Yelich’s Triple Crown bid given another day
NEW YORK — In a season of haves and have nots, Christian Yelich’s quest to become the National League’s first Triple Crown winner since 1937 will extend to a 163rd game Monday.
Yelich is assured the Brewers’ first batting title with a .323 average. He has 36 home runs going into Monday’s NL Central tiebreaker game at the Chicago Cubs, one behind Nolan Arenado’s league-leading total for Colorado, and Yelich’s 109 RBIS are second to the Cubs’ Javier Baez, who leads with 111.
Arenado and the Rockies also have one more game, a Monday NL West tiebreaker at the Los Angeles Dodgers. Yelich, 26, was acquired from payroll-slashing Miami in January.
There has not been a Triple Crown winner in the NL since Joe Medwick for the St. Louis Cardinals. Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera in 2012 won the American League’s first Triple Crown since Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
Boston’s Mookie Betts won this year’s AL batting title at .346 and with 32 homers and 30 stolen bases became the first player to lead either league in batting as part of a 30-30 season.
Boston (108), Houston (103) and the New York Yankees (100) became the first trio of 100-game winners in the same league and the seventh ever across the majors.
The Chicago White Sox lost 100 games for the first time since 1970. That gave the majors three 100-loss teams for the second time since 1985 and the first since a record four in 2002.
There also were eight 95-loss teams for the first time in major league history when Cincinnati and Texas reached that figure on the final day. San Diego lost 96, and Detroit and Miami 98 each.
Oakland’s Khris Davis topped the majors with 48 homers; Boston’s J.D. Martinez led the AL 130 RBIS.
The Mets’ Jacob degrom won the NL ERA title at 1.70, the second-lowest in the majors since Dwight Gooden’s 1.53 in 1985, behind only Zack Greinke’s 1.66 three years ago. Tampa Bay’s Blake Snell led the AL at 1.89, the lowest in that league since Pedro Martinez’s 1.74 in 2000.
Snell (21-5) led the majors in wins, and Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and Miles Mikolas shared the NL lead with 18.
The Yankees hit 267 home runs, breaking the previous mark of 264 by the 1997 Seattle Mariners. New York became the first team with 12 players reaching double-digits in home runs and the first team with 20 or more from every spot in batting order.