500 Doubles Teammates

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Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez have both joined the 500 double club this year, Jeter on May 3rd against Kansas City, and Rodriguez yesterday (May 21st), also against the Royals.

How unusual is that? After the jump, I’ll take a look.

Here is the list of teammates in the 500 double club.

Rk	Player	2B	From	To 6	Age	G	PA	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Tm
1	Tris Speaker	792	1907	1928	19-40	2790	11991	10195	1882	3514	117	1529	1381	395	.345	.428	.500	.928	PHA
	Ty Cobb	724	1905	1928	18-41	3034	13078	11434	2246	4189	117	1938	1249	680	.366	.433	.512	.945	PHA
2	Al Simmons	512	1924	1938	22-36	2023	8880	8164	1450	2773	298	1749	578	663	.340	.385	.547	.932	WSH
	Goose Goslin	500	1921	1938	20-37	2287	9829	8656	1483	2735	248	1609	949	585	.316	.387	.500	.887	WSH
3	Al Simmons	539	1924	1943	22-41	2211	9512	8753	1506	2924	307	1825	615	737	.334	.380	.535	.915	BOS
	Joe Cronin	508	1926	1943	19-36	2045	8598	7380	1208	2236	165	1395	1022	679	.303	.390	.471	.861	BOS
4	Pete Rose	746	1963	1986	22-45	3562	15890	14053	2165	4256	160	1314	1566	1143	.303	.375	.409	.784	CIN
	Tony Perez	505	1964	1986	22-44	2777	10861	9778	1272	2732	379	1652	925	1867	.279	.341	.463	.804	CIN
5	Dave Winfield	540	1973	1995	21-43	2973	12358	11003	1669	3110	465	1833	1216	1686	.283	.353	.475	.827	CLE
	Eddie Murray	532	1977	1995	21-39	2819	11995	10603	1545	3071	479	1820	1257	1403	.290	.362	.482	.844	CLE
6	Tony Gwynn	543	1982	2001	22-41	2440	10232	9288	1383	3141	135	1138	790	434	.338	.388	.459	.847	SDP
	Rickey Henderson	503	1979	2001	20-42	2979	13040	10710	2248	3000	290	1094	2141	1631	.280	.402	.420	.823	SDP
7	Luis Gonzalez	570	1990	2007	22-39	2455	10144	8816	1382	2502	346	1392	1114	1175	.284	.368	.481	.849	LAD
	Jeff Kent	537	1992	2007	24-39	2177	9063	8058	1278	2338	365	1459	776	1470	.290	.357	.504	.861	LAD
8	Jeff Kent	560	1992	2008	24-40	2298	9537	8498	1320	2461	377	1518	801	1522	.290	.356	.500	.855	LAD
	Manny Ramirez	507	1993	2008	21-36	2103	9006	7610	1444	2392	527	1725	1212	1667	.314	.411	.593	1.004	LAD
9	Manny Ramirez	547	1993	2010	21-38	2297	9757	8227	1544	2573	555	1830	1329	1809	.313	.411	.586	.998	LAD
	Garret Anderson	522	1994	2010	22-38	2228	9177	8640	1084	2529	287	1365	429	1224	.293	.324	.461	.785	LAD
10	Derek Jeter	501	1995	2012	21-38	2467	11345	10043	1793	3148	245	1211	1007	1673	.313	.383	.449	.832	NYY
	Alex Rodriguez	500	1994	2012	18-36	2443	10809	9351	1846	2817	634	1908	1186	1948	.301	.386	.564	.950	NYY

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/22/2012.

So, this is only the 10th time that teammates have both been at 500+ career doubles.

Note that I omitted Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon of the 2011 Rays because, well, Ramirez is already all over this list and, more importantly, he had already announced his sudden retirement last year before Damon reached the 500 mark. Also, for the record, Tony Perez did not reach the 500 mark until after Pete Rose’s final game in 1986 but, according to a contemporary press report, Rose did not officially announce his retirement until after the following season, at the MLB winter meetings in December 1987.

