The most amazing Ted Williams statistic of all?

Wednesday 2/4/26

A while ago I had alluded to this remarkable statistic I had discovered about Ted Williams.

I get rather deep in the statistical weeds in my researches. The season-by-season stuff is one thing, but I like to go further.

This isn't the stat I was referring to--we'll get to that in a minute--but this is the type of thing I mean. Ted Williams was formidable everywhere; that is, at home and on the road. If you're going to put up the career numbers he did--in terms of batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, OPS+--you can't afford to have big splits.

You'll in large part be the same wherever you're playing, or in May or September. First half, second half: All in all, you're a raker. (A quick word on Fenway's Green Monster and Williams: The Splinter was a dead pull hitter. He wasn't a BoSox lefty who went the other way like Wade Boggs or David Ortiz would sometimes--when he was really going well.) Obviously this changes from year to year and seasons have their quirks, but on the whole--that is, the totality of a career--the consistency of a Williams is mind-blowing. You can summarize Williams the ballplayer pithily and accurately: He hit. And he got on base half the time he came up. But "He hit" nails it. Qualifiers or specifics are unnecessary.

That's why this statistical oddity of his 1951 season stands out so much.

Williams had another great year in a career which was almost entirely comprised of great years.

He led the AL in WAR at 7.1. He was fourth in batting average at .318. Third in runs at 109. Led the league in total bases at 295. Led the league in walks at 144. Was second in home runs with 30. Finished second in RBI with 126. Led the league in OBP at .464. Led the league in slugging at .556. Led the league in OPS at 1.019. Led the league in OPS+ at 164.

Ironically, these rate stats are all below--and sometimes well below--Williams' career numbers. Is this a down year for him? Well, if you want to be a pedantic relativist about it, I suppose it is. But clearly this is an awesome year and would often be the best year of the career of a great, inner circle Hall of Famer.

But these numbers, in total, are also rather deceiving.

In 73 games at Fenway Park, Williams hit 16 homers, drove in 76, batted .403, and had an OPS of 1.227.

Whoa.

But that also means that in 75 games on the road that year, he 12 homers, with 45 RBI, registered a very un-Williams like batting average of .232, and had an OPS .810.

Why? I don't know. It's an anomaly in his career. And while the writers didn't like Williams, this may explain, in part, why he finished thirteenth in MVP voting that year.

In 1957, Williams was in his age thirty-eight season. This was the second year of a two-year period in which Mickey Mantle went within shouting distance of the best years of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Rogers Hornsby.

Mantle was the best that Mantle could be. I think it's overstated, the idea that he didn't fulfill his promise, and if he wasn't hurt then he would have done this, done that. Mantle is a borderline top ten player of all-time. I'm not sure how much anyone could have expected then, or looking back now.

He won the MVP in 1956 and 1957, and he should have (in 1956, he won the Triple Crown). But in 1957, Ted Williams may have had the best ever year a guy has ever had who deserved to be second in MVP voting, as Williams was.

This is an age thirty-eight season that's so good that it'd be one of the best seasons any ballplayer, no matter how great they are, had smack in the middle of their prime.

Williams had 9.7 WAR, which trailed Mantle. He hit .388. .388! As Williams wrote in his book, My Turn at Bat--which I first read in fourth grade between Jack London novels--he was only a few infield hits away from .400, which he mentioned because Williams, who was never a speedster, was very slow by then. Infield hits weren't really a thing for him. He had a .526 OPS, a .731 slugging percentage, a 1.257 OPS, and a 233 OPS+, all of which led the league. The average ballplayer has an OPS+ of 100. You can do the math from there as to how much better Williams was. Considerably more than double. At the professional level. This is absurd.

And now we come to the stat I turned up in my researches. I'm not going to claim it's the most mind-blowing of stats I've seen/found, but it's a top ten type of deal. Maybe it is number one. I don't know. Some Wayne Gretzky stats are positively unholy.

Ready?

During the second half of 1957, his age thirty-eight season, Ted Williams appeared in 60 games and batted .453.

.453.

I don't know what to do with that number. In high school, I guess, I could handle someone doing that. But in MLB? And as the season wears on?

There's more. Stats within the stat.

During that second half, Williams' OPS was 1.432.

It was in September/October, though, that Williams really turned it on, batting .632 in 12 games and registering a 2.314 OPS. He had 5 homers and 9 RBI during that stretch.

Is this the best half a hitter has ever had? The best month as well? Is this the best anyone has ever hit for a fairly sustained time?

Williams ended up with 38 homers so it's not like he all of a sudden became a bloop and bleeder hitter. He was lacing the ball.

Mantle, by the way, has 11.3 WAR. So what are you going to do? The better man that year took home the MVP.

But no hitter has ever really did what Williams did in 1957.