Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman is having an MVP-caliber season, even if he trails one or two players -- including a teammate -- in the running right now. Among the impressive stats on his ledger to this point, he's racked up 50 doubles. Given that the Dodgers still have 33 games remaining on the schedule, Freeman has a chance to do something special here.
He's on pace to end up with 63 doubles. Even just getting to 50 is a big deal. There have previously been exactly 100 individual 50-double seasons in MLB history, so Freeman makes it 101. If we set the parameters to 55 doubles in a season, we find 24 from 22 different players.
Much like with home runs, though, 60 is the number. That's where a season of doubles is truly special and we haven't seen one of those for a long, long time.
Here are the top six all-time in single-season doubles:
1. Earl Webb, 1931: 67 doubles
t2. George Burnes, 1926: 64
t2. Joe Medwick, 1936: 64
4. Hank Greenberg, 1934: 63
5. Paul Waner, 1932: 62
6. Charlie Gehringer, 1936: 60
That's it. Those are the 60-double seasons in MLB history. Tris Speaker, the Hall of Famer and all-time doubles leader with 792, never got to 60. He topped out at 59. We've recently seen runs at 60 that have come up short. Here are the 55-plus doubles seasons since we got to the year 2000.
Todd Helton, 2000: 59Nick Castellanos, 2019: 58Garret Anderson, 2002: 56Nomar Garciaparra, 2002: 56José Ramírez, 2017: 56Brian Roberts, 2009: 56Lance Berkman, 2001: 55Matt Carpenter, 2013: 55Obviously, home runs are more important than doubles while the triple slash line is generally the best indicator of how well a player has performed. HIts, runs and RBI will continue to get their due. But don't forget about doubles and Freeman's total is worth monitoring the rest of the way. History could be made. It'll be especially fun to monitor is he starts zeroing in on 60.