Note also that this is only the second time that two teammates have both reached 500 doubles in the same season. The first time was Al Simmons and Goose Goslin of the 1938 Senators. Goslin reached 500 with the last hit of his career on July 28th against Detroit and Simmons followed him a couple of weeks later, on August 12th against Boston.

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Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Good work, Doug.

Now, can you explain why Joe Dwyer was nicknamed Double? He never even hit one!

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

I can’t.

I’ll make a guess that he had an identical twin brother.

e pluribus munu

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

With the identical nickname.

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

I wonder what kind of gum they chewed….

(Showing my age.)

Chris Strohmier

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Joe Dwyer did hit 65 one year in the minor leagues.

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to Chris Strohmier

Serves me right for not going the extra click. Good work, Strohmeister. (Sorry.)

Nick Pain

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

The year before his brief stint in the Bigs, with the Nashville Volunteers of the Southern Association he hit 65 doubles. That could certainly be a reason.

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Hitting 500 doubles is a decent HOF indicator. It isn’t quite as dramatic as 3000 hits (56 to 30), but only six of the 41 players with 500 or more doubles who have been on the HOF ballot have not been elected, and one was because of PEDs (Palmeiro).

All 11 eligible players with 600 or more doubles have been elected (Rose not eligible, Biggio and Bonds not yet on the ballot).

Strange that no one has 50 doubles in a season since 1936.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Actually, Lawrence, there are lots of players with 50 doubles in a season. Among recent players, Brian Roberts had done this three times, and Pujols, Helton, Garciaparra, Biggio and Edgar Martinez have done it twice.

Intersting, though, that you mention 1936. There were 7 players with 50 doubles that season, the most in any season since 1901.

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

OOPS! –

I meant _sixty_ doubles in season (last done in 1936), sorry. Fifty doubles in year used to be a fairly rare occurence, but in the past 20 years, it happens more often than not for league leaders.

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

I see that Winfield & Murray were the even rarer (I assume) 1,000 extra-base hit teammates.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Obviously you mean 3,000 hit teammates, John. Certainly aren’t many of them. Speaker and Cobb on this list (plus Eddie Collins) is another example.

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Am I misinterpreting the table, Doug? Looks like the sum of doubles and HRs is over 1,000 for both Winfield & Murray as of 1995, when they played together with Cleveland.

Hence, 1,000 extra-base-hit teammates. 🙂

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Sorry, John. My mistake. 🙁

I’ll have to look that one up, too.

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

So, here are the 1000 XBH teammates.

1928 PHA (Cobb, Speaker)
1995 CLE (Murray, Winfield)
2009 LAD (Ramirez, Thome)

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Appears these are the only 3000 hit teammates.

1927 PHA (Cobb, Collins)
1928 PHA (Cobb, Speaker, Collins)
1995 CLE (Murray, Winfield)
2001 SDP (Gwynn, Henderson) Rickey got his 3000th hit in the final game of Gwynn’s career.

Dr. Remulak

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

LOL! Just like Rickey to steal Gwynn’s moment.

Editor

birtelcom

12 years ago

According to the ESPN version of Bill James’ “Favorite Toy” career projection formula, Miguel Cabrera was predicted (as of the beginning of this season) to end up with around 626 career doubles, which would knock Hank Aaron out of 10th place on the all-time doubles list, assuming nobody else does so first. The same formula gave (when the 2012 season began) Cabrera a 13% chance of reaching 793 doubles, which would break Tris Speaker’s all-time career doubles record. But the same method had Albert Pujols with a head start on Cabrera as of the beginning of 2012, with a projected… Read more »

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Interesting that the chances are that high. I would have guessed Speaker’s record would be one that would never be broken, given that today’s hitters hit so many more HR than the dead-ball guys (after all, there are only so many AB in a season).

