Miguel Cabrera and Martin Prado: batting leaders
Posted by Andy on July 16, 2010
Other than leading their respective leagues in batting average at the All-Star break, how many of you know what else Miguel Cabrera and Martin Prado have in common? Click through for the answer...
They are both Venezuelan. Marcos Grunfeld of BeisbolVenezolano.net pointed it out to me, and he guessed that this might have been the first such occasion in history.
I did not know the answer, by the way. Plus, Josh Hamilton has passed Cabrera for the AL lead and Andre Ethier has passed Prado for the NL lead.
July 16th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Vic Davalillo was the first Venezuelan to bat .300 in a season, 1965.
Eyeballing it, Magglio Ordonez and Andres Galarraga are the only to win batting titles.
July 16th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Not Related:
I was looking at box scores for tonights games and I noticed A. Dunn was having yet another good game, in a game pitched by S. Strasburg. So I went to the game logs and if I did it correctly, Dunn seems to be batting .517 in the 7 games Strasburg has pitched so far (with a current, 2 for 3 in tonights game). Also, 4 hrs and 9 rbis. Talk about watching out for a young pitcher!!
July 17th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Miguel Cabrera has an honest to God legitimate shot at a triple crown. I don't know why people aren't making a bigger deal out of this (I didn't realize it until I started flipping through stats on my own around the end of June...)
July 19th, 2010 at 10:43 am
"Miguel Cabrera has an honest to God legitimate shot at a triple crown"
He has a shot, and it would be exciting but:
1) There are 2 other guys within range of the RBI crown plus the risk of someone coming from the field. He has the best chance of any individual player, but I'd still guess Cabrera's odds of winning the RBI title are under 1/3 anyway.
2) Batting title: 1/5 chance at best? 2 guys ahead, 1 essentially tied, plus plenty of guys in the field not too far back.
3) Home run: easily a dozen guys with a shot.
A triple crown is possible, but it is not probable. I'd give a 1%-2% chance. Cabrera could end up not leading the league in any of the categories very easily.
July 19th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
This page shows you the triple crown leaders if you want to keep up:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/stats/index.jsp?tcid=nav_mlb_stats
I noticed on Miguel Cabrera's page that he is well on his way to a 7th straight season of 300+ total bases. I think this would put him in pretty elite company, especially at such a young age. I had a quick manual search and Willie Mays and Lou Gehrig managed 13 straight years. Stan Musial did 10. Not many others could beat 7.