Double Play grounding

Rany Jazayerli twooted something this morning that caught my eye: Billy Butler had grounded into 16 double plays in his team's first 59 games. That is a blistering pace (in fact, he's now up to 17 in the first 60 games) that has been beaten only three times before (presumably during the Retrosheet era). Three Red Sox have been more ground-outier at this stage of the season: Jim Rice in 1984 and 1985 and Carl Yastrzemski in 1964. Everyone knows that Rice ground into a lot of double plays, of course. His recent Hall of Fame induction saw to that. But consider the following all-time leader list (courtesy of Baseball Reference): Player (age) GIDP Year Jim Rice+ (31) 36 1984 Jim Rice+ (32) 35 1985 Ben Grieve (24) 32 2000 Jackie Jensen (27) 32 1954 Cal Ripken+ (24) 32 1985 Miguel Tejada (34) 32 2008 Tony Armas (29) 31 1983 Bobby Doerr+ (31) 31 1949 Jim Rice+ (30) 31 1983 Ivan Rodrigu...