For the third consecutive season, baseball has been seriously discussing the Triple Crown come September, despite it being 45 years since Carl Yastrzemski last managed to pull off the feat in 1967. Last year, it was Matt Kemp, who finished first in the National League in homers and RBIs, but finished behind Ryan Braun and Jose Reyes in batting average. In 2010, it was the troika of Albert Pujols, Joey Votto and Carlos Gonzalez fighting for the Triple Crown, all possessing realistic chances through most of the summer, but eventually crowding each other out by season's end.
This season, however, we focus on the American League, and with just over a week left in the season, Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera is in the driver's seat, leading the AL in batting average (.331), RBIs (133), and with 42 homers, only a single homer behind Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers. The Tigers just have nine games left in the season, so at this point, Cabrera's entrance into one of the most exclusive clubs in baseball history definitely appears to be more than a flight of fancy. (According to my model, he has a 46 percent chance of winning the Triple Crown. As hard as it is to pull off a Triple Crown, you have to like those odds.)
SABR stars
These are the players who have led the league in OBP, SLG and SB -- aka the Sabermetric Triple Crown -- since World War II:
YEAR PLAYER
2009 Joe Mauer
2004 Barry Bonds
2002 Barry Bonds
2000 Todd Helton
1999 Larry Walker
1980 George Brett
1979 Fred Lynn
1970 Carl Yastrzemski
1967 Carl Yastrzemski
1966 Frank Robinson
1957 Ted Williams
1954 Ted Williams
1949 Ted Williams
1948 Ted Williams
1948 Stan Musial
1947 Ted Williams
Cabrera's actually on the cusp of doing something even rarer: winning the Triple Crown without leading the league in wins above replacement. Mike Trout's amazing rookie season comes out significantly ahead of everyone in the AL, whether you use Baseball-Reference's WAR (Trout 10.4, Cabrera 6.
or FanGraphs' WAR (Trout 9.5, Cabrera 6.9). By Baseball-Reference's reckoning, Cabrera would only be the second Triple Crown winner to not lead the league in WAR, the only other player being Paul Hines in 1878. Via FanGraphs, Cabrera would only be the fourth, with Hines, Ty Cobb and Hugh Duffy just missing the WAR lead in their Triple Crown years.
The fact that the Triple Crown doesn't correlate with WAR got me wondering, Is there a better Triple Crown, one that does a better job of measuring overall value? After all, choosing average, home runs and RBIs as the Triple Crown was somewhat arbitrary to begin with, and their is another trio of traditional stats that does a much better job of defining overall player value.
Throughout baseball history, WAR and Triple Crown stats generally correlate with each other. Taking into consideration every player qualifying for a batting title in baseball history, BA/HR/RBI explains 49 percent of the variance in WAR from player to player. While there are cases in which players with good Triple Crown stats have weak WAR seasons and vice-versa, generally speaking, the two go along well.
Real Triple Crown
These are the players who led the league in OBP, SLG and SB, the "real" Triple Crown.
YEAR PLAYER
1976 Joe Morgan
1917 Ty Cobb
1909 Ty Cobb
1908 Honus Wagner
1907 Honus Wagner
1904 Honus Wagner
So what hypothetical Triple Crown would have the strongest relationship with WAR? Replacing RBIs with runs scored strengthens the relationship, explaining 53 percent of the variation. The "sabermetric" Triple Crown of BA/OBP/SLG gets you up to explaining 56 percent of the variance in WAR from player to player.
Running all the permutations of the basic statistics used in baseball, the combination with the strongest relationship is actually SLG, OBP, and stolen bases, explaining 59 percent of the variation in WAR. This is because slugging percentage and on-base percentage generally sum up most offense quite well, with stolen bases including information not contained in either SLG or OBP. (Faster players steal bases, and speedy guys tend to be better defenders, so stolen bases actually give us at least a glimpse of defensive value in a way other stats don't.)
So let's call SLG/OBP/SB the "real" Triple Crown. This feat has only been pulled off three times in baseball history (see table) by three of the most well-rounded players we've ever seen: Joe Morgan, Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner.
Trout leads the AL in steals this year (46), but is fourth in OBP (.394) and slugging (.554). Cabrera is in the top five in the AL in OBP and slugging, but doesn't really steal bases. Other players who have come close in recent years are Larry Walker in 1997 (1st in OBP and SLG, 7th in SB) and Rickey Henderson in 1990 (first in OBP, second in slugging and first in steals).
It's pretty clear that the traditional Triple Crown doesn't do as good a job at measuring player value as the "real" Triple Crown. That said, whether or not Miguel Cabrera wins the Triple Crown this year or deserves the MVP award (or not), there's little question that his season is one for the ages, another highlight in his march to Cooperstown.