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Speaker was in the Top-10 for doubles in all but three of his full seasons, and #1 eight times. He also had a huge home advantage, which I cannot look up completely, but from 1918 till the end of his career, it was 290/179.

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Stan Musial “might” have had a chance to break the record had he not missed the ’45 season due to the war. He had 51 the year before, and 50 the year after. Penciling him in for 50 for his missed year leaves him 17 short of Speaker. Not sure he would have some back for another year in an attempt to break the record.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

birtelcom, I’ve been watching Pujols and Cabrera’s doubles totals for a few years now because I too am convinced they are the best choices to get to 700 doubles. Their chances looked even better a couple years ago before offense overall began to regress a bit back to more normal numbers. Both of these two players’ doubles rate should begin to decline in their 30s, but Pujols especially has a great career doubles rate, one every 16.41 PA. While this isn’t close to Tris Speaker at 15.14 or Joe Medwick at 15.08, Albert would need ~13,000 plate appearances to get… Read more »

richard chester

12 years ago

The Yankees currently have 3 players with more than 1670 SO, Jeter, A-Rod and Jones.

topper009

12 years ago

I see the 1986 White Sox had Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver, both with over 300 wins. The next year Carlton joined Phil Niekro in Cleveland, also with 300+ wins. The 1891 Giants had Mickey Welch and Time Keefe, over 300 wins each.

I’m not sure if there are any other instances of this.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to topper009

I checked too Topper. I think that’s all there are.

Good catch BTW on Welch and Keefe – like Seaver and Carlton, teammates only for part of one season.

12 years ago

I’ve never been a Pete Rose fan but he led the league in doubles 5 times, all between the ages 33-39. And these weren’t chintzy doubles totals either, he had 42 twice, 45, 47, and 51.

Jimbo

12 years ago

Reply to Ed

42 doubles is very low for a league leader.

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to Jimbo

It’s a little low, but not unusually so for the era. I took the ten years before (1966-75) and after Rose’s 42 (1977-1987, skipped 1981/strike), and the NL average for the doubles leader was 44.8. The AL average over those years was 41.6.

It _is_ very low recently; the only leader in the 2000’s lower is Votto last year (40), and the average is 51.5.

Dalton M

12 years ago

It’s funny–the one pair I definitely thought would be on this list isn’t. The ol’ Killer B’s from Houston, Bagwell and Biggio. Turns out Biggio had 668 and Bags had 488. It is interesting to note though, that they combined for 1,041 doubles while playing together (1991-2005). Has anything like that ever been done? Two players playing for the same franchise accumulating 1000+ two-baggers?

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Dalton M

Dalton, you may have nailed the only pair. The next best I can find are Hal McRae and George Brett, who combined for 895 doubles for the Royals from 1973-1987. Robin Yount and Paul Molitor had 868 for the Brewers from 1978-1992. There’s got to be a few I missed out there.

nightfly

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

bstar – Brett and Frank White, from 1973-1990, combined for 963 (at least, if I have the hang of the math now).

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to nightfly

D’oh!! I checked Amos Otis and Brett but not Frank White. Thanks, nightfly.

Nick Pain

12 years ago

Reply to Dalton M

I’ve got Red Schoendienst and Stan Musial at 1,077. Musial was on the Cardinals for all of Red’s time with them, from 1945 to part of 1956, and then 1961-63.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Nick Pain

I think your Musial-Schoendienst total is over-stated. During their first overlap from 1946 to June 12, 1956 they combined for 732 doubles. Fot their second overlap from 1961 to 1963 they totaled 63 doubles. Their overall overlap total is 795 doubles.

Their combined career total is 725 + 427 = 1152. From just 1941 to 1944 alone Musial’s total was 135 so obviously their overlap total is easily less than 1017.

Nick Pain

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Yeah, my mistake. I weeded out Schoendienst’s Cardinals doubles, but I then added them to all of Musials as opposed to the overlapping years. Serves me right for trying to respond at 7 in the morning.

richard chester

12 years ago

Reply to Dalton M

As soon as I finish my breakfast I am going to check Pete Rose and Tony Perez unless somebody else wants to do it now.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to richard chester

Nope, they were not even close.

