Aaron Judge is chasing .400 this season, currently sitting in the .390s with plenty of baseball left to play.
The last player to reach that milestone was Ted Williams, who hit .406 for the Red Sox back in 1941. That’s the standard line you’ll hear whenever this topic comes up.
But there’s more to the story.
MLB analyst Ryan Spaeder pointed out on X that if you shift the parameters a bit – look at any 162-game stretch instead of just calendar seasons – someone has cracked .400 more recently.
From June 9, 1985 through June 6, 1986, Wade Boggs played exactly 162 games for Boston. His batting average over that span? .401.
It’s one of the purest hitting stretches in baseball history, but it gets overlooked because it didn’t align with a traditional season. The timing was wrong for the record books, but the performance was absolutely there.
What makes Boggs even more impressive is how he got there. This wasn’t just slap-hitting – the guy had an incredible eye at the plate.
Take 1988, when Boggs posted a .476 on-base percentage. Spaeder notes that number was higher than what Ty Cobb managed in any of his three .400 seasons. That’s elite plate discipline.
Boggs might not get the same legendary status as some other hitters because he wasn’t launching home runs. But that left-handed swing was pure art, and for one full season’s worth of games, he truly hit like a .400 hitter.
The Hall of Famer’s forgotten .400 streak shows just how rare Judge’s current pursuit really is – and how special it would be if he actually gets there.
