List of Major League Baseball players with a .400 batting average in a season

In baseball, batting average (AVG) is a measure of a batter's success rate in achieving a hit during an at bat,^[1] and is calculated by dividing a player's hits by his at bats.^[2] The achievement of a .400 batting average in a season was historically recognized as the coveted "standard of hitting excellence",^[3] in light of how batting .300 in a season is already regarded as very good.^[4][5] There have been 50 officially-recognized instances of a player having recorded a batting average of at least .400 in a single Major League Baseball (MLB) season,^[A] but none have done so since 1943, when Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays hit .466, the single-season record. In the National League, the last to do so was Bill Terry of the New York Giants in 1930. Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox is the last player to hit .400 in the American League. Four players – Ed Delahanty, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Oscar Charleston – have accomplished the feat in three different seasons.^[6][7]

Oscar Charleston, Ty Cobb, Ed Delahanty, and Rogers Hornsby (left to right) are the only players to record a .400 batting average in three different seasons.

In total, 48 players have reached the .400 mark in MLB history; eleven have done so more than once and five have done it three times. Ross Barnes is the only player to do it four times (1871, 1872, 1873, and 1876). Of the 48 players, 25 were right-handed batters, 21 were left-handed, and two were switch hitters, meaning they could bat from either side of the plate.

The Philadelphia Phillies are the only franchise to have three players reach the milestone in the same season (1894): Hall of Fame outfielders Ed Delahanty (.405), Billy Hamilton (.403), and Sam Thompson (.415), as well as outfielder Tuck Turner (.418). That same season, Boston Beaneaters outfielder Hugh Duffy batted .440 to win the batting title; to date, this is the only season in which five players throughout the Major Leagues had a .400 season. The Homestead Grays are the only franchise with four players recording a .400 single-season batting average, albeit in different years: Joe Strong (1932), Josh Gibson (1937, 1943), Buck Leonard (1938), and David Whatley (1939) all hit .400 while playing for the Grays. Three players won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award the same year as their .400 season: Ty Cobb (1911), George Sisler (1922), and Rogers Hornsby (1925).^[8] Rap Dixon, Tip O'Neill, Nap Lajoie, Josh Gibson (twice), Willie Wells, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston (twice), Heavy Johnson, and Rogers Hornsby (twice) also earned the Triple Crown in their .400 season.^[9] Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Cleveland Naps hit .408 in 1911, the highest batting average ever recorded by a rookie in the American League. Joe Strong has the lowest career batting average among players who have batted .400 in a season, with a .266, while Gibson recorded the highest career average in major league history, at .372.^[10]

Given the decades that have elapsed since Gibson became the last player to achieve the feat and the integral changes to the way the game of baseball is played since then – such as the increased utilization of specialized relief pitchers^[11] – a writer for The Washington Post called the mark "both mystical and unattainable".^[12] Consequently, modern-day attempts to reach the hallowed mark by Rod Carew (.388 in 1977), George Brett (.390 in 1980), and Tony Gwynn (.394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season) have generated considerable hype among fans and in the media.^[13][14][15] Of the thirty-six players who have batted .400 in a season, twenty-one have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, two on the first ballot.^[16] Five of the thirty-six are ineligible for not meeting the 10-season threshold for enshrinement. Until he was reinstated in 2025, Shoeless Joe Jackson was ineligible for the Hall of Fame due to his ban for his involvement in the Black Sox Scandal, leaving eight eligible .400 hitters not elected to the Hall of Fame.^[17][18][19]