MLB's Top 10 Candidates to Win the AL and NL Batting Titles in 2023
At an MLB-wide level, batting average just keeps getting worse with each passing year. It was .269 in 2006, but has gradually declined since then down to last year's lowly mark of .243—the worst since the mound was lowered after players hit .237 in 1968.
But guess what?
Both the American League and National League still award a batting crown at the end of each season, and we're going to do our darnedest to project that champion of each league.
It will be interesting to see how the pitch clock and banning the shift impact these races. Dead pull hitters should be able to find more holes in the defense. But, like, within reason. We're not expecting Mitch Garver, Byron Buxton or Joey Gallo to suddenly lead the league in hitting.
Aaron Judge, though? He should benefit, possibly to a league-leading degree.
Batting title candidates are presented in ascending order of likelihood within each league, starting with the American League.
AL Honorable Mentions: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Toronto), Bo Bichette (Toronto), Alejandro Kirk (Toronto), Alex Verdugo (Boston), Rafael Devers (Boston), Wander Franco (Tampa Bay), Julio Rodríguez (Seattle).
NL Honorable Mentions: Paul Goldschmidt (St. Louis), Nolan Arenado (St. Louis), Michael Harris ll (Atlanta), Manny Machado (San Diego).
AL No. 5: Masataka Yoshida, Boston Red Sox
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .336 / .326 (in Nippon Professional Baseball)
It was 22 years ago that Ichiro Suzuki came over from Japan—where he was a .353 career hitter—and immediately won a batting title as a "rookie" in the Majors, batting .350 in 2001.
Who's to say Masataka Yoshida couldn't do the same thing?
To be clear, we're talking about different hitters. Ichiro mastered the art of the opposite field slap single, leveraging his elite speed to get a lot of hits. Yoshida isn't anywhere near as fast (21 career stolen bases) and is more of a Jose Altuve / Dustin Pedroia pint-sized slugger, capable of generating a ridiculous amount of torque in his swing despite standing just 5'8".
All the same, Yoshida hit at least .321 in each of the past five seasons, maxing out at .351 in 2020. And he rarely strikes out, whiffing in less than 10 percent of plate appearances in his career.
Granted, there may be an adjustment period on the strikeout front. In 2022, the average K/9 rate in NPB was 7.5, compared to 8.5 in MLB. Flamethrowers and general strikeout artists aren't quite as prevalent in Japan as they are in America.
Still, Boston's new outfielder figures to be one of the best contact hitters in his MLB debut season. It's tempting to put him even higher than this, because a .300 or better batting average is very much in play.
AL No. 4: Aaron Judge, New York Yankees
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .311 / .284
Most of the focus on Aaron Judge centers on the slugging percentage and the balls that he can smash into orbit, but last year's home run king is also just as good at simply getting on base.
Judge almost won the AL batting crown last season, finishing just five points behind Luis Arraez. And Judge did lead the majors in on-base percentage by a considerable margin. (Judge finished at .425; Freddie Freeman was next-best at .407.)
The .311 batting average was the best of his career, but not to some outlandish, unrepeatable degree. He hit .287 in 2021 and .284 in 2017, and has gone through plenty of several-week-long hot streaks in his career during which opposing pitchers just feel helpless in their quest to retire this hitter.
Banning the shift should be a big help for Judge, too. Per Baseball Savant, only about 10 percent of Judge's hits in 2022 went to the first base side of where the 2B and RF typically align, and he faced a shift on 49.2 percent of his 677 plate appearances. That should mean more seeing-eye singles to the shortstop side of the field and might result in a batting crown.
AL No. 3: Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .298 / .298
Say this much for Steven Kwan: He's going to put the ball in play.
Among qualified hitters, only Luis Arraez (7.1 percent) had a lower strikeout rate than the 9.4 percent that Kwan posted during his rookie campaign. Kwan made contact on 91.9 percent of his swings, which was also second only to Arraez (94.1 percent) among qualified hitters.
