Friday, June 16, 2006
Friday 9/24/54: Ted Williams takes lead over Kuenn in batting race
Swinging a hot bat, Ted Williams has taken over the league lead from Harvey Kuenn in the batting race here in the last weekend of the season in my '54 AL replay. Kuenn had led the league in hitting all season long until now. But today Harvey went 0-for-3 in Cleveland, his average dropping to a season low .342. (He hit .306 in real life in '54.) Meanwhile Ted raised his average to .344 with a 3 for 5 performance in a double header against the Senators in Boston. He also has drawn 132 walks. The Red Sox have two games left, those being on Saturday and Sunday against the Senators. Meanwhile Kuenn and the Tigers must face the tough Indians pitching staff in games Saturday and Sunday at Cleveland, so it won't be easy for Kuenn now to regain the lead over Williams. Interesting note: If Strat used the scoring rules in effect in 1954, Kuenn would still be the leader, because the rules required a player to have at least 400 official at bats to qualify for the batting championship. Ted Williams has only 366 at bats so far in the Strat replay; Kuenn has 669 at bats in the replay. But Williams heads the Strat-O-Matic leader board because Strat uses the modern-day standard requiring qualifiers to have at least 3.1 plate appearances per scheduled game. Williams with all his walks thus easily qualifies. The major leagues have used this criterion ever since the late 1950s. The old rule cost Ted the real life batting championship, because although he hit .345 in real life in '54 to Bobby Avila's .341, Avila was declared official batting champion because he had 555 at bats whereas Williams had only 395. Ted's propensity to draw walks cost him the batting championship. He had 136 free passes in real life in '54. |
