Arraez takes NL batting title, denies Triple Crown for Ohtani

Luis Arraez held off Shohei Ohtani’s bid to win the National League Triple Crown and is set to become the first player since the 1800s to earn batting titles with three teams.

Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. won his first American League batting championship, finishing with a major league-best .332 average.

Arraez went 1 for 3 on Sunday and posted a .314 average for San Diego, the lowest 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 doubled in the sixth inning to reach 200 hits for the second straight season. He was pulled for a defensive replacement in the bottom half.

Arraez won the 2022 AL title at .316 for Minnesota and the 2023 NL title at .354 for Miami, which traded him to the Padres in May. He became the first NL player with 200 hits in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre in 2003 and ’04.

“This one was hard. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Arraez said, adding the pressure contributed to him striking out leading off — just his 29th strikeout this season and third since Aug. 10.

Ohtani went 1 for 4 with an eighth-inning single and finished second in the National League at .310. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he led the NL with 54 homers and 130 RBIs. He also got his 59th stolen base Sunday to cap a remarkable campaign in which he became the first major leaguer with 50 homers and 50 steals in one season. The two-way star did not pitch this year following 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 Triple Crown winner in 1937. The most recent player to achieve the feat in either league was Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera in 2012, which ended a 45-year drought.