Luis Arraez on Sunday held off Shohei Ohtani’s bid to win the National League Triple Crown and was set to become the first player since the 1800s to earn batting titles with three teams.
Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr won his first American League batting championship, finishing with a major league-best .332 average.
Arraez went one for three and posted a .314 average for San Diego, the lowest for an National League batting champion since Tony Gwynn’s record-low .313 in 1988. After striking out and flying out in his first two at-bats, Arraez doubled in the sixth inning to reach 200 hits for the second straight season. He was pulled for a defensive replacement in the bottom half of the Padres 11-2 loss to the Diamondbacks.
Photo: Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images / USA Today
Arraez won the 2022 American League title at .316 for Minnesota and last year’s National League title at .354 for Miami, who traded him to the Padres in May. He became the first National League player with 200 hits in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre in 2003 and 2004.
“This one was hard. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Arraez said, adding the pressure contributed to him striking out leading off — just his 29th strikeout this season and his third since Aug. 10.
“I’m not perfect. I say to myself, you’ve got to do something,” Arraez said. “That’s never happened, but I’m not perfect.”
Photo: AFP
Dan Brouthers won five batting titles with four teams from 1882 to 1892.
Ohtani went one for four with an eighth-inning single in the Dodgers 2-1 victory over the Rockies and finished second in the National League at .310.
In his first season with the Dodgers, he led the National League with 54 homers and 130 RBIs. He also got his 59th stolen base on Sunday to cap a remarkable campaign in which he became the first major league player with 50 homers and 50 steals in one season. The two-way star did not pitch this year following elbow surgery in September last year.
“I didn’t think about the Triple Crown or how close I was to it today,” Ohtani said through a translator. “Today, I was focused on having quality at-bats.”
Joe Medwick of the St Louis Cardinals was the last National League Triple Crown winner in 1937. The most recent player to achieve the feat in either league was Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera in 2012, which ended a 45-year drought.
Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna sits third in the National League in batting at .304 and would have to go nine for nine in a makeup doubleheader against the New York Mets this morning Taiwan time to overtake Arraez.
Witt, who took his first day off all season on Saturday, went one for four in the Royals’ finale, a 4-2 victory over the Braves, to finish at .332. Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero was second at .323 and the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge third at .322.
“It’s special and it’s an honor,” Witt said. “It’s something that wasn’t even a goal. You never think as a kid it would ever happen and now it happened.”
Judge had 58 homers to lead the major leagues for the second time after hitting an American League-record 62 in 2022. His 144 RBIs were the most in the majors since Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard had 146 in 2008.
Seven batters are hitting .300 or higher, which would be the fewest since a record low six in 1968. There were 55 in 1999 during the Steroids Era.
Boston outfielder Jarren Duran led the major leagues with 48 doubles and tied Arizona’s Corbin Carroll for the lead with 14 triples, the first time a player had a share in both categories since Lou Brock in 1968.
Among pitchers, it was just the fifth non-shortened season without a 20-game winner after 1871, 2006, 2009 and 2017.
Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale top the major leagues with 18 wins each, although Sale might pitch against the Mets this morning. Hampered by injuries, the left-hander totaled 17 wins over the previous five seasons.
Sale is on track to lead the National League in ERA at 2.38, with Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler at 2.57. Skubal’s 2.39 mark led the American League.
Sale tops the National League with 235 strikeouts and Skubal led the Amercian League with 228. Sale became the first pitcher to win an National League pitching Triple Crown since Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2011.
Skubal became the first American League pitching Triple Crown winner since Cleveland’s Shane Bieber during the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and the first in a full season since Justin Verlander in 2011.
“When you see special seasons like this, the hardest thing to do for all of us is to put it in proper context while you’re watching it,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’re going to look at Tarik’s year much differently five years from now, 10 years from now.”
There have been a record-low 28 complete games, down from 35 last year and 29 in 2020. The 16 shutouts were down from 23 last season and matched 2022 as the fewest in a non-shortened season since 1874.
Washington stole 223 bases, the most since the 1993 Montreal Expos swiped 228.
The Chicago White Sox finished 41-121, breaking the post-1900 record for losses that had been held by the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120 during the franchise’s first season. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders hold the overall major league mark at 20-134.
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