Hank Bauer and Billy Martin. Martin never got on base a whole lot, and though Bauer did for his career, he had an unusual season in '56, low OBP plus a career high in home runs. I guess a lot of it (as Primates and TFA are saying) is just timing. In 1956, Mantle batted .444 with runners in scoring position. Over the next few years, that dropped to .345, .274, and .206 (!) in 1959, when he drove in just 75 runs.

Odd way to fade. Will he win the TC? Who knows. But it's not due to fading

Duke is basing it upon the fact that Goldy had his first bad week of the season (if you consider a week to be strictly the last 7 days)

I think it's tough to say he's fading and not just that he had a bad week. He's probably going to win player of the month for August.

#8 - Yeah, it's weird to blame Coors Field when it didn't even exist for the first almost 60 years of that drought. And even since it's inception, Coors has cost NL players exactly zero Triple Crowns (meaning, no one would have finished at the top of all 3 categories even if you removed all Rockies from the leaderboards).

Lively ball era players who led their league in all 3 categories at some point, but never won a Triple Crown:

Babe Ruth
Johnny Mize
Joe DiMaggio
Hank Aaron
Eddie Murray*
Barry Bonds
Andres Galarraga
Manny Ramirez
Alex Rodriguez
Albert Pujols

Paul Goldschmidt just needs to hang on to the batting title this season to add his name to the list. Great group of Hall of Famers, future Hall of Famers, and would've been Hall of Famers if not for 'roids...and Andres Galarraga!

* Murray was never actually credited with a batting title, of course, but he led the entire majors in 1990, so I'm counting it

Seasons where a player finished in the top 3 of all 3 categories:

1920's - 14
1930's - 15
1940's - 7
1950's - 4
1960's - 5
1970's - 4
1980's - 0 (!)
1990's - 6 (3 in the strike year, 2 in Coors)
2000's - 3 (all by Pujols)
2010's - 8

Excepting Goldschmidt this season, the last time it happened was 2018, when both Yelich and JD Martinez did it.

It was pretty common in the 20's and 30's when the league was half the size and very few players hit for power, so anyone who did would basically finish in the top 3 in homers by default. Heilmann and Sisler for example both make the 1920's list with homerun seasons of 18 and 19.

It actually doesn't surprise me much that it never happened in the 1980's. That was a weird era where almost all the best hitters were specialists; you'd either challenge for the HR lead with a .270 avg (Schmidt, Murphy, Strawberry, McGwire and Canseco at the end of the decade, etc), or you'd win batting titles with single digit homerun totals (Gwynn, Boggs). Murray and Mattingly are about the only guys who even seemed capable of challenging for both titles (and both topped out with 30-35 HR power, so even that was pushing it a bit).

Lively ball era players who led their league in all 3 categories at some point, but never won a Triple Crown:

The fact that Frank Thomas didn't make that list surprised me. I get he played during the sillyball era, but I still had expected to see him on your list. (heck he never led in hr or rbi)

For whatever reasons (lack of Yankees being one of them), the NL has long been the more balanced league at the team level too. Since the 1921-24 Giants, the wartime 1942-44 Cards are the only team to win 3 straight NL pennants. There have been a number of mini-dynasties -- e.g. the Dodgers took 6 between 1947 and 1956. With the expanded playoffs the AL probably isn't much different but in the last 25 years, 12 different NL teams (and the Astros) have won the pennant. (Reds 1990, Pirates 1979, Brewers never in NL; looks like A's, M's, O's and Twins in the AL.)

Anybody know what the BBWAA HoF inductee breakdown has been over the last XX years? Obviously not many players are strict AL/NL but I assume most have a prime that can be assigned to one league or the other -- could always use the plaque hat if necessary.

#16 - Yep, Thomas finished 2nd in homers 4 times, yet joined Palmeiro and Sheffield as the only 500 homer guys to never lead the league. He also missed the RBI title by 1 in 1993 and by 2 in 2000.

Other potential contenders that didn't make the list (some of them were mentioned in the article):

Mel Ott (never won a batting title)
Stan Musial (never led in homers)
Willie Mays (never led in RBI)
Billy Williams (never led in HR or RBI)
Dick Allen (never won batting title)
Jim Rice (never won batting title)
Larry Walker (never led in RBI)
Vlad Guerrero (never led in any of those categories)
Todd Helton (never led in HR)

I think the answer is timing and expansion

Nitpicking ####### here. Comes naturally. If Ducky Joe won the triple crown in 1937 by leading the league in the 3 categories then it logically follows that Lou Gehrig led the league in unassisted triple plays. Did he LEAD the league? Not really. I didn't invent English. I've seen the triple crown defined always as leading the league in 3 categories. I've never seen it defined as leading or tying for the lead in those 3 categories. Nitpicking #######. Sorry, Yaz.

Seasons where a player finished in the top 3 of all 3 categories:

1980's - 0 (!)

In 1981, Mike Schmidt led the NL in HR and RBI, and his .316 was good enough for 4th.

