Your National League batting champion for 2016? Say hello to Colorado Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu. We’ll forgive you if you don’t know the name or haven’t seen the guy, because he’s been in hiding for most of the final week of the season.
The Rockies apparently decided to protect their one reason to pay attention to the team in the final week of the 2016 campaign by sitting him and protecting him from losing the batting crown.
LeMahieu managed to sit in four of the final five games, protecting his precious .348 batting average. Even still, he managed to finish just one point ahead of Washington Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy.
Clearly the Rockies were more interested in ensuring LeMahieu didn’t drop points, knowing that Murphy was battling an injury.
LeMahieu said all of the right things about wanting to play, but it clearly didn’t change the mind of manager Walt Weiss, who sat him for the majority of the final week to protect the batting title.
This is a team that finished the season 75-87 and were well out of the race for the post-season. What else did the Rockies have to look forward to down the stretch than one of its players capturing a big moment like winning a batting title? Even as it turns out he rode the pine for the majority of the stretch run.
Rockies manager Walt Weiss had this to say about the decisions made in the race for the NL batting title via the Denver Post:
“It was a weird situation with the batting title thing. It was unique in that the other guy he was battling with wasn’t playing. He was hurt. I didn’t want DJ to lose the batting title that way. So I did what I could to kind of construct that as much as possible. If they’re both playing and going at it, that’s one thing. But I didn’t want him to lose it that way.”
Lose it what way? By playing and maybe faltering because he couldn’t keep his average up? It sure seemed that was the reasoning following an 0-2 night at the plate in his lone appearance in the final week, the series opener on Friday night against the Milwaukee Brewers.
That certainly seems like a team worried more about numbers than about going out and playing baseball regardless of what the numbers say.
While sitting LeMahieu succeeded, it’s not exactly the Ted Williams approach. You know, the greatest hitter of all-time and the last hitter to bat .400 or better for an entire season.
With his .400 average hanging in the balance, did Williams sit down and end his season? No.
Instead, he went to bat in both games of a final day doubleheader with a .400 batting average on the line back in 1941. One or two extra outs and Williams could’ve easily given up the historic number that people still talk about today, but he went out and played, batting 6-8 in the two games.
Even Jose Reyes, who led the 2011 NL batting title race heading in to the final day didn’t initially sit down. He walked up to the plate in the first inning, dropped down a bunt-single and then was taken out of the game to protect his batting average on the final day of the season.
Clearly there is more than one way to approach these historic situations, but sitting four of five of the final games? That seems a bit of overkill.
