The 2012 NL Batting Champion?

An interesting development is happening in baseball this season with regard to the National League batting champion.

All-Star Melky Cabrera of the San Francisco Giants was suspended for 50 games on August 15, 2012 for use of performance enhancing drugs. He was having the best season of his career, hitting .346 with 159 hits, 11 home runs, and 69 RBIs. And this is where things gets interesting.

Melky had had 501 plate appearances. He was in a tight race with Pittsburgh Pirate Andrew McCutchen for the National League batting title, with McCutchen leading. In order to qualify for the batting title, you need to have at least 502 plate appearances, so Melky fell one short, right? Wrong. The rules say you that a non-qualifying player will have as many hitless at-bats added to his total as it takes to get him to the qualifying number. So then Melky with have an 0-for-1 at bat added his number and this brings his batting average that will appear on the back of next year's baseball card too.... .346. No change at all.

Earlier this week, McCutchen's batting average fell below Melky's, and is currently at .344. Unless McCutchen raises it above .346 before the season is over, Melky will be this years batting champion, without having played the last 45 games of the season.

I can't wait to see what happens then!