12 years ago

Reply to richard chester

If I did the math correctly, Perez only had 339 doubles with the Reds. So I doubt he and Rose exceeded 1,000.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Ed

Their total was 851 including their time together with the Phils in 1983.

nightfly

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Thought I had one, but Aaron and Mathews (Braves ’54-’66) stopped at 884. Ruth and Gehrig (Yankees ’20-’34) were at 826. Is there any way to search for long-time teammates in the PI, or is it a matter of checking everyone and their twin page-by-page?

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Nightfly: I have a book which lists players who have been teammates the longest, that’s how I decide whom to search.

nightfly

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

A book!??!?!?one!? 😀

But seriously, that has got to be a huge help.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Wish I had that book, too. I just pulled up a list of anyone over 400 doubles and was just eyeballing it. It was a fun exercise. Aaron and Mathews were one of the first duos I checked but Eddie hit an amazingly low number of doubles for having such prodigious power.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Reply to #49:

That book is the SABR Baseball List & Record Book, March 2007 Ed. I don’t know if a later edition has been issued. I was at Barnes & Noble this morning and the same 2007 Ed. was still on the shelf. Perhaps you could try Amazon.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

This is fairly easy to do with P-I.
– Use Season Finder and Totals for Multiple Seasons.
– Select the date range of the player of interest with the shorter tenure with a club
– Limit search to just that club
– Display list sorted by statistic of interest (in this case, doubles)

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to Dalton M

Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke played together forever (1897-1915), but only got to 900. I’ve included all of 1897, even though Wagner started half-way through the year, and 1913-15, when Clarke made token playing appearances as a player-manager.

Whitaker and Trammell played practically their entire careers together, but only got to 830. It’s harder than you think, there’s only been 56 players total with 500 or more doubles, and most spent considerable time with another team.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Sam Rice and Joe Judge combined for 896 doubles during their time with the Senators.

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

… and 337 triples, but I guess this is the wrong forum for that note!

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke have 412 triples as teammates, with the loose definition of “teammate” I used in #40 above.

Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford had 391 triples as Tigers.

Since these are four of the top seven all-time leaders (and the top three), I don’t see any other teammates topping those two.

nightfly

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Posada and Jeter ended up at 871, debuting together in 1995 and Posada hanging them up last October. If Jorge had gotten more than 70 games in his first three seasons, they could have gotten up around 950 or so. (Of course, nobody hangs around one more year to set a record like “most doubles as teamamtes,” so even if they knew I doubt Posada would be back now.)

nightfly

12 years ago

Dalton’s really hit upon a great question – most doubles by teammates, as teammates. Researching the answer has led to some amazing tidbits. Take the Tigers. As it turns out, they had four of their top-nine franchise doublers playing simultaneously from 1914-1917: Ty Cobb (665), Sam Crawford (402), Harry Heilmann (497), and Bobby Veach (345). Cobb, Veach, and Hielman overlapped for ten seasons (!), 1914-1923. And yet, none of them topped 785 (Cobb with Hielmann). And number two behind Cobb, Charlie Gehringer, had 574 doubles as a Tiger, but debuted in 1924, giving him only three seasons with Cobb in… Read more »

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to nightfly

I think that the most logical approach to finding teammates with 1000+ career doubles would be:
1) look at the list of players with 500+ career doubles
2) see which players were one-team (or close to that) players
3) think of long-time teammates for these one-team players

I think we’ve found most of the obvious candidates, the only new one I found was Jeter/Posada (492+379 = 871).

