Batting average doesn't hold the same distinction it once did, with all sorts of different statistics available to measure offensive performance. But winning a batting title -- leading the league in batting average -- is still pretty cool, with Justin Morneau of the Rockies and Josh Harrison of the Pirates fighting for National League supremacy with one day remaining in the season.
Justin Morneau, Josh Harrison vying for NL batting title
Charles LeClaire-US PRESSWIRE
Morneau leads with a .319 batting average entering Sunday, 160 hits in 501 at-bats. Harrison is right behind him at .318, 164 hits in 516 at-bats. For the moment, we'll ignore Andrew McCutchen and his .314 average; he would need to go 5-for-5 to pass Morneau at .320.
Pittsburgh plays before Colorado on Sunday, so Morneau will know ahead of time what he needs to do, if anything, to win the batting title. He might sit out again, like he did on Saturday, though Rockies manager Walt Weiss defended the decision.
“I mean, people talk about backing into a batting title and all of that stuff. I don’t think there is such a thing. It takes six months to win it,” Weiss told Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. “How do you back into something that takes six months to win? But he’s had a great, great year. It would be the icing on the cake.”
Here is a look at what the batting averages for Morneau and Harrison would look like with various scenarios on Sunday.
| National League batting title scenarios | ||
|---|---|---|
| Scenario | Morneau | Harrison |
| no at-bats | .3194 | .3178 |
| 0-for-1 | .3187 | .3172 |
| 1-for-1 | .3207 | .3191 |
| 0-for-2 | .3181 | .3166 |
| 1-for-2 | .3201 | .3185 |
| 2-for-2 | .3221 | .3205 |
| 0-for-3 | .3175 | .3160 |
| 1-for-3 | .3194 | .3179 |
| 2-for-3 | .3214 | .3198 |
| 3-for-3 | .3234 | .3218 |
| 0-for-4 | .3168 | .3154 |
| 1-for-4 | .3188 | .3173 |
| 2-for-4 | .3208 | .3192 |
| 3-for-4 | .3228 | .3212 |
| 4-for-4 | .3248 | .3231 |
| 0-for-5 | .3162 | .3148 |
| 1-for-5 | .3182 | .3167 |
| 2-for-5 | .3202 | .3186 |
| 3-for-5 | .3221 | .3205 |
| 4-for-5 | .3241 | .3225 |
| 5-for-5 | .3261 | .3244 |
It appears Harrison needs to go at least 2-for-3 or 3-for-5 or better (even 3-for-6 would work, .3199) to pass Morneau and force him to play, so the odds are in favor of the Colorado first baseman.
Then again, the Pirates might still play a regular season game on Monday if they can force a division tiebreaker with the Cardinals, rendering this "final day" talk of Sunday moot.
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