This is how difficult it is to hit .400:

Joe Mauer exited Sunday’s game riding an eight-game hitting streak. He had at least two hits in five of those games, going 14-for-35. And his batting average fell five points.

Nobody’s hit .400 (while qualifying for the batting title) since Ted Williams in 1941.

Mauer has stirred up some speculation along those lines, which will happen when a two-time batting champ enters mid-June hitting .414.

But man, are the odds against him.

The trick’s been turned 13 times since the American League started.

Two men — Ty Cobb (1911, ’12 and ’22) and Rogers Hornsby (1922, ’24 and ’25) did it three times each. George Sisler did it twice (1920, ’22). The others, chronologically, are Nap Lajoie (1901), Joe Jackson (1911), Harry Heilmann (1923), Bill Terry (1930) and Williams.

Lajoie’s 1901 is somewhat suspect, as it was the AL’s first season as a major league and play probably wasn’t quite up to speed. Still, the man hit .426, so give him credit.

If there’s going to be another .400 hitter, what does this list tell us about that hitter?

He’s going to be left-handed.

Hornsby, Lajoie and Heilmann are the only right-handers to hit .400 in the modern era. Left-handed hitters have the platoon advantage more frequently then right-handers, and they start a couple of steps closer to first base, making it a bit easier to leg out hits.

Mauer, of course, is left-handed.

It’s going to come in an era of high averages, with multiple challengers to the mark.

Look at that list again. Cobb and Jackson each topped .400 in 1911, and Cobb did it again the next season — and Jackson hit “just” .395.

We see another spurt in the early 1920s — one in 1920, three guys in 1922 (Hornsby, Cobb and Sisler), one each in 1923, ’24 and ’25. League averages in that period were always above .280 and often above .290.