Ted Williams won the Triple Crown in 1942 and did not win the Most Valuable Player award. He won it again in 1947 and did not win that one either.
That is the strangest fact in the whole history of this achievement, and it is a useful way in, because it shows what the Triple Crown actually is. It is not a prize. Nobody votes on it. It is three separate leaderboards happening to end with the same name at the top, and it is rare enough that a player can lead his league in average, home runs and runs batted in and still finish second to a teammate's second baseman.
Miguel Cabrera was the most recent batting Triple Crown, in 2012. Before him it had not happened for 45 years.
What counts
A batting Triple Crown means leading your league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in, in the same season. A pitching Triple Crown means leading in wins, earned run average and strikeouts.
Both require qualifying for the rate title, which today means 3.1 plate appearances per team game for a hitter and one inning pitched per team game for a pitcher. That qualification rule matters more than it sounds, and there is a famous case below where it decided everything.
Every batting Triple Crown since 1901
| Season | Player | League | AVG | HR | RBI | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1901 | Nap Lajoie | AL | .421 | 14 | 125 | | 1909 | Ty Cobb | AL | .377 | 9 | 107 | | 1922 | Rogers Hornsby | NL | .401 | 42 | 152 | | 1925 | Rogers Hornsby | NL | .403 | 39 | 143 | | 1933 | Jimmie Foxx | AL | .356 | 48 | 163 | | 1933 | Chuck Klein | NL | .368 | 28 | 120 | | 1934 | Lou Gehrig | AL | .363 | 49 | 165 | | 1937 | Joe Medwick | NL | .374 | 31 | 154 | | 1942 | Ted Williams | AL | .356 | 36 | 137 | | 1947 | Ted Williams | AL | .343 | 32 | 114 | | 1956 | Mickey Mantle | AL | .353 | 52 | 130 | | 1966 | Frank Robinson | AL | .316 | 49 | 122 | | 1967 | Carl Yastrzemski | AL | .326 | 44 | 121 | | 2012 | Miguel Cabrera | AL | .330 | 44 | 139 |
Fourteen in 125 years, and the two by Hornsby and the two by Williams mean twelve different men.
Note 1933. Foxx and Klein won it in the same season, one in each league, which has happened exactly once.
Note also Nap Lajoie's .421 in 1901, which is the second highest average of the modern era, behind only Rogers Hornsby's .424 in 1924. Hornsby appears on this list twice and neither entry is that season: in 1924 he hit .424 and led the league in nothing else.
And note Ty Cobb's nine home runs in 1909, the only Triple Crown in American or National League history won without a double-digit home run total. That is the deadball era in one line. Nine was enough to lead the American League, and the man who finished second hit seven.
Miguel Cabrera, 2012
Cabrera hit .330 with 44 home runs and 139 runs batted in for Detroit, and it ended the longest gap the achievement has ever had.
It also produced the most contested MVP vote in recent memory. Mike Trout was a 20-year-old rookie that year and had, by the newer measures, the better season. Cabrera won the award. Twelve years earlier the Triple Crown would have settled the argument without anyone raising a hand, and that it did not is a fair marker of where the sport's thinking had moved.
Carl Yastrzemski, 1967
Yastrzemski's .326, 44 and 121 came in the year Boston went from ninth place to the World Series, and his was the lowest batting average ever to win a Triple Crown.
That is not a criticism of Yastrzemski. 1967 was the deepest pitching era the sport has had since the deadball years, and the following season the mound was lowered because scoring had collapsed. Leading a league at .326 in 1967 was harder than leading it at .360 in 1930.
The Triple Crowns that were not counted until 2020
MLB recognised the Negro Leagues as major leagues in 2020, which added a set of Triple Crown seasons to the official record:
| Season | Player | League | AVG | HR | RBI | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1923 | Heavy Johnson | Negro National League | .406 | 20 | 120 | | 1924 | Oscar Charleston | Eastern Colored League | .410 | 15 | 65 | | 1925 | Oscar Charleston | Eastern Colored League | .419 | 20 | 92 | | 1925 | Turkey Stearnes | Negro National League | .372 | 19 | 106 | | 1926 | Mule Suttles | Negro National League | .425 | 32 | 130 | | 1930 | Willie Wells | Negro National League | .399 | 18 | 112 | | 1933 | Josh Gibson | Negro National League II | .395 | 20 | 80 | | 1938 | Josh Gibson | Negro National League II | .368 | 13 | 58 | | 1943 | Josh Gibson | Negro National League II | .466 | 20 | 112 |
Josh Gibson won three. No player in American or National League history has won more than two.
His 1943 is the line to sit with: a .466 average with 20 home runs and 112 runs batted in. He is also the all-time career batting average leader at .372.
The context belongs with the numbers rather than in a footnote: these leagues played far shorter official schedules, roughly 60 to 100 league games against 154 in the American and National Leagues, and the qualified player pools were smaller. Leading a smaller league over a shorter season is a different task from leading a 400-player league over six months. What it is not is an easier one. The pitching those hitters faced included Satchel Paige and Bullet Rogan, and the averages above were posted against it.
