The Last Batters to Hit .400 and Why It Has Not Happened Since

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 8 min read

Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941 and nobody has reached .400 since. The full list of .400 seasons, the near misses by Brett and Gwynn, and the arithmetic of strikeouts and luck that explains the drought.

Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, and through the 2025 season nobody in the major leagues has hit .400 since. The closest anyone has come in the historical record is Tony Gwynn's .394 in 1994, a season cut short by a strike, followed by George Brett's .390 in 1980. In the 84 seasons after Williams, only four hitters with at least 400 at-bats have finished at .388 or higher.

This article lists every .400 season since 1901, explains how Williams earned his on the last day, looks at what Brett and Gwynn would have needed, and shows with plain arithmetic why the feat has become so hard. The explanation is not a mystery, and it is not that hitters today are worse. It is a matter of strikeouts, of luck, and of what a .400 average asks of a hitter over about 500 at-bats.

What .400 asks of a hitter

A .400 average means four hits in every ten official at-bats, held for a season. Over 500 at-bats that is 200 hits, and the margin is thin: 199 hits in 500 at-bats is .398 and 200 is exactly .400. A hitter who is a few hits short at the end of the year cannot make them up; a hitter who is a few ahead has a cushion no bigger than one good week.

The average counts at-bats, not plate appearances. Walks, hit-by-pitches and sacrifice bunts do not count against it. That is why a patient hitter who walks 150 times can be far more valuable than his batting average suggests, and why the average on its own has never been the best summary of a hitter. It is still the number people argue about, because it is simple and because .400 has the weight of a round figure.

Every .400 season since 1901

The historical record shows the following seasons at .400 or better for hitters with at least 250 at-bats in the American and National Leagues, computed from hits divided by at-bats. Before 1901 the National League and the American Association had many more of them, and the list below begins with the modern two-league era.

That is 13 seasons by eight hitters in 41 years, with Cobb, Hornsby and Sisler responsible for eight of them. Hornsby's .424 in 1924 is the highest average in the National League since 1901. Terry's .401 in 1930 is the last by a National Leaguer, and the next American Leaguer after Heilmann's 1923 was Williams. In the 1920s the two leagues' batting champions averaged .390 together, which is the highest figure for any decade.

The historical record also carries Negro Leagues data for 1920 to 1948 as major-league data. Several of its rows show .400 averages in partial schedules, such as Oscar Charleston's .4275 in 71 games in 1925. Those schedules were shorter than the National and American League schedule of 154 games, so the figures are not directly comparable, and the records are still being recovered. This article treats them as valuable evidence, not as entries in the table above.

The last day of 1941

Ted Williams did not just reach .400. He had to work for it on the final day, and the story is one of the best documented in the sport. Going into a season-ending doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics, Williams stood at 179 hits in 448 at-bats, an average of .3996 and some more digits. The rounding convention then used would have let the figure be recorded as .400. The Red Sox manager, Joe Cronin, offered to sit him out. Williams chose to play both games.

He went 6 for 8. That made his final line 185 hits in 456 at-bats, .4057, recorded as .406. No one has finished higher in the years since, and the choice to play instead of protecting the number is a large part of why the season is remembered the way it is.

His season in the database was 143 games, 456 at-bats, and a league-leading 37 home runs, where Charlie Keller hit 33. He also did not win the Most Valuable Player Award. It went to Joe DiMaggio, who in the same summer had hit in 56 consecutive games. The DiMaggio streak article explains the other half of that year. Williams's batting average was the best in the league by a wide margin, as Cecil Travis hit .359 and DiMaggio .357.

A technical point deserves a mention. As the scoring rules of 1941 are generally described, a sacrifice fly counted as an at-bat then, while today it does not, so Williams's average would be slightly higher under modern rules. The figure is a fair reflection of how well he hit, not a rounding trick.

The near misses: Brett, Gwynn and others

Since 1941 the best averages in the historical record, for hitters with at least 400 at-bats, are these.

Three of the top four came in short or part-time seasons. Gwynn's season ended in August 1994 because of the players' strike, with the Padres having played 117 of their 162 games. Brett appeared in 117 games in 1980 and had 449 at-bats, well below a full-time total. Williams in 1957 was in his late thirties and had 420 at-bats. Only Carew played a full schedule, with 616 at-bats.

The arithmetic is instructive. Gwynn had 165 hits in 419 at-bats. To reach .400 he would have needed 168, only three more hits, and 167 would have left him at .3986. Brett needed 180 in 449 at-bats rather than his 175, five more. Carew, in a full 616 at-bats, would have needed 247 instead of 239, eight more. Each of these seasons was within a handful of hits of .400, which shows how narrow the margin is and how much it rewards luck.

