Luis Arraez stopped Shohei Ohtani from winning the National League Triple Crown and was on track to become the first player since the 1800s to win batting titles with three different teams.
Kansas City Royals player Bobby Witt Jr. claimed his first American League batting championship, finishing with the highest average in the majors at .332.
On Sunday, Arraez went 1 for 3 and ended the season with a .314 average for San Diego, which is the lowest average 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, Arraez hit a double in the sixth inning, reaching 200 hits for the second straight season. He was taken out for a defensive replacement in the bottom of the inning.
Arraez won the AL title in 2022 with a .316 average while playing for Minnesota, and he earned the NL title in 2023 with a .354 average for Miami before being traded to the Padres in May.
He became the first NL player to get 200 hits in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre did it in 2003 and 2004.
“This one was hard. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Arraez said, noting that the pressure led to his strikeout in his first at-bat—just his 29th strikeout of the season and only the third since August 10.
Dan Brouthers won five batting titles with four different teams from 1882 to 1892.
Ohtani went 1 for 4 with a single in the eighth inning and finished second in the National League with a .310 average. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he led the NL with 54 home runs and 130 RBIs.
He also achieved his 59th stolen base on Sunday, wrapping up an impressive season in which he became the first major leaguer to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season. The two-way star did not pitch this year after having elbow surgery in September 2023.
“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 NL player to win the Triple Crown in 1937. The most recent player to achieve this in either league was Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera in 2012, ending a 45-year gap.
Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna is third in the NL batting race with a .304 average and would need to go 9 for 9 in a makeup doubleheader on Monday against the New York Mets to surpass Arraez.
Witt, who took his first day off all season on Saturday, went 1 for 4 in the Royals’ final game to finish at .332. Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero was second with a .323 average, and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees was 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 hit 58 home runs, leading the major leagues for the second time after setting an AL record with 62 in 2022. His 144 RBIs were the most in the majors since Ryan Howard had 146 in 2008.
Seven batters are hitting .300 or higher this season, which would be the fewest since a record low of six in 1968. In contrast, there were 55 players with a .300 average in 1999 during the Steroids Era.
Boston outfielder Jarren Duran led the majors with 48 doubles and tied Arizona’s Corbin Carroll for the most triples with 14, marking the first time a player shared leads in both categories since Lou Brock in 1968.
Among pitchers, this was only the fifth full season without a 20-game winner, following the years 1871, 2006, 2009, and 2017.
Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale lead the major leagues with 18 wins each, although Sale might pitch against the Mets on Monday. Struggling with injuries, the left-handed pitcher had only 17 wins in the past five seasons.
Sale is set to lead the NL in ERA with a score of 2.38, while Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler follows with a 2.57. Skubal’s ERA of 2.39 is the best in the AL.
Sale also leads the NL with 235 strikeouts, and Skubal tops 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 is the first AL pitching Triple Crown winner since Shane Bieber of Cleveland during the 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 this season, down from 35 last year and 29 in 2020. The 16 shutouts match last year’s total and are the fewest in a non-shortened season since 1874.
Washington stole 223 bases, the most since the 1993 Montreal Expos stole 228.
The Chicago White Sox finished with a record of 41-121, breaking the post-1900 record for losses that was previously held by the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120 in their first season. The overall major league record for losses belongs to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who finished at 20-134.
