Thanks to Brilliant Reader Brad for pointing this out: A lot of people are focusing on a couple of triple crown chases going on:
In the American League, Aaron Judge currently leads the league in batting average (.317), home runs (60) and RBIs (128). He has clearly locked up the home run title (second is Yordan Alvarez with 37) and his RBI lead of 13 over Jose Ramirez makes him pretty much uncatchable. The only leg of the Triple Crown still in play is batting average — Xander Bogaerts and Luis Arraez are both well within striking range. Of course, it should be added that everybody knows the flaws of batting average these days, and Judge’s .419 on-base percentage is way ahead of everyone else’s.
In the National League, Paul Goldschmidt was a triple crown threat for a long time, but now he looks unlikely to lead the NL in any of the three categories. He’s eight points behind Freddie Freeman in batting average, five homers behind Kyle Schwarber and nine RBIs behind Pete Alonso. Goldschmidt is still the favorite to win the MVP award, and he’s still a deserving choice, but it’s REALLY close between him and Nolan Arenado, who is such an incredible defensive force in addition to his great offense.
Anyway, that’s where attention has been focused.
And it has been focused away from Washington, where Patrick Corbin is having an, um, remarkable season.
Brilliant Reader Brad wants to make the argument that Corbin is having the anti-Triple Crown — or, as I am dubbing it, the Triple Dud season. And Brad has an argument. Corbin has the league’s worst ERA (6.08) by, like, a lot. He also has given up the most hits (200 in 149 innings), and he also leads the league in losses (18). It’s an impressively terrible season. We’ll get back to Corbin’s horror show in a moment.
But first, we must ask: Is Corbin’s season truly a Triple Dud? Are the three legs of the Triple Dud (1) Most hits allowed; (2) highest ERA and (3) most losses? We must make rulings like this here at JoeBlogs because, obviously, nobody else will.