Hitters with ONE exceptional season

I think Ken had two quite good seasons before he was killed in a small plane crash....

Hubbs won the Rookie of the Year award based more on his fielding than anything else. He was a .260 hitter with little pop, who now grades out with a 70 OPS + for that 1962 season. He returned to post a 71 in 1963 before the plane crash that ended his life the next off season.

Then I would defer to the career average, giving weight to what his living expectations would be. I am certain that there would be far more players who would simply not make any future teams than players that died...

I’ve found a few more. Some were situations of players who had only one season that was “qualified” due to lack of health or performance in the remainder of their careers, but nonetheless did indeed qualify.

The major players with full careers first:

I will apologize in advance that I didn’t always recall to write down the year of unusual success, but that info is easily found by lokkknv the player up in BR.

I i don’t think Rico Petrocelli was mentioned previously. His 1967 season when he tagged .297/40/97 produced a 168 OPS compared to a second best year of 123. Odd how his reputation was so strong that one tends to think he matched that season a few times, but part of the magic here was that baseball was in such a down offensive cycle that season and took corrective action the following years that disguised Petrocelli’s effective differential in other seasons.

A fellow named Al Wingo hit .370/5/68 for a 151 while never having posted higher than 94 otherwise.

Ryan Ludwick was a late-bloomer who leaped into the spotlight with a .299/37/113 season. He remained a good player for a few more seasons, but his second best was 105.

Claude Coopers 1915 season of .294/2/63 needs historical perspective to be appreciated, but the OPS+!of 132 was way better than his 83 second best.

Andres Torres hit .268/16/63, proving that modest performance can make the list with a 122 vs. an 84 that was less than full time...

In 1943 Lou Klein hit .287/7/62 for a 111 in his only qualifying season.

Charlie Hanford hit .291/12/90 in his only qualifying year to post a 118. That’s a lot of RBI for a guy to have and then basically disappear from meaningful playing time. Likely an interesting story behind that.

That’s about all I can find for now...

I cheated quite a bit by googling sites with the word baseball + stats and adding words like recondite, outlier, unusual, strange. That way I was able to sort through a lot of trash in order to mine the gems out of it. When some one was posting about something like Bert Campaneris and 22 HR season, I knew they were using only the old traditional slash line numbers and moved on. If I found something I hadn't researched before I jotted it down for further research. It helps when you are an insomniac.

I suppose I could write some sort of blog or column about baseball, but that would make it work and perhaps remove much of the pleasure out of the process...

I believe I had checked on Lindell after you posted that originally. I don’t recall if I ever replied to you though. I see him as close, but not quite. His best was 138, his second best was 104.

I’m actually quite happy that I chose a random mark of 40 points, because had I dropped that to thirty, we would have had dozens of additional players in this now rather exclusive group. I have a feeling that if one of us really went crazy and dig into the dead ball era, there would be more. Since we didn’t see that game played, it just isn’t that meaningful to me.

I believe there is still plenty of room for discussion of the near miss players like Lindell. Even for discussion of the Bert Cameneris and Dave Johnson types who had odd years in HR, or players like Willie Montanez (from another thread) that had roller-coaster years. It’s just a different group of players that fit another category.

Fun stuff. The fun part is that whether he qualifies for a list or not, it makes you remember Johnny Lindell and then you tend to go look st stats that you may not have. His one season becomes special to you once more...