What is the 4×100 season? I’m talking about seasons with triple-digit totals for runs, RBI, walks and strikeouts. There were no such seasons in 2012, and only four seasons by three players in the past 5 years, which is quite a departure from the recent past.

• 2008-2012: 4 seasons by 3 players
• 2003-2007: 16 seasons by 10 players
• 1998-2002: 22 seasons by 11 players

After the jump, a bit more on another sign of the changing face of the game.

The recent decline in 4×100 seasons dovetails with the change in the MLB offensive environment over that period. To wit:

• Offense in 2011 was down by more than 0.5 R/G from 2006 (for 2007 to 2012, the decline was 0.48 R/G), following a similar 0.5 R/G decline from the 2000 peak (the highest R/G since 1936) to 2005.
• Excluding the one-year aberration of 1987 (offense rose that year by more than 0.3 R/G, then immediately fell by almost 0.6 R/G the next season), the last time offense declined by more than 0.5 R/G in a 5-year period was from 1963 to the offensive nadir of 1968.
• R/G for the 2008-2012 period was the lowest for any 5-year period since 1989-1993.

Here are the players with 4×100 seasons for the past 20 years. Actually, makes an illustrative little bar chart.

Looking at the players in the list above, while most are still active or are not yet HOF-eligible, my take is that currently only Thome and Rodriguez are good HOF bets and, of the others, only Bagwell (and Delgado, to a lesser degree) have been shafted. That is in contrast with the first 10 players to have 4×100 seasons, 7 of whom are in Cooperstown.

Note that, up to 1961, only 5 players had done this a total of 7 times. Four of those 5 were or would become HOFers, while the other (Camilli) did this in consecutive seasons, a unique achievement until Mike Schmidt duplicated it in 1976-77.

How valuable is a 4×100 season? Of the 67 such seasons, ALL of them have garnered an OPS+ over 125, with a median OPS+ of 158. By WAR, only 3 seasons are below 3 WAR (the two lowest belong to Adam Dunn), with a median of 6.1 WAR.

Here are the top 10 and ties by OPS+.

And, by WAR.

Rather surprising that only four seasons (Mantle, Sosa, Jackson, Bautista) make both lists.

Who will be the next 4×100 player? Clearly, this type of player has not departed the scene entirely. Any of the last 3 players to do this could easily repeat, athough Fielder demonstrated a newly discovered plate discipline in 2012, his first qualifying season below 100 strikeouts. Votto and Bautista were both injured for a good chunk of 2012, but Bautista’s numbers, projected over 156+ games, would have yielded him a third consecutive 4×100 season.