After Ted Williams: The 16 Players Who Hit .400 Across an 80‑Game Stretch
Batting .400 is incredibly difficult. It hasn’t been done since 1941, when Ted Williams hit .406 (and famously did not win MVP). A lot of time has passed since, and the probability of seeing it happen again only seems more impossible with time. In 1941, MLB as a whole hit .261. In 2025, it was .245. I got curious and wanted to see, since 1941, who has even gotten close to hitting .400? For this exercise, I sampled all 80-game stretches (a nice round number for about a half-season of games) since 1941 to see any instance where a player hit over .400 during a season. Here are those 16 instances. Jackie Robinson – 5/8/1949-8/2/1949. Total hits: 124, total at-bats: 309, average: .401 Robinson got off to a slow start in 1949, hitting just .222 through his first 18 games before this hot streak. 1949 ended up being Robinson’s signature season, where he won NL MVP and led the league in stolen bases (37), bWAR (9.3), and batting average, where he ultimately ended at .342. Ted William...