Paul Goldschmidt Makes Serious Run At Rare National League Triple Crown

It’s more elusive than a no-hitter, four-homer game, or triple play.

In fact, the Triple Crown is so rare that it’s happened only once since the 1969 advent of divisional play – and not at all in the National League since 1937.

Talk of the Triple Crown – league leadership in batting, home runs, and runs batted in – has resurfaced, thanks mainly to the slugging exploits of St. Louis first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.

At 34, he’d be the oldest Triple Crown winner. But he’d have to stay at the top of the leader boards while his team tries to track down a divisional title. That’s no easy task.

Consider the fact that neither Hank Aaron nor Willie Mays ever did it.

Goldschmidt himself chased the Triple Crown in 2013, when he led the National League with 36 home runs and 125 runs batted in while playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He hit a fine .302 but that was well behind batting champ Michael Cuddyer, who hit .331 for the Colorado Rockies.

As the Cardinals entered the weekend, Goldschmidt was leading the league in slugging (.603), on-base percentage (.413), OPS (1.016), and total bases (307). He was second in batting (.324) and runs batted in (110) and third in both hits (165), home runs (35), and runs (101). Those numbers spell MVP more quickly than Triple Crown, however.

He’s never won that either, but did finish second in 2013 and 2015 and third in 2017.

Goldschmidt is close in the Triple Crown categories but is chasing Freddie Freeman in batting, Kyle Schwarber in home runs, and Pete Alonso in runs batted in.

“It would be a miracle,” he said of his Triple Crown pursuit. “To think it’s realistic is probably pretty far-fetched.”

He’s flirted with the idea before, hitting 30 homers six times, reaching .300 four times, and driving in 100 runs three times.

No less an authority than Albert Pujols, a three-time National League MVP, said of his teammate, “He’s been carrying the ballclub most of the year. What he’s doing is so special. He’s having an MVP year. To see him do it as a teammate is even more special.”

Pujols, 42, is the author of his own storybook season, approaching the 700-homer plateau reached previously only by Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth. He’s one of three 40-something Cardinals, along with catcher Yadier Molina and pitcher Adam Wainwright, hoping for one last championship before they retire. But the big story also season has been Goldschmidt.

“His preparation is unbelievable,” said St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol. “He’s not going to allow the opposition to get him out because he’s so in-tune with what they are trying to do.”

A Goldschmidt surge over the final three weeks could give him the NL’s first Triple Crown since Joe Medwick, an earlier Cardinals star, won one in 1937. Rogers Hornsby, who won the first one 100 years ago and later did it again, also played for the Cards, so a Goldschmidt win would give St. Louis three winners – most of any team.

The New York Yankees, with Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle, and the Boston Red Sox, with Ted Williams twice and Carl Yastrzemski once, are the only other clubs with multiple Triple Crown winners.

The last man to win it in either league was the still-active Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers in 2012. But he was the only winner in the last half-century.

Yastrzemski won in 1967, when he powered the Impossible Dream Red Sox to a surprise pennant, and Robinson win in 1966, his first year with the Baltimore Orioles. Mantle won in 1956, Williams in 1942 and 1947, Medwick in 1937, Gehrig in 1934, Jimmie Foxx (AL) and Chuck Klein (NL) in 1933, and Hornsby in both 1922 and 1925.

That’s a pretty exclusive club, though six other players – including Ty Cobb – led their league in the three Triple Crown categories before runs batted in became an official statistic in 1920.

In recent years, several stars tried to join the parade. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. tied for the 2021 American League home run lead but finished second in average and fifth in RBI.

During the virus-shortened 2020 campaign, Marcel Ozuna topped the NL in homers and RBI but was third in average despite a career-best .338 mark.

En route to a National League MVP trophy in 2018, Milwaukee outfielder Christian Yelich won a batting crown but finished a close second in both homers and RBI. That same year, J.D. Martinez of the Boston Red Sox led the AL in runs batted in but was second in homers (43) and batting (.330).

And let’s not overlook Cabrera, who bid for back-to-back Triple Crowns in 2013 when he again won the batting title but fell one RBI and nine homers short. No one has ever won two in a row.

To win the Triple Crown, a player’s statistics often have to be stupendous. In 1922, for example, Hornsby hit .401 with 42 home runs and 152 runs batted in.

Goldschmidt, a 6-3, 220-pound right-handed hitter from Wilmington, DE, would be in line for another contract extension if his Triple Crown materializes. He signed a five-year, $130 million deal – the largest in club history – during spring training on March 23, 2019.

Endurance helps too; almost all Triple Crown winners in baseball history were under 30. The lone exceptions were Gehrig, 31 at the time, and Robinson, who was 30.