The 1932 case, and the rule that decided it
Jimmie Foxx led the American League in 1932 with 58 home runs and 169 runs batted in. He hit .364.
Dale Alexander hit .367, and won the batting title, and so Foxx is not credited with a Triple Crown that year.
Alexander did it in 454 plate appearances. Foxx had 701. Under the qualification rule the sport uses now, 3.1 plate appearances per team game, Alexander would have needed roughly 477 and would not have qualified at all. The 1932 rule was based on games played, Alexander played 124, and that was enough.
So Foxx missed a Triple Crown by three points, to a man who would not be eligible for the title under any rule written in the last 70 years. He won the MVP instead, which is some consolation, and he won the Triple Crown outright the following season anyway.
Every pitching Triple Crown since 1901
The pitching version happens more often, and the list is longer:
| Season | Pitcher | League | W | ERA | SO | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1901 | Cy Young | AL | 33 | 1.62 | 158 | | 1905 | Rube Waddell | AL | 27 | 1.48 | 287 | | 1905 | Christy Mathewson | NL | 31 | 1.28 | 206 | | 1908 | Christy Mathewson | NL | 37 | 1.43 | 259 | | 1913 | Walter Johnson | AL | 36 | 1.14 | 243 | | 1915 | Walter Johnson | AL | 27 | 1.55 | 203 | | 1915 | Grover Alexander | NL | 31 | 1.22 | 241 | | 1916 | Grover Alexander | NL | 33 | 1.55 | 167 | | 1917 | Grover Alexander | NL | 30 | 1.83 | 200 | | 1918 | Walter Johnson | AL | 23 | 1.27 | 162 | | 1918 | Hippo Vaughn | NL | 22 | 1.74 | 148 | | 1920 | Grover Alexander | NL | 27 | 1.91 | 173 | | 1924 | Walter Johnson | AL | 23 | 2.72 | 158 | | 1924 | Dazzy Vance | NL | 28 | 2.16 | 262 | | 1930 | Lefty Grove | AL | 28 | 2.54 | 209 | | 1931 | Lefty Grove | AL | 31 | 2.06 | 175 | | 1934 | Lefty Gomez | AL | 26 | 2.33 | 158 | | 1937 | Lefty Gomez | AL | 21 | 2.33 | 194 | | 1939 | Bucky Walters | NL | 27 | 2.29 | 137 | | 1940 | Bob Feller | AL | 27 | 2.61 | 261 | | 1945 | Hal Newhouser | AL | 25 | 1.81 | 212 | | 1963 | Sandy Koufax | NL | 25 | 1.88 | 306 | | 1965 | Sandy Koufax | NL | 26 | 2.04 | 382 | | 1966 | Sandy Koufax | NL | 27 | 1.73 | 317 | | 1972 | Steve Carlton | NL | 27 | 1.97 | 310 | | 1985 | Dwight Gooden | NL | 24 | 1.53 | 268 | | 1997 | Roger Clemens | AL | 21 | 2.05 | 292 | | 1998 | Roger Clemens | AL | 20 | 2.65 | 271 | | 1999 | Pedro Martinez | AL | 23 | 2.07 | 313 | | 2002 | Randy Johnson | NL | 24 | 2.32 | 334 | | 2006 | Johan Santana | AL | 19 | 2.77 | 245 | | 2007 | Jake Peavy | NL | 19 | 2.54 | 240 | | 2011 | Justin Verlander | AL | 24 | 2.40 | 250 | | 2011 | Clayton Kershaw | NL | 21 | 2.28 | 248 | | 2024 | Tarik Skubal | AL | 18 | 2.39 | 228 |
The Negro Leagues add Bullet Rogan in 1921, Slim Jones in 1934, Hilton Smith in 1937, Ray Brown in 1937 and 1938, Johnny Wright in 1943 and Leon Day in 1946.
Koufax, three times in four years
Sandy Koufax won it in 1963, 1965 and 1966, which is more than anyone.
Then he retired. The 1966 Triple Crown, 27 wins and a 1.73 earned run average and 317 strikeouts, was the last season he ever pitched. He was 30 years old and his elbow had stopped working.
Grover Alexander also won three, in 1915, 1916 and 1917, consecutively, which is the only time that has been done.
Why the pitching one still happens
Tarik Skubal won the pitching Triple Crown in 2024 with 18 wins. Hal Newhouser needed 25 in 1945, and Cy Young needed 33 in 1901.
That falling number is why the pitching version survives. As starters throw fewer innings, the win totals required to lead a league have collapsed, and 18 is now a total several pitchers reach. The strikeout title and the earned run average title still go to genuinely dominant seasons, and the win title has become close to a coin flip on run support. Three leaderboards, one of which has gone soft, converge more often than they used to.
The batting version has moved the other way. Home run and RBI titles now go to players who strike out 180 times, and batting titles go to players who do not. Those used to be the same man. In 2012 they were, for the first time in 45 years, and it has not happened since.
Triple Crown winners turn up constantly in the daily puzzles, and the pitching list is where most players come unstuck. Name an all-time leaderboard against three outs in MLB Top 10 Quiz, or work out who you are from the clues in Who Am I.