Nitpicking ####### here. Comes naturally. If Ducky Joe won the triple crown in 1937 by leading the league in the 3 categories then it logically follows that Lou Gehrig led the league in unassisted triple plays. Did he LEAD the league? Not really. I didn't invent English. I've seen the triple crown defined always as leading the league in 3 categories. I've never seen it defined as leading or tying for the lead in those 3 categories. Nitpicking #######. Sorry, Yaz.

Like I said, silly.

#21 - Yeah, Mattingly finished in the top 4 of all 3 categories in 1985 too, but the list will grow for every decade if I expanded the parameters to top 4 (or top 5, or whatever). I'm guessing the '80's would finish dead last in Triple Crown contending seasons no matter where we draw the cutoff line. There just weren't a lot of guys who hit for both power and average back then.

Edit: And since there weren't many power plus avg guys in the late 70's and throughout the 80's, the few there were tended to be overrated (Rice, Parker, Mattingly, Puckett).

There just weren't a lot of guys who hit for both power and average back then.

I wonder if ballparks contributed to it, with so many speedy/deep turf parks influencing both offense and roster construction.

And possibly the way talent was developed -- i.e. if you don't train guys to do both. The path to high BA is GBs, LDs and contact; the path to power is LDs, FBs and focusing on a zone.

Miggy's an interesting guy. His G/F ratio is about league average, he pulls the ball a little less than league average, his HR/FB is obviously well above league average at 12% but hardly Thome-ian (19%). Even in those big seasons, HR/FB was more 15%. One thing he did do in those peak seasons was reduce his Ks, obviously without losing anything when he was making contact.

Ballparks and sinker/slider pitchers IMO

It also needs to be mentioned that pitchers giving up and not even trying with Bonds once he hit 73 homers contributed to the NL Triple Crown drought. Give Barry a more reasonable (but still very high!) walk total of 120 in both 2002 and 2004 instead of the 198 and 232 he actually had, and if he kept his HR and RBI rates the same over those extra 78 and 112 at bats, he would've won the Triple Crown both seasons (while still having fewer than 500 AB's in either year!).

It also needs to be mentioned that pitchers giving up and not even trying with Bonds once he hit 73 homers contributed to the NL Triple Crown drought. Give Barry a more reasonable (but still very high!) walk total of 120 in both 2002 and 2004 instead of the 198 and 232 he actually had, and if he kept his HR and RBI rates the same over those extra 78 and 112 at bats, he would've won the Triple Crown both seasons (while still having fewer than 500 AB's in either year!).

Thank God for small favors. Every award or recognition denied to Barry Bonds was a plus. If you want to hang over the plate like that, ditch the armor and suffer the consequences. His exclusion from the HoF is a small dollop of joy in an otherwise bleak world.

has any SABRmetrician ever said that the 430 combined IBB in those 2 seasons for Bonds was anything less than a mass psychosis? (not that all of them were poor strategy, obviously).

I'll hang up and wait for your response.....

His exclusion from the HoF is a small dollop of joy in an otherwise bleak world.

I have to disagree. He put up the stats and no one did sh*t while it was happening. Under the current criteria he should be elected. Don't even think of arguing that integrity rubbish as the HOF is full of despicable humans and that didn't stop any of them getting elected(though it's also keeping out Schilling, so there is a line somewhere to be drawn apparently)

If you truly believe the world is bleak, maybe you can join Reynard on his random island in the middle of nowhere to find some solace...but don't forget your mobile phone to stay connected!

[17] Anybody know what the BBWAA HoF inductee breakdown has been over the last XX years? Obviously not many players are strict AL/NL but I assume most have a prime that can be assigned to one league or the other -- could always use the plaque hat if necessary.

Decade Inducted AL NL 
          1930s 10  3
          1940s  4  4
          1950s  8  7
          1960s  4  4
          1970s  6  8
          1980s  7 11
          1990s  7  8
          2000s 10  7
          2010s 13 11
          2020s  2  1
          Total 71 64

Source: Calculated from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame ("In the table below, 'primary team' is based on the inductees' biographies at the Hall of Fame website.)

ive Barry a more reasonable (but still very high!) walk total of 120 in both 2002 and 2004 instead of the 198 and 232 he actually had, and if he kept his HR and RBI rates the same over those extra 78 and 112 at bats, he would've won the Triple Crown both seasons (while still having fewer than 500 AB's in either year!).

Makes Ted Williams triple crowns more amazing, 145 and 162 walks. Also, 1949 had 159 rbi with 162 walks.
The double play machines that hit behind Barry Bonds didn't help that walk rate. IIRC, Pierzynski and Santiago

Seasons where a player finished in the top 3 of all 3 categories:

...
2000's - 3 (all by Pujols)

My first thought: "that can't be right. Derrek Lee was right there all year in 2005."
*looks up 2005 season leaders*
Oh my, I didn't realize how far Lee fell back in RBIs at the end.