With 19 games left in the season, much of the usual sources of baseball intrigue have been eliminated right along with the White Sox, who were officially clipped from the proceedings on Saturday. "The string" has now been set, and the White Sox will be playing it out from now until Sept. 29.
Players can start putting the "I" in team, because it's just about entirely all stat-padding from here. The Sox have three individual pursuits I'm following in particular over the final three weeks, which loom larger than anything the Sox can do as a group.
Tim Anderson's batting title
Joe McEwing gave Tim Anderson the day off on Sunday before the team's off day on Monday, so Anderson should be fully charged for the challenge lying ahead. He leads D.J. LeMahieu .334 to .326, giving the proceedings a pennant-chase feel, and he'll need about 13 full games to reach the qualifying number of plate appearances.
The phrasing brings to mind a pennant race -- "he's up six points with 56 plate appearances to play" -- but I know of now way to create a magic number due to the different units of measurement.
Batting average has lost its prominence as other stats more comprehensively reflect a player's offensive value, but with Anderson, a glance at the batting average will more or less tell you how his season's going. He's allergic to walks and his power output has been consistent relative to the league, so the average is the only chapter that features significant changes when the year's Anderson Annual hits the newsstands.
(OK, strikeout rate is there, too, but we'll probably need to see one more year of it to better understand how it relates to his BABIP.)
Basically, a batting title would be a crowning achievement for Anderson, because it tells everybody he maxed out a skill set that confuses the hell out of everybody else. Freak flags fly forever.
Jose Abreu's RBI crown
With 112 RBIs to his name, Jose Abreu holds a five-run edge over Boston's Rafael Devers for American League RBI supremacy.
Like batting average, RBIs is an outdated measurement for a player's individual worth, but like batting average in Anderson's case, RBIs reflect Abreu's penchant for success with an approach not recommended for anybody else.
Ten of the top 12 AL RBI leaders play in lineups that are at least top-half offensive clubs. Abreu is one of the exceptions, as only Detroit has scored fewer runs than the Sox. The other is Jorge Soler, who has spent much of the year driving in himself for the league's third-lowest-scoring offense. He set Kansas City's single-season home run record with 41.
Abreu isn't challenging the league's home run crowd; he's tied for 12th with 31. He's going about RBIs the old-fashioned way, saving his hits for when runners are on base. There's an element of luck, but when he's right, Abreu's hitting approach makes him hard to defend when he's only concerned about getting the run home. His eyes often get bigger than his stomach when it comes to plate coverage, but the swing he deploys is that of a guy who will be happy to drive in one run even if three are available.
Abreu isn't greedy in that regard, but he looks like he's hoarding all the RBIs when you consider the context. Abreu is atop the team leaderboard with 112 RBIs, and No. 2 on the list is Yoan Moncada ... with 66. That's a significant gap, and the 1972 White Sox are the only team I can find challenging it in franchise history. Dick Allen had 113, and Carlos May was second with 68.
Daniel Palka's lowest average ever
Daniel Palka is 1-for-54 over 61 plate appearances, and if his season were to end today -- and it probably should -- he'd hold the record for the lowest non-zero average for a position player in MLB history. The only players with more hitless at-bats than Palka in a season are pitchers, and even then, there are only nine of them.
He long ago dusted Skeeter Shelton, who went 1-for-40 for the New York Giants back in 1915, and old friend Corky Miller, who went 1-for-39 as a third catcher for the Cincinnati Reds back in 2004. From here, the record is Doug Davis' 1-for-64 with the Brewers in 2004. At least Davis won 12 games and pitched 207 innings. Palka is a DH playing right field.
You'd think it'd take a special kind of luck to go 1-for-54, but Palka would be hitless on the season if it weren't for a broken-bat flare to left field. When you see him foul off four middle-middle pitches before grounding out to second on a pitch out of the zone, it basically eliminates all hope. Palka put the Sox in this position since late April, where playing him and sitting him are both kinda cruel. That said, the Sox put themselves in this position by bringing Palka back to the roster in September when nobody clamored for his return. Underneath Rick Renteria's cheerful exterior lies a sadist streak.