And Kwan has plus speed. It took a while for him to get comfortable on the basepaths, attempting just two stolen bases (one successful) in Cleveland's first 44 games, but he finished the season with 19 steals.
Kwan is also the ultimate spray hitter. He did pull all of his home runs, but per FanGraphs, the pull/opposite/center breakdown of his batted balls was 30.8/33.8/35.4 percent. Not quite a 33.3 x3 split, but it might as well be.
Combine his speed with that ability to utilize the entire field and Kwan really should have one of the best BABIPs in the majors. And in that department, he was better than the league average at .323, but nowhere near first place, tied for 29th among the 130 qualified hitters.
If that BABIP creeps up toward .350 while the strikeout rate remains down at or below 10 percent, that's the recipe for hitting .320 and winning a batting title.
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AL No. 2: Yordan Alvarez, Houston Astros
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .306 / .296
Since his arrival in 2019, Yordan Alvarez has been one of the best sluggers in baseball. Along with Mike Trout, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Aaron Judge, he is one of just four qualified hitters slugging at least .560 over the past four seasons. (Alvarez's mark is .590.) And among that elite quartet, he has both the highest batting average and the lowest strikeout rate.
As with Judge, we tend to focus on Alvarez's propensity for hitting moonshots, and the fact that he can and does contend for batting titles kind of flies below the radar.
In 25 games played from May 29-June 28, Alvarez triple-slashed .443/.519/.886. Eleven of his 39 hits went for home runs, but 39 hits in the span of a month were incredible stuff. During that run, he quickly became a legitimate third wheel in what had been a two-horse AL MVP race between Judge and Shohei Ohtani.
That .306 batting average in 2022 wasn't some new development, either. Alvarez actually hit .313 as a rookie and would have finished in sixth place in that AL batting race if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. And he did finish fourth this past season.
Per Baseball Savant, Alvarez faced a shift on 88 percent of plate appearances over the past three seasons. He did a reasonably fine job of using the whole field, but this king of barreling up hard-hit balls should benefit from facing a more conventional defensive alignment in 2023. (Take it to the bank that the second baseman will still be more of a "shallow right fielder," though, since Alvarez isn't fleet of foot and the extra time to react to his lasers will be critical).
AL No. 1: Tim Anderson, Chicago White Sox
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .301 / .288
That career batting average does not do justice to how good Tim Anderson has been over the past four years. He was a modest .258 hitter for his first three seasons in the big leagues, but he is sitting at .318 since the beginning of 2019, which is the best mark in the Majors during that time.
Anderson won the AL batting title in 2019 and finished second to DJ LeMahieu in his quest to repeat in 2020. (It was a distant second, as LeMahieu hit .364 during that truncated campaign, but second nonetheless.)
Over the past two seasons, it has really just been a question of whether or not Anderson can stay healthy enough to vie for a batting title. He missed nearly a quarter of the 2021 campaign with leg/hamstring injuries and more than half of last season between a groin strain and a torn ligament in his finger.
At the time of the groin injury in late May, Anderson was hitting .356 for the year and was at an even .400 over the course of his last 19 games. It looked like he was going to run away with the second batting crown of his career, but he missed three weeks and wasn't quite the same when he did return for 39 more games.
It's a new year, though. We've got to put our faith in the player who has been the most reliable hitter over the past four years, and a player who is sort of in a contract year, with the White Sox holding a $14 million club option for 2024. Hard to imagine he won't get that money if and when he flirts with this title.
NL No. 5: Juan Soto, San Diego Padres
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .242 / .287
To put it lightly, 2022 was not a banner year for Juan Soto. He hit .246 while dealing with constant trade rumors with Washington, and then was even worse (.236) after relocating to San Diego.
But Childish Bambino entered 2022 as a career .301 hitter, and you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who isn't expecting a big bounce-back year in 2023.
Because even though he struggled to get hits, he remains one of the best in the business at seeing the ball out of the pitcher's hand. He still led the majors in walks drawn for a second consecutive year—145 in 2021; 135 in 2022—and finished third in the NL with a .401 on-base percentage.
He simply had horrendous BABIP luