For my first offseason time-killer, I assembled lists of the best seasons in certain stats by batting order position, retrieved with the Batting Split Finder. The idea was spawned by discovering that Jimmie Foxx mainly batted 5th for his first five full seasons, including a near-Triple Crown in 1932. (The Athletics’ 3rd and 4th men from 1928-32 were Mickey Cochrane and Al Simmons.)

All stats are for 1916-2013, and were compiled while batting in a given spot in the order. For rate stats, I used a minimum of 400 PAs in that slot (350 for 9th). All “bonus” listings represent either a tie for the best (noted by an asterisk) or a notable 2nd-best, unless otherwise described.

Again, these stats are all since 1916, so a lot of dead-ball greats are mostly absent here.

Runs Scored

Bonus notes:

• Rolfe owns the nos. 1, 3 and 5 seasons in runs scored from the #2 slot.
• Hitting 3rd, Ruth’s 177 runs are 19 more than his own 2nd-best, and 25 more than 3rd-best from the #3 slot.
• Gehrig owns the top two marks from the #4 slot, and six of the top 10; Al Simmons is 3rd-best with 152.
• Foxx’s 151 runs from the #5 slot are 30 more than his own runner-up mark; no other has topped 117.
• Batting 6th, only Glaus and Sewell scored 100 runs.
• From the 7th spot, only Higgins and Keltner topped 76 runs.
• Only Schang and Myers topped 71 runs batting 8th.

Runs Batted In

Bonus notes:

• Ruth owns three of the top four RBI marks from the 3rd spot. Shocking.
• There were 17 seasons of 160+ RBI from 1921-38, but just two since — Manny in 1999 (his 164 RBI from the 4th slot ranks 8th), and Sammy in 2001 (his 142 RBI from the 3rd slot ranks 11th).
• Foxx owns the top two RBI marks hitting 5th (169 and 151); next is 131, shared by Bill Dickey and Norm Cash.
• The top 10 marks average 134 RBI from the 5th slot, 104 from 6th.
• Batting 7th, only Keltner had over 98 RBI, which he did as a rookie in 1938.
• Only Dahlgren had over 72 RBI from the 8th spot.
• Elster’s 92 RBI from the 9th slot are 31 more than the next-best total.

Total Bases

Bonus notes:

• Leading off, only Soriano, Garciaparra and Erstad have reached 350 total bases.
• Hitting 9th, only Elster reached 200 TB.

Hits

Who was Jim Levey? Shortstop for the Browns from 1931-33, he batted .209 as a rookie, flunking a leadoff trial before settling into the 8th slot; his -3.1 WAR that year is 3rd-worst among modern rookies. Staying in the 8th spot, Levey produced the solid 1932 featured above; but in ’33 his average fell to .195, and his last 11 pro seasons were spent in the minors.

Bonus notes:

• Ichiro owns three of the top four hits totals from the leadoff spot, and five of the top 11.
• Jack Tobin’s 236 hits leading off rank 5th. He stood 5′ 8″ and had 200 hits four straight years, 1920-23; in modern history, only Tobin, Paul Waner (8) and Kirby Puckett (5) have more than two such seasons at that height or less. Tobin is also the only position player who began his “big league” career in the Federal League and went on to amass more than 10 WAR in the established majors.
• I’ve always thought of Hornsby as a #3 hitter (where he hit for most of his two Triple Crown years), but he batted cleanup more than half his career PAs.
• Joe Torre’s 230 hits from the cleanup spot are 3rd all-time, and by far the most since 1940. From 1920-39, cleanup men had 17 seasons of 206+ hits; since 1940, only Torre and Magglio Ordonez (215) have reached that level.
• Only Foxx and Appling ever had 200+ hits from the 5th spot.
• Keltner’s strong 1938 rookie year batting 7th got him promoted in ’39 … all the way up to 6th. The ’39 Indians had more hits and RBI from the 6th spot than from the 3rd.
• Leo Cardenas in 1965 earned 3.7 offensive WAR, hitting 8th almost exclusively. That’s 3rd-best of the 56 known seasons with 500+ PAs from the 8th spot, after Adolfo Phillips (4.7 oWAR in ’67) and Wally Schang (4.3 oWAR in ’21). Of the 44 men with any year(s) of 500+ PAs hitting 8th, only they and Freddie Patek had any season worth 3.7 oWAR, and only Schang (with six) had more than one such year.
• Only DiSarcina, Harold Reynolds and Ozzie Guillen had more than 131 hits batting 9th.

Stolen Bases

Who was Armando Marsans? A member of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame, he was the first Cuban big-leaguer to reach 1,000 and then 2,000 PAs; and until Minnie Minoso, the only Cuban to bat .300 in a qualified season, which he did for the 1912 Reds. Marsans finished his career with the 1918 Yankees (their first year under Miller Huggins), and remains that club’s Cuban leader in PAs, hits, doubles, RBI and steals. (Take that, Bert Campaneris!)

Bonus notes:

• Breakdown of 60-SB seasons: 56 batting 1st, 3 batting 2nd, 1 batting 3rd.
• Omar the Out-maker’s full-season high in OBP came in his one full year batting 2nd, taking pitches so that Frank Taveras could get caught stealing.
• Rodney Scott’s 63 total steals in 1980 included 24-4 swiping 3rd. Three others stole 79 or more that year, but only Rodney topped 16 steals of 3rd.
• 55+ SB batting 3rd: 3 for Cedeno, one each for Rice, Cobb and Morgan. Cedeno had 363 career steals hitting 3rd; no one else reached 300.
• Batting 4th, only Davis and Roth topped 37 SB.
• Batting 5th, only Chapman and Bonds topped 37 SB.
• No one has topped 28 SB batting 6th or 7th.
• Batting 8th, only Patek topped 27 SB. Freddie also owns one of the two years at 27 SB in the 8th slot.
• Hitting 9th, only Reynolds and Cruz topped 32 SB.

OPS (On-base plus Slugging averages)

Bonus notes: Hartnett batted 7th or 8th in more than half his career games, with a .301/.871 line batting 7th (including the top two season OPS marks) and .302/.900 while hitting 8th. He was never quite a full-timer in the 8th slot, but his year-by-year stats in that role are kind of fun.

Batting Average

Bonus notes:

• Heilmann’s odd-year run of very high BAs is well known (.394, .403, .393 and .398 from 1921-27). But I never knew that Harry mainly batted 5th each of those years, and hit there in over 60% of his career games.
• Nine of the 12 marks listed here came from 1922-30.

On-Base Percentage

Bonus notes:

• Stanky’s 1950 season comprised far more time in the leadoff role than did Boggs’s best mark.
• On the other hand, Boggs also owns the 2nd-best OBP in the #2 slot. He was never really locked into one spot in the order, starting over 500 games each in the 1st through 3rd slots, but never getting 600+ PAs in a season in any one slot.
• In 1957, Mickey & the Splinter both had a .524 OBP and 540 PAs from the #3 spot.
• Cash’s 1961 season batting 5th runs 2nd or 3rd in many categories to Foxx’s big years from that slot.
• Jim Essian platooned with Brian Downing at catcher and in the 9th spot for the ’77 ChiSox, who got a MLB-record .375 OBP from their 9th hitters; no other spot in their order was over .351.