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

So summing up everyone’s research so far, here’s the very unofficial list of career doubles by teammates:

1. Bagwell/Biggio (1991-2005) 1,041
2. Brett/F White (1973-1990) 963
3. Wagner/F Clarke (1897-1915) 900
4. S Rice/J Judge (1915-1932) 896
5. Brett/H McRae (1973-1987) 895
6. Jeter/Posada (1995-2011) 871
7. Yount/Molitor (1978-1992) 868
8. Rose/Perez (1964-76, 1983) 851

Unless I left out a duo, which is entirely possible.

Dalton M

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

I think Brett/White is 966, but I could be wrong (559+407)?

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Dalton M

That’s what I get, too, Dalton. Edit #1 to the “official” table. Next…..

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

Jim Rice and Dwight Evans had 813 from 1974 to 1989.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

For Rose/Perez, should be 1964-76 and 1984-86. Subtracting Rose’s doubles with the Reds in ’64 (before Perez debuted), ’77 and ’78 and with Montreal in ’84, I get 471 for Rose and 339 for Perez for a total of 810, not 851.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Doug: I found from 1964 to 1976 with the Reds Rose had 458 and Perez had 313. With the Phils in 1983 Rose had 14 and Perez had 11. Then again with the Reds from 1984 to 1986 Rose had 29 and Perez had 26.That adds up to 851.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

I just rechecked the math also and got 851. Perez did debut with the Reds in ’64, Doug.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Thanks guys.

I forgot they were teammates in Philadelphia.

Here’s my tally.

Rose
64 to 76: 458 – 10 (before Perez debut in 64) = 448
83 to 86 (excl. Montreal) – 43. Total = 491.

Perez
64 to 76 – 313.
83 to 86 – 37 – 6 (when Rose was in Montreal) = 31
Total = 344.

Grand total = 835.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Ok, you’re subtracting Rose’s doubles pre-Perez in 1964. I’d wager we would have to do a lot of recalculating if we look at it that way. I think the general assumption we all used was that if they were teammates on the same team for any part of that year, all their doubles were counted (other than playing for another team for part of the year, e.g. Pete Rose’s doubles in 1984 with Montreal were not counted).

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

Ref. my post #60: Perez had 6 doubles in 1984 prior to Rose joining the Reds, I missed that so my corrected value is 845.

Doug: I think that 64-76 value of 458 already excludes the 10 doubles Rose got in 1963.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Doug

We’re going to have to re-do most of these duos, then. For example, George Brett had a similar cup of coffee with the ’73 Royals, so we will have to subtract Frank White and Hal McRae’s doubles that year before Brett got called up. Same thing with Jeter and Posada–looks like Posada had two cups of coffee in ’95 and ’96 and only a third of a season in ’97, so that’s going to decrease that duo’s total by quite a bit.

Dalton M

12 years ago

Reply to nightfly

I thought I should check where a pair involving Speaker would rank, given that he finished atop the all-time leaderboard. As it turns out, my research has given me the pair of Speaker and Joe Sewell, combining for 564 doubles in 1920-26 with the Tribe. Certainly a bit lower than I had expected.

Dalton M

12 years ago

Fun little tidbit inspired by the Rushmore threads and this one:

Top doubles pairs for the 4 most recent expansion teams
Rockies – Helton/Walker – 576 (1997-2004)
Marlins – Lowell/Gonzalez – 422 (1999-2005)
D’Backs – Gonzalez/Finley – 371 (1999-2004)
(Devil) Rays – Crawford/Upton – 361 (2004-10)

With how often the Marlins organization gets dismantled, I would have thought their pair would have an even lower total.

Ernesto

12 years ago

I’m late to the boat on this, but I came up with 1022 for Cobb and Crawford.

Crawford – 1905 thru 1917 – 357 doubles
Cobb – 1905 thru 1917 – 665 doubles

That puts them at #2 behind Bagwell and Biggio.

Author

Doug

12 years ago

Reply to Ernesto

Thanks Ernesto, but I think you miscalculated on Cobb – I have him at just 376 doubles for those seasons. 665 were Cobb’s total doubles as a Tiger, from 1905 to 1926.