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Arraez denies Ohtani NL Triple Crown and is poised to win the 3rd team batting title
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Arraez denies Ohtani NL Triple Crown and is poised to win the 3rd team batting title

NEW YORK (AP) — Luis Arraez held off Shohei Ohtani’s bid to win the National League Triple Crown and would become the first player since the 18th century to win three-team batting titles.

Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. won his first American League batting championship and finished with a major league-best .332 average.

Arraez 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. He doubled in the sixth inning and reached 200 hits for the second straight year. He was brought in as a defensive replacement in the bottom half.

Arraez won the 2022 AL title hitting .316 for Minnesota and the 2023 NL title hitting .354 for Miami, which traded him to the Padres in May. He became the first NL player to reach 200 goals in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre in 2003 and 2004.

Dan Brouthers won five four-team batting titles from 1882 to 1892.

Ohtani went 1 for 4 with a single in the eighth inning, second in the National League at .310. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he led the NL with 54 home runs and 130 RBIs. He also picked up his 59th stolen base on Sunday, capping a remarkable season in which he became the first major league player with 50 home runs and 50 steals in a season. The two-way star has not pitched this year after undergoing elbow surgery in September 2023.

Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals was the last winner of the NL Triple Crown in 1937. The most recent player to achieve this feat in both leagues was Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera in 2012, ending a 45-year losing streak.

Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna ranks third in the NL with a .304 batting average and would need to go 9-for-9 in a makeup doubleheader against the New York Mets on Monday to overtake Arraez.

Witt, who took his first day off all season on Saturday, went 1-for-4 in the Royals’ finale and finished hitting .332. Vladimir Guerrero of Toronto was second at .323 and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees was third at .322.

Judge had 58 home runs, leading the major leagues for the second time after setting an AL record of 62 in 2022. His 144 RBIs were the most in the majors since Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard had 146 in 2008.

Seven batters hit .300 or higher, which would be the fewest since a record low of six in 1968. In 1999, during the steroid era, there were 55.

Among pitchers, this was only the fifth non-shortened season without a 20-game winner, following 1871, 2006, 2009 and 2017.

Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale lead the major leagues with 18 wins each, although Sale may start Monday against the Mets. The injury-hit left-hander has amassed a total of 17 wins over the last five seasons.

Sale is on pace 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 leads the NL with 235 strikeouts and Skubal leads the AL with 228. Sale became the first pitcher to win an NL pitching Triple Crown since Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers 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.

There were a record-low 28 complete games, down from 35 last year and 29 in 2020. The 16 shutouts were fewer than 23 last season and, like 2022, were the fewest in a non-shortened season since 1874.

Washington stole 223 bases, the most since the 1993 Montreal Expos stole 228 bases.

The Chicago White Sox finished the game 41-121, breaking the post-1900 losing record set by the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120 in the franchise’s first season. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders hold the overall Major League standings at 20-134.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

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