LET's get down to it with "big RBI games"--defined as those where hitters have driven in at least seven runs in a game.
We told you last time that there are 699 of these accounted for at Forman et soeur--truth told, there are likely another 50 or so from the nineteenth century, particularly from the heavy-hitting 1890s (we only have data back to 1898).
FIRST, the TimeGrid™ that shows us when these 7+-RBI games occurred. Our color-coding in the decade/year grid tracks the record for most such games in a single year as it evolves.
We can have fun name-checking the hitters who contributed to the record-setting seasons in each case...
In 1911, there were five: Fred Merkle, Doc Gessler, Heinie Zimmerman, Roy Hartzell, and Frank LaPorte.
In 1923, there were six: Johnny Mokan, Cy Williams, Ross Youngs, Hack Miller, Irish Meusel, and Travis Jackson. (That's three members of the New York Giants, who won the NL pennant. For Meusel, it was the second time he'd done it--and he was the first hitter to do so when his team lost the game, breaking a 31-game winning streak for "big RBI guys.")
In 1929, there were eight (or, actually seven, since a certain Sultan of Swat did it twice): Charlie Gehringer, Travis Jackson, Babe Ruth (once in June and once in August), Lew Fonseca, Riggs Stephenson, Jim Bottomley, and Buddy Myer.
It should come as no surprise that 1930 bumped the record up to 11: Del Bissonette, Babe Herman, Lou Gehrig (three times during the year, so just nine names); Pie Traynor, Carl Reynolds, Glenn Wright, Harry Heilmann, Bill Terry, and Earl Averill.
Eleven instances held as the record for forty years, until the oddball season in 1970 upped the ante to 13 (twelve names): Brant Alyea (twice, the first and the last to do that year), Dick Allen, Willie Horton, Mike Epstein, Frank Robinson, John Bateman, Ron Santo, Jim Ray Hart, Ted Kubiak, Johnny Bench, Orlando Cepeda, and Donn Clendenon.
Bench and Cepeda did on the same day, which is a rare event (we'll get to that later). Kubiak is a strong candidate for the weakest hitter to have a 7+-RBI game, with his lifetime 73 OPS+. He might be in the running for the lowest seasonal RBI total for a hitter with a 7+-RBI game (41).
The 1970 record was tied in 1987. Here are the 13 hitters that season: Bo Jackson, George Brett, Andre Dawson, Keith Moreland, Pete O'Brien, Ellis Burks, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Kevin Seitzer, John Kruk, Mickey Brantley, Todd Benzinger, and Dave Parker.
The offensive explosion of the 1990s threatened this record several times, and it was finally broken (with room to spare) in 2000, when there were 17 7+-RBI games (fifteen names, as Alex Rodriguez matched Brant Alyea's feat of being the first and last to do so; Jason Giambi also did it twice) The full list: A-Rod, Adam Kennedy, Ron Coomer, Jeffrey Hammonds, Henry Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Brian Jordan, Giambi, Bobby Higginson, Bernie Williams, Ken Griffey Jr., Andy Tracy, Jeff Cirillo, Jeff Bagwell, and Charles Johnson .
This record was tied in the launch angle madness that was 2019. Here are the culprits: Christian Yelich, Josh Phegley, Trevor Story, David Bote, Matt Adams, Mike Trout, Josh Bell, Brandon Crawford, Didi Gregorius, Kyle Schwarber (natch!), Eduardo Escobar (natch!!), Yuli Gurriel, Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Marcus Semien, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jose Ramirez.
We'll go deeper into this in our next installment...stay tuned.
