Arraez holds on to deny Ohtani the Triple Crown
NEW YORK — Luis Arráez held off Shohei Ohtani‘s bid to win the National League Triple Crown and is 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.
Arráez went 1-for-3 on Sunday and posted a .314 average for San Diego, the lowest for an NL batting champion since Tony Gwynn’s record-low .313 in 1988. After striking out and flying out in his first two at-bats, Arráez 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.
Arráez won the 2022 AL title at .316 for Minnesota and the 2023 NL title at .354 for Miami, which traded him to the Padres in May. He became the first NL player with 200 hits in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre in 2003 and ’04.
“This one was hard. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Arráez said, adding the pressure contributed to him striking out leading off — just his 29th strikeout this season and third since Aug. 10.
“I’m not perfect. I say to myself, you’ve got to do something,” Arráez recalled. “That’s never happened. But I’m not perfect.”
Dan Brouthers won five batting titles with four teams from 1882 to 1892.
Ohtani went 1-for-4 with an eighth-inning single and finished second in the National League at .310. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he led the NL with 54 homers and 130 RBIs. He also got his 59th stolen base Sunday to cap a remarkable campaign in which he became the first major leaguer with 50 homers and 50 steals in one season. The two-way star did not pitch this year after elbow surgery in September 2023.
“I didn’t think about the Triple Crown or how close I was to it today,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “Today, I was focused on having quality at-bats.”
Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals was the last NL 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 NL in batting at .304 and would have to go 9-for-9 in a makeup doubleheader Monday against the New York Mets to overtake Arráez.
Witt, who took his first day off all season Saturday, went 1-for-4 in the Royals’ finale 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 AL-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 steroid 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, this was only the fifth nonshortened 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, though Sale might pitch against the Mets on Monday. Hampered by injuries, the left-hander totaled 17 wins over the previous five seasons.
Sale is on track to lead the NL in ERA at 2.38, with Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler at 2.57. Skubal’s 2.39 mark led the AL.
Sale tops the NL with 235 strikeouts and Skubal led the AL with 228. Sale became the first pitcher to win an NL pitching Triple Crown since the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw in 2011.
Skubal became the first AL pitching Triple Crown winner since Cleveland’s Shane Bieber during the 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 nonshortened 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.
