Every Triple Crown Winner in Baseball History

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 9 min read

All 17 batting Triple Crown seasons by 15 hitters, from Paul Hines in 1878 to Miguel Cabrera in 2012, with the near misses, the pitching version of the award and why the batting crown has been so rare.

A batter wins the Triple Crown by leading his league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in during the same season. The historical record shows 17 such seasons by 15 different hitters, from Paul Hines in 1878 to Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers in 2012. Cabrera's was the first in 45 years, since Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox in 1967, and through the 2025 season nobody has done it since. The hitter who comes closest to it today usually has to give something up, because the players who hit for the highest average are rarely the ones who hit the most home runs.

There is a pitching version, leading the league in wins, earned run average and strikeouts, and it has happened far more often. This article lists every batting winner with the numbers, explains why some of the early entries deserve a footnote, looks at the near misses and at what made 2012 different, and then covers the pitchers. Everything comes from the historical record, which runs through the 2025 season.

What counts, and what does not

The three categories are simple: highest batting average among qualified hitters, most home runs, most RBI. The batting title requires a minimum of 3.1 plate appearances per team game, which is 502 over a 162-game season, so a part-time player cannot win it on a hot month. Ties count. Yastrzemski tied Harmon Killebrew for the home run lead in 1967 with 44, and he is still listed as a Triple Crown winner, because he led or shared the lead in all three.

The award is also league-specific. A player who leads the American League in two categories and the National League in the third does not qualify, and the two leagues can each produce a winner in the same year: Jimmie Foxx of the Athletics and Chuck Klein of the Phillies both won in 1933. Before 1900 the leagues and the statistics themselves were different, which is why the early entries need caution.

All 17 batting Triple Crowns

The first five, and why they come with footnotes

The first entries belong to a different game. Hines's 1878 season, 92 hits in 62 games, with 4 home runs and 50 runs batted in, comes from a short schedule, and RBI were not an official statistic until 1920, which means the totals for any season before then were reconstructed from box scores and newspaper accounts. Tip O'Neill's .435 in 1887 and Hugh Duffy's .440 in 1894 are the two highest averages in the table, and both were produced under 19th-century conditions: pitching rules were different (the distance was lengthened to 60 feet 6 inches in 1893), and foul balls were not yet counted as strikes. They are real achievements, but they are not measured against the same yardstick as a modern season.

One more name sits in the footnotes. Heinie Zimmerman of the Cubs led the National League in 1912 in batting average (.372) and home runs (14), and whether he also led in RBI depends on the source. The historical record gives him 99 against the 102 of Honus Wagner, so the table above leaves him out, while Baseball-Reference credits him with the RBI lead and a Triple Crown. The lesson is that early totals were reconstructed from box scores and still differ from one reference to another, so they deserve a second look.

Nap Lajoie's 1901 season, the American League's first as a major league, is the first one that looks modern. He hit .426, with 14 home runs and 125 RBI, for the Philadelphia Athletics. Ty Cobb's 1909 is the oddest on the list, because a Triple Crown with 9 home runs belongs to the Deadball era, when a whole league hit home runs at a fraction of today's rate. The league hit 0.19 home runs per team game in 1913, a few years later, against 1.02 in 2012.

The Hornsby, Foxx and Gehrig years

Rogers Hornsby is the only player to win two Triple Crowns in the National League, and he did it by hitting over .400 both times. In 1922 he hit .401 with 42 home runs and 152 RBI, and in 1925 he hit .403 with 39 and 143. He did it as a second baseman. For the hitters of that era who reached .400, see the last batters to hit .400.

The 1930s then produced four. Foxx and Klein both won in 1933, Foxx with 48 home runs and 163 RBI and Klein at .368 with 28 and 120. In 1934 Lou Gehrig won in the American League with a .363 average, 49 home runs and 165 RBI, and in 1937 Joe Medwick of the Cardinals hit .374 with 31 home runs and 154 RBI. Medwick's season is the most recent Triple Crown in the National League, which means that a National League hitter has not won one for more than 85 years as of 2025.

The award did not always bring the Most Valuable Player award with it. Foxx won the 1933 AL award, Medwick the 1937 NL award and Hornsby the 1925 NL award. But Klein finished behind the Giants' Carl Hubbell in 1933, Gehrig behind Mickey Cochrane of the Tigers in 1934, and in 1942 and 1947 Ted Williams lost the vote to Joe Gordon and Joe DiMaggio, respectively, despite leading the league in all three categories both times. Voters sometimes weigh a winning team and a defensive position over a hitting line, however complete.

Williams, Mantle, Robinson and Yastrzemski

Ted Williams won in 1942, at .356 with 36 home runs and 137 RBI, and again in 1947, at .343 with 32 and 114. Between those two seasons he spent three years in military service. Mickey Mantle won in 1956 with the highest home run total of any Triple Crown winner in the table, 52, along with a .353 average and 130 RBI, and took the MVP award. Frank Robinson did it in 1966 in his first season with the Orioles, hitting .316 with 49 home runs and 122 RBI, and was named MVP.

