Sunday, October 01, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
You've got to be awfully consistent to win a batting title in the major leagues, so I suppose it was not surprising that Frederick Philip Sanchez, who has consistently denied any particular interest in winning one, spent a good portion of his fateful 2006 baseball weekend demonstrating that same consistent disinterest.
When the Pirates' clubhouse opened yesterday afternoon, he was watching Purdue wrestle with Notre Dame on the big screen that is the room's focal point, even though several smaller monitors including the one closest to his locker had the Phillies-Marlins game on. The Marlins' Miguel Cabrera, Sanchez's only remaining competition for the National League batting championship, was at that moment getting punched out on three pitches by former Pirates pitcher Rick White on a Florida afternoon that would see his average dip to .339721, which is .340 in topical conversation.
That's the number he'll have to build on today, the final day of the season, if he's to keep the .343-hitting Sanchez from winning the 25th batting championship in Pirates history, more than any other franchise.
"Freddy needs a hit or two over the next two games," manager Jim Tracy guessed before the game last night.
Freddy doesn't have 'em yet.
Sanchez's 0-4 last night kept Cabrera within striking distance.
Sanchez dressed quickly and bolted without comment after the game, but Tracy said he planned to write his name on the lineup card today. To sit Sanchez would be an accepted strategy on the final day of a batting title issue, but it can backfire as well, as when the Reds' Sparky Anderson sat Ken Griffey on the final day of the 1976 season, only to absorb the 4 for 4 turned in by Chicago's Bill Madlock, who won the batting title, .339 to Griffey's .336.
It might seem an exercise in statistical trivia, a small matter of numerological housekeeping for earnest readers of baseball's record book, but batting titles are often the launching points of distinguished careers. Sanchez had an undistinguished one to this point, but a rich sampling of the company he can join today indicates essentially that excellence will ensue -- Bonds, Gwynn, Madlock, Parker, Rose, Clemente, Aaron.
The past 50 National League batting titles have been won by only 27 people, 27 people whose typical career batting average wound up at .302. They've varied wildly in style, with more of them hitting only two homers in their batting title years (Dick Groat 1960, Richie Ashburn 1958, Matty Alou 1966) than belting 45 or more (Derek Lee 2005, and Barry Bonds 2004 and 2002). None of them could have been said to have had undistinguished career.
Even a player such as Ralph Garr (1974), a defensive liability on some terrible Atlanta Braves teams, wound up with a career batting average of .306 across 13 seasons. Terry Pendleton (1991), with the lowest career batting average (.270) of anyone who won the league title in the past 50 years, won an MVP award and three Gold Gloves in a career that spanned 15 seasons. Bill Buckner (1980), whose career was poisoned by a single World Series ground ball, was a .300 hitter or better five times.
"There's no such thing as a fluky batting champion," Tracy said. "There's nothing fluky about a player just continuing to go the plate and taking superior at-bats. Freddy Sanchez not only knows how to take a critical at-bat with a runner in scoring position, he's capable of making productive outs."
That is, of course, the raw fabric of the Sanchez story, that despite some rather persistent evidence that he always knew what he was doing at the plate, he never played his way into an everyday lineup until a year ago. Even this spring, the offseason acquisition of Joe Randa figured to put him back in the dugout and pretty much keep him there. It was Randa's foot injury in early May that brought him back.
"I think he would have wound up with something like the same number of at-bats anyway," Tracy said. "You could just tell very early by the kind of at-bats he was having in pinch-hit situations that there was no way you could not play this guy. If it hadn't been Randa, someone else would have gotten nicked up just enough for it to happen.
"He's not the first player in this game who's done that and then gone on to have a very special year."
No matter what happens at PNC Park and in Florida this afternoon, this has been our Sanchez Summer. The very sound of summer on these mostly quiet North Side nights has been the regular vocal eruptions sparked by another line drive off the bat of steady Freddy, who has very simply hit the ball hard in every direction in every month and in every situation.
The .392 he hit at PNC Park was the best batting average by any player at any Major League Baseball Park in America. No wonder it will end with thousands holding up their "Go Freddy Go" signs. That's what will have to sustain them through the long offseason that starts again within hours.
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