Hitting streak
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In baseball, a hitting streak refers to the consecutive number of official games in which a player gets at least one base hit. Games in which a player does not have any official at bats due to walks, or sacrifice bunts, or being hit by a pitch, are ignored (neither break the streak nor add to the streak). However, if a player has a sacrifice fly, then the game is not ignored, and he must get a hit or his streak is over. [1]
Joe DiMaggio holds the major league record for the longest hitting streak with 56 straight games with a hit in 1941. Joltin' Joe got his first hit of the streak on May 15, 1941 against the White Sox, going 1 for 4. He would get a hit in every single game the Yankees played for two months before going 0 for 3 in a game against Cleveland on July 17. DiMaggio hit .408 during his streak (91 for 223), with 15 home runs and 55 RBI.
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[edit] Major League Baseball records
There have been 46 occurrences in Major League Baseball where a player had a hitting streak of at least 30 games. Multiple streaks in the same season have occurred in 1922 (George Sisler and Rogers Hornsby), 1987 (Paul Molitor and Benito Santiago), 1997 (Nomar Garciaparra and Sandy Alomar Jr.), 1999 (Vladimir Guerrero and Luis Gonzalez), and 2006 (Chase Utley and Willy Taveras). In addition, 1924 included one whole streak (Sam Rice) and the beginning of another (George Sisler). A similar event occurred in 2006 with two whole streaks (Utley and Taveras) and the end of another (Jimmy Rollins).
Keeler's streak started in his final game of the 1896 season, and continued through the first 44 games of the 1897 season. Rollins ended the 2005 season with a 36-game streak and extended it through the first two games of the 2006 season. Sisler had a hit in the last game of 1924 and the first 34 games of 1925. Major League Baseball recognizes two hitting streak records: Longest hitting streak in one season, and longest hitting streak over multiple seasons (e.g. Rollins 2005-2006). Keeler's, Sisler's, and Rollins' streaks are listed as 44, 34, and 36 games when discussing single-season streaks, and 45, 35, and 38 games when discussing multiple-season streaks. All the other hitting streaks on this list were compiled within a single season.
This list omits Denny Lyons of the 1887 American Association Philadelphia Athletics, who had a 52-game hitting streak. In 1887, the major leagues adopted a new rule which counted walks as hits, a rule which was dropped after that season. Lyons hit in 52 consecutive games that season, but his streak included two games (#22 and #44) in which his only "hits" were walks. In 1968, MLB ruled that walks in 1887 would not be counted as hits, so Lyons' streak was no longer recognized, though it still appears on some lists. In 2000 Major League Baseball reversed its 1968 decision, ruling that the statistics which were recognized in each year's official records should stand, even in cases where they were later proven incorrect. Paradoxically, the ruling affects only hit totals for the year; the batting champion for the year is not recognized as the all-time leader despite having the highest single-season average under the ruling, and Lyons' hitting streak is not recognized.
[edit] Minor League Baseball records
Some of the longer streaks in the history of Minor League Baseball, including some of the longer recent ones are:
61 - Joe DiMaggio (1933)
55 - Roman Mejias (1954)
49 - Jack Ness (1915)
35 - Scott Seabol (1999)
32 - Dave Doster (2004)
32 - Chris Valaika (2006)
31 - Kevin Hooper (2002)
30 - Ricardo Nanita (2003)
DiMaggio set the Minor League record as a member of the San Francisco Seals. Unrecognized by Minor League Baseball is the 69 game hitting streak by Joe Wilhoit in 1919. Wilhoit was in the independent Western League at the time and his record is considered the all-time Professional Baseball record. [2] [3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/official_info/official_rules/official_scorer_10.jsp
- ^ Longest Hitting Streaks. Baseball-Reference.com (August, 2006).
- ^ Joe Wilhoit and Ken Guettler. The Baseball Research Journal (January, 2000).
