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As I stood and applauded Jeff McNeil's batting title during the final game of the year, I couldn't shake the feeling it had come out of nowhere. Jayson Stark, with some help, confirms it was not just a feeling.
THE UNLIKELY BATTING CHAMP — Loyal reader Eric Orns has been helping me unearth epic Strange But Trueness for years. But he outdid himself this year, when he pointed out that the Mets' Jeff McNeil just won the National League batting title even though … he never led the league for even one day from April through September … and also … as late as Sept. 21, he was still trailing Freddie Freeman by 16 points (.330-.314).
So I asked my friends from STATS Perform if we'd ever seen a batting champ like this. And Eric will be delighted to know that question almost blew up their computers. Turns out that looking at every player's batting average on every day of every season is hard. Who knew! But anyway, after multitudinous numbers of hours of research from STATS, the answer is …
The April-September part: Just FYI, I'm throwing out those tricky situations where a player led the league but then dropped out when he no longer had enough playing time to qualify. (Buster Posey/Melky Cabrera in 2012 comes to mind.) So if we go with that, it makes McNeil the first batting champ not to lead his league at any point in April through September since … Harry Heilmann in 1925! (Heilmann didn't pass Tris Speaker until the last day of the season, Oct. 4.)
The 16-point comeback part: Hoo boy, what a question! We'll spare you how complicated that one was to figure out and just let you know that … only one batting champ in the last 111 years ever came from farther back than McNeil's 16-point hole after games of Sept. 21. In 1911, Honus Wagner stormed from 17 points behind to beat out Chief Meyers, for his seventh (and final) batting title. |
https://theathletic.com/4035149/2022/12/29/mlb-2022-weird-injuries-wild-postseason/
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