Manny Machado broke up Scott Kazmir’s no-hitter last night by smacking his 36th double of the season. Not only does that lead MLB by a wide margin--no one else has more than 26--it puts the 20-year-old third baseman on pace to break the all-time record.
Earl Webb is the record-holder with 67 doubles in 1931 and Machado is currently on pace for 74 doubles. Looking at things another way, Baltimore has played 79 games and here’s the all-time doubles leaderboard through 79 team games:
Edgar Martinez 1996 39
Earl Webb 1931 38
Paul Waner 1932 37
MANNY MACHADO 2013 36
George Burns 1926 36
Edgar Martinez and three guys from the 1920s and 1930s is pretty good company. Machado is two doubles behind where Webb was in 1931 and it’s worth noting that teams only played 154 games per season back then.
And just to show how incredible what he’s doing is at Machado’s age, here’s the all-time doubles leaderboard through 79 team games for 20-year-olds:
MANNY MACHADO 2013 36
Ted Williams 1939 27
Alex Rodriguez 1996 25
Vada Pinson 1959 22
Mel Ott 1929 22
Manny Machado is bogarting all the doubles.
(All of these numbers come courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com’s indispensable Play Index, which is the single most valuable research tool in baseball.)