The coveted Triple Crown is being sought by Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, and there is much debate about whether if he wins it, should he be crowned AL MVP, or should rookie phenom Mike Trout receive the award based on his stellar sabermetrics.
Who cares? You can read about that anywhere.
Baseball Jerks takes great pride in reporting on the bad side of baseball, the crap numbers, the poor totals, the jerk plays, the ejections and hissy-fits. Here’s something you can’t read about anywhere. As is said many times in many places throughout our site, there is more to baseball than winning and glory. In fact, even the best teams only win 60% of the time.
While Cabrera tries to become the first Triple Crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in ’67, there are several other dirtbags who are making an epic run at being the first Triple Crown Loser since Ramon Santiago‘s historic 2003 season when he had the worst numbers in the three major stat categories. Santiago’s final line in ’03 was .239, 29 RBI, 2 HR. Santiago, of course, had the required number of at-bats to qualify for the real Triple Crown, but ended the season with the worst numbers in each category, landing him the infamous trophy.
He never got a trophy for that feat, and neither will any of these players should they make a run during the last two weeks of the season and win. This year is extremely difficult to gauge because there are several players with awful stats in one column, and not-so-bad stats in another. But, for the sake of wondering, here’s the leaderboard for this year’s Triple Crown Loser race. And, for the sake of organization, we’ll organize by batting average.
|
Player |
Batting Average |
RBI |
HR |
| Carlos Pena |
 .198 |
57 |
 18 |
| Justin Smoak |
 .207 |
 45 |
 16 |
| Drew Stubbs |
 .217 |
 40 |
 14 |
| Jemile Weeks |
 .222 |
 20 |
 2 |
| Jeff Francoeur |
 .233 |
 41 |
 13 |
| Zack Cozart |
 .241 |
 32 |
 15 |
| Cameron Maybin |
 .247 |
 43 |
 7 |
| Jamey Carroll |
 .261 |
 38 |
 1 |
Our clear front-runner is Jemile Weeks, who was recently called back up by the Athletics to “help out” down the stretch. By far, Weeks has the best chance at winning the TCL. The only problem is, in order for weeks to win this year, Jamey Carroll will have to hit two more home runs, and Ben Revere, who is not on this list due to his decent batting average, must hit three home runs (he currently has none).
It’s unlikely that Revere will hit three home runs in the next 13 games, but for what it’s worth, Jemile Weeks has made one hell of a run in this year’s TCL race.