Gwynn's season is a special case because the strike ended it. With the Padres having played 117 games, he had completed roughly 72 percent of a schedule. A hitter whose average sits at .394 after 419 at-bats is not certain to finish at .394, and the usual statistical expectation is that his average would drift down toward his true skill over the rest of the season. That does not diminish what he did, but it is the reason careful writers say only that he came closer than anyone since Williams.

How batting averages have changed

The deeper answer is that the whole league's batting average has moved. The historical record lets us compare the American and National League batting champions decade by decade, computed with the usual qualification of 3.1 plate appearances per team game.

In 2025 the American League's best qualifier, Aaron Judge, hit .331 and the National League's, Trea Turner, hit .304. The league as a whole hit .245 that year, down from .296 in 1930 and .262 in 1941. Batting champions in the 1920s regularly cleared .380; the best in the National League in 2025 did not reach .310.

Strikeouts: the arithmetic that matters most

A strikeout is an at-bat without a hit, so every strikeout is a guaranteed out for the batting average. In 1941 about 10 percent of at-bats ended in a strikeout. In 2025, the historical record implies, the figure was about 25 percent. The table shows how that moved.

Here is the consequence. Set aside home runs to keep the example simple. If a hitter strikes out in 10 percent of his at-bats, he has to hit .444 on the balls he puts in play to reach .400. If he strikes out in 20 percent, he has to hit .500 on balls in play. At 25 percent, the required figure is .533. Across the sport, the batting average on balls in play has been near .300 for a century; a hitter far above that is either very skilled or lucky, and one who must reach .500 is almost impossible.

That is the single best reason .400 has gone. A modern hitter who strikes out less than average, as Gwynn did, can still do it, which is why Gwynn came closer than anyone. But the hitters with the power to be most dangerous are the ones who strike out the most, and the sport rewards power over contact.

Luck: the math of a long season

There is a second reason that has nothing to do with eras. Even a great hitter's season average is partly luck. A hitter whose true skill is .330 and who comes to the plate 500 times has a standard deviation of about 21 points in his final average, because of the randomness in each at-bat. To reach .400 he needs to be 70 points above his true level, more than three standard deviations. The probability is well under one in a thousand.

A true-talent .350 hitter, rarer, has about a one-percent chance in a given season of finishing above .400. That is the realistic version of what Williams did: he was a .344 career hitter, a hitter at the very top of the all-time list, and he got a good year. The historical record lists his career average at .344, tied for 11th among the leaders, which includes the Negro Leagues rows. A hitter has to be one of the best in history and have a lucky year at once.

In the 1920s and 1930s the best hitters had higher true averages than anyone does today, because the league averaged higher, the strikeouts were fewer and the pitchers tired. Hornsby's career average of .358 ranks second only to Cobb's .366 in the database. Move those hitters into the modern game, with its strikeouts and its relievers, and they would almost certainly not hit .358 either. It is the environment, not only the men, that moved.

Other reasons that get cited

Pitchers today are specialists who enter in the sixth inning throwing as hard as they can, so a batter who gets to see the starter three times in a game as Williams did now sees fresh relievers in the late innings. Defenses are positioned by analysts, which turns some line drives into outs. Hitters have been taught to elevate the ball, which raises power and lowers batting average. And the talent pool is deeper, so the gap between the best hitter and the average hitter is smaller; the biologist Stephen Jay Gould made a version of that argument about the disappearance of .400 in his book Full House.

None of these causes is certain on its own, and they work together. If you want to test the arithmetic yourself, the stat calculator on this site computes averages and the hits needed for a target. The leaders pages show the current batting races.

Common questions

Who was the last player to hit .400? Ted Williams, with .406 for the Red Sox in 1941.

Who was the last National Leaguer? Bill Terry, who hit .401 for the New York Giants in 1930.

Did Babe Ruth ever hit .400? No. His best average in the database is .393 in 1923, and his career average is .342.

Could someone hit .400 today? It is not impossible, but it is extremely unlikely. A hitter would need a very high true average, a low strikeout rate and a lot of luck at once. The odds in any year are small, and nobody in the 21st century has finished above .372.

What is the highest average since Williams? Tony Gwynn's .394 in 1994, a strike-shortened season of 110 games for him.

Where to go next

The Triple Crown article lists the hitters who led their league in average, home runs and runs batted in, and the best single-season teams article covers the clubs of the same eras. For another record that has stood for decades, read Cal Ripken's streak or the worst seasons in baseball history.