Yastrzemski's 1967 was the last before Cabrera, and it came in a pennant race that did not end until the last day. Boston finished 92-70, one game ahead of Detroit and Minnesota, each at 91-71, and the White Sox, at 89-73, were three back. Yastrzemski hit .326 with 44 home runs, tied for the lead with Killebrew, and 121 RBI. The Red Sox then lost the World Series to St. Louis in seven games. His .326 is the lowest average of any winner in the table except Robinson's .316, in part because 1967 was a low-scoring season: the league scored 3.77 runs per team game, compared with 4.32 in 2012.

2012: Cabrera, Trout and an argument about value

Miguel Cabrera led the American League in 2012 with a .330 average, 44 home runs and 139 RBI. The margins tell a story. His .330 beat Mike Trout's .326 by four points, and Adrian Beltre's .321 was third. His 44 home runs were one more than Curtis Granderson and Josh Hamilton, who each hit 43. His 139 RBI were 11 more than Hamilton's 128.

The Tigers won the Central at 88-74, swept the Yankees in the ALCS and lost the World Series to San Francisco in four games. Cabrera took the MVP award over Trout, who had a 49-stolen-base season, 30 home runs and a .326 average and was named Rookie of the Year. That vote touched off a long argument over whether traditional statistics or wins above replacement, which values defense, base running and position, should decide the question. The historical record does not carry WAR, so it cannot settle the dispute, but it does show the Triple Crown season as a historical fact. Cabrera was the first winner in 45 years, and the last through 2025.

The near misses

The list of players who came within a whisker is long, and the historical makes it easy to see. These are the closest cases where a player led in two categories and finished at or near the top in the third.

Williams in 1949 is the cruelest. His average lost by .0001 in the rounded figures, on 194 hits in 566 at-bats against Kell's 179 in 522. One more hit would have given him a third Triple Crown. The Musial case is nearly as close: one home run separated him from the lead in a year when he also had 230 hits. Rosen's .3356 trailed Vernon's .3372 in that batting race by .0016.

Why it has been so hard since 1967

Three things work against the modern hitter. The first is specialization. A hitter who aims for 45 home runs strikes out more and accepts a lower average, and the league-wide shift is visible in the data: strikeouts per team game rose from 5.99 in 1967 to 7.50 in 2012. The second is the number of rivals. In 1967 there were 20 major-league teams, and by 2012 there were 30, so the player has to beat a deeper field in each category.

The third is that RBI depend on teammates. A hitter needs runners on base and a lineup that keeps getting on, and a player who wins the batting title and the home run title can still lose the RBI race because the team around him is weaker. That is why Cabrera, with Prince Fielder in the same Detroit lineup in 2012, was in a good position. The National League, for its part, has not produced a winner since Medwick in 1937.

The pitching Triple Crown

A pitcher wins it by leading his league in wins, ERA and strikeouts. The historical record shows 39 of them between 1877 and 2020, and files two more from 2024 under the plain "Triple Crown" label, for 41 in all. The 2024 pair were Chris Sale of the Braves (18-3, 2.38 ERA, 225 strikeouts) and Tarik Skubal of the Tigers (18-4, 2.39, 228). Several pitchers have won more than once: Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander and Sandy Koufax three times each, and Christy Mathewson, Lefty Grove, Lefty Gomez and Roger Clemens twice.

The pitching version is easier for a reason. A single dominant starter can lead in all three, because wins, ERA and strikeouts are all consequences of the same skill. Bieber's 2020 is a special case, an 8-1 season in a 60-game schedule. The modern pitcher still has to stay healthy and pitch for a team that scores for him, and no pitcher has won in consecutive seasons since Clemens in 1997 and 1998.

Common questions

Who was the last Triple Crown winner? Miguel Cabrera of Detroit in 2012 among batters. For pitchers, historical files Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal in 2024.

Has anyone won it twice? Rogers Hornsby, in 1922 and 1925, and Ted Williams, in 1942 and 1947.

Is a tie for the home run lead enough? Yes. Yastrzemski tied Killebrew at 44 in 1967 and is counted as a winner.

Did every winner win the MVP? No. Williams lost the vote in both of his seasons, Klein lost in 1933 and Gehrig lost in 1934, and several of the earliest winners played before the award existed.

Where to go next

For the other great single-season feats in the record book, read the last batters to hit .400, which includes two Triple Crown winners, and the stolen base leaders. To read the numbers in a game story, see how to read a baseball box score, and for another record built on pure durability see Cal Ripken's streak of 2,632 games. The live career and season lists are on the leaders page, and coverage of the honors is on the awards topic page.