When the Best Hitters in Baseball Forgot How to Hit

Ted Williams was the best hitter of his generation and maybe of any generation. In 1946 he was the American League MVP and he hit .342. Then the Red Sox reached the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, and he went 5-for-25. Every hit was a single. He drove in one run, and he was playing hurt.

Boston lost in seven games, and Williams never got another chance. He played until 1960 and never appeared in another World Series. For a hitter who finished his career at .344, those seven games are the strangest line on his record.

The greatest all-around player many people ever saw started his career looking like he did not belong. Called up by the Giants in May of 1951, Mays went 0-for-12 in his first three games in Philadelphia. His manager, Leo Durocher, told him that as long as Durocher managed the Giants, Mays was his center fielder.

His first big-league hit, on May 28 at the Polo Grounds, was a towering first-inning home run off Warren Spahn, a future Hall of Famer. Then he went hitless again, 0-for-13, which made him 1-for-26 to start his career. He finished the season at .274 with 20 home runs and was named National League Rookie of the Year. He ended up with 660 home runs.

This is the most famous slump in baseball history, because an entire borough tried to fix it. Gil Hodges was the slugging first baseman of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and in the 1952 World Series against the Yankees he went 0-for-21 across all seven games. He drew five walks and did not get a single hit. Brooklyn lost Game 7.

The slump followed him into 1953. He was still hitting .181 in late May, and fans mailed him letters and good-luck charms. Father Herbert Redmond of St. Francis Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn told his parishioners on a hot day that it was too hot for a sermon, and to go home and say a prayer for Gil Hodges.

Whatever it was, it worked. Hodges finished 1953 with 31 home runs and 122 RBI. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2021 and inducted in 2022.

Dave Winfield signed with the Yankees before the 1981 season on a 10-year contract that made him one of the highest-paid players in baseball. In his first World Series, against the Dodgers, he went 1-for-22, and the Yankees lost in six games.

George Steinbrenner never let it go. He later called Winfield Mr. May, a dig at Reggie Jackson, who was Mr. October. Winfield got the last word eleven years later. In Game 6 of the 1992 World Series, playing for Toronto, he doubled in two runs in the 11th inning to win the championship. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2001.

Derek Jeter finished his career with 3,465 hits, and in April of 2004 he could not get one. He went 0-for-32, the longest hitless streak of his career, and after 25 games he was hitting .181.

It ended on April 29 in Oakland, when he homered off Barry Zito. Years later Jeter admitted he had tried a superstition to break it: a gold thong. He hit .292 for the season and won a Gold Glove.

Alex Rodriguez was the reigning American League MVP in 2006, and in October he could not hit at all. Against Detroit in the Division Series he went 1-for-14 with no RBI, and for Game 4 Joe Torre dropped him to eighth in the lineup, the lowest he had batted in about a decade. The Yankees lost the game and the series.

Over his last 12 postseason games he was 4-for-41, a .098 average, with no RBI. Three years later he hit .365 with six home runs in the 2009 postseason, and the Yankees won the World Series.

Before 2002, the best hitter of his era had a postseason problem that followed him for a decade. Across five postseasons he hit .196 with one home run and six RBI. His Pittsburgh teams lost three straight National League Championship Series, from 1990 to 1992.

Then came 2002. In the World Series against the Angels he hit .471 with four home runs, walked 13 times and slugged 1.294. The Giants lost in seven games, but nobody talked about his October record again.

By 2009 David Ortiz was the most feared clutch hitter in baseball, and suddenly people were asking if he was finished. He did not hit a home run until May 20, a drought of 149 at-bats going back to the previous September, the longest of his career. Even after that first homer, off Toronto rookie Brett Cecil, he was hitting .210.

He finished the year with 28 home runs. Four years later he was the World Series MVP, hitting .688 in the six games against St. Louis.

Albert Pujols arrived in Anaheim in 2012 on a 10-year, $240 million contract as the best hitter of his generation. He did not hit a home run in any of his first 27 games, and he was batting .194. Counting the end of 2011, he went 33 games and 139 at-bats without one, the longest drought of his career.

The first Angels homer finally came on May 6 against Toronto, in his 28th game and 111th at-bat for his new team. He finished the season with 30.

Chris Davis led the majors with 53 home runs in 2013 and led them again with 47 in 2015. In January of 2016 Baltimore gave him a seven-year, $161 million contract, the largest in team history.

Then it fell apart. In 2018 he hit .168, the lowest batting average ever by a qualified hitter. His last hit that year came on September 14, and he did not get another until April 13, 2019, at Fenway Park. In between he went 0-for-54, passing Eugenio Velez for the longest hitless streak by a position player.

In 2019 Cody Bellinger was the National League MVP. Two years later he hit .165 in 350 plate appearances with 10 home runs. Of the 262 hitters who came to the plate at least 300 times that year, only one had a lower average.

This was not a slump of a few weeks. It was the better part of two seasons, with a shoulder injury in the middle of it. He has since rebuilt his career, which is the other lesson of this list: even the longest slumps end.

Aaron Judge hit .322 with 58 home runs in 2024 and won the American League MVP. In October he went cold. Before Game 5 of the World Series against the Dodgers he was hitting .152 for the postseason, and .133 in the Series.

He broke out in the first inning of Game 5 with a two-run home run off Jack Flaherty. A few innings later he dropped a catchable line drive, his first error of the year, the Dodgers scored five runs in the inning, and they won the championship that night. He finished the postseason at .184.