Jeff McNeil Vying for Batting Title

It’s the biggest series of the year for the New York Mets, who are in the midst of a division race for the ages with the Atlanta Braves. However, with five games to go this season, one player on the team finds himself competing for a title of his own: a batting title.

Jeff McNeil enters play on Saturday with a .322 batting average, good for second in the National League behind only Freddie Freeman who is hitting .327 on the year. The 30-year-old utilityman is in his fifth major league season and has vied for the batting title in just about every one of those seasons, but this season has presented his best chance yet to capture glory.

McNeil finished his rookie season in 2018 with a .329 batting average on his way to a sixth-place finish in NL Rookie of the Year balloting. He only played 63 games, so he did not have enough at-bats to qualify for any year-end leaderboards, but he did finish with a better average than Christian Yelich, whose .326 average won him the batting title that year.

McNeil followed that up with a .318 average during an All-Star year in 2019, finishing shy of the .329 average that Yelich posted in winning a second-straight batting title. McNeil managed to hit .311 in 2020, but given the abbreviated nature of the season, that was not even a top-ten mark in the league. McNeil then had his worst season by far in 2021, hitting just .251 and seeing his offensive numbers decline across the board.

An All-Star again in 2022, McNeil has established himself again as one of the premier contact hitters in the league. In order to get over the line and win his first batting title, he’ll have to overcome a major obstacle in the ever-steady Freeman.

Freeman has also never won a batting title in his 13-year career, but he consistently finishes among the league leaders in batting average. He has posted a season-long average of at least .300 in seven different seasons and came the closest to winning a batting title in his MVP season in 2020, finishing second in the league with a .341 mark. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Freeman finds himself with a decent cushion in the batting average leaderboards, five points ahead of McNeil with five games to play.

It will take a great stretch of games from McNeil, a poor stretch of games from Freeman, or some combination of the two for McNeil to end up with the batting title. The Dodgers have already secured the best record in the National League and do not have much to play for, while the Mets have just about everything to play for, so maybe the intensity with which Freeman and McNeil approach their remaining games could play a factor.

Regardless of where McNeil ends up in the race for the batting title, he deserves to be commended for the fantastic season he has had both at the plate and with his glove. He has recorded multi-hit games in five of his last six played and hit .337 in the month of September, rounding out the year in excellent form. He’s also likely to be in consideration for the newly introduced Gold Glove award for utility players, a sign of just how much he has improved his defensive abilities during his time in the majors.

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