While there's been much discussion of an
American League Triple Crown for Red Sox slugger
J.D. Martinez, little attention has been paid to a potentially
bigger achievement. Martinez has a legitimate shot at
the so-called "global" Triple Crown, i.e., leading
all of Major League Baseball in batting average, home runs and RBIs. This has not been done since
Mickey Mantle pulled-off the feat in 1956 (.353, 52 homers, 130 RBIs). In fact, only four other players
besides Mantle have done it—
Ted Williams (1942),
Lou Gehrig (1934),
Rogers Hornsby (1925), and
Ty Cobb (1909). Not bad company. To become the 6th player all-time to get a
Global Triple Crown, Martinez still has a lot of work to do. As of today, J.D. trails teammate
Mookie Betts on BA by a
ridiculous margin (.33547 vs. .33531). He trails Oakland's
Khris Davis in the home run category by just one (40 vs. 39), and is running away with the RBI race (115 to Davis' 106). Clearly, the global thing is reachable—just one more thing to monitor in these final three weeks of a momentous season.
