With the start of the Atlanta Braves season up in the air, it’s a great time to look at statistics from the past. Today we dive into what it may take to win the batting title in a shortened season.
Many Atlanta Braves fans are currently couped up in hiding from the novel coronavirus, some of us have a lot of free time on our hands. Many people have filled the baseball-sized hole in their hearts with baseball video games or reading about baseball.
Personally, I’ve revamped the Braves minor league system on MLB 2K12 to pack it with stars such as Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, and Mike Myers. We are so good it’s not funny.
The CDC recommended postponing or canceling gatherings of 50 or more people for the next eight weeks. Major League Baseball has stated they will comply with the CDC’s recommendations.
There are all sorts of possibilities in this scenario. Should we only play half a season, a hot streak could propel an adept hitter to a batting title deserving of an asterisk.
Before we consider a few players that could challenge the .400 mark in a shortened season, we take a look at some incredible streaks over the past 20 seasons.
In 2004, Ivan Rodriguez was spectacular. In the first month of the season, he hit .356. By the end of June, he was sitting on a .381 average. He finished out the remaining three months of the season hitting .289 so the law of large numbers kicked in and he didn’t threaten .400.
In 2006, Atlanta Braves legend Chipper Jones finished with a stellar .324 average but had a streak for the ages between June 23 and Aug 14 he slashed .480/.544/.939 and hit .367 between May 17-August 14.
I’m sure we all remember Chipper’s great 2008 season in which he ended April with a .410 average. By the end of May, he had raised his average three points. Chipper held on to the .400 average until the 67th game of the season when he went 0-4 and dropped his average to a sad .394. Chip finished the season with a .364 average, but over the first half of the season, he had us all believing that he could come away with the first .400 season since the great Ted Williams in 1941.
These aren’t isolated incidents either, in the past 20 seasons there have been 243 different instances in which a player hit at least .400 in a month while logging at least 50 plate appearances.
So, with the possibility of a shortened season on the horizon for 2020, how do we determine which Braves are the most likely to threaten for .400 even if it won’t mean the same thing as doing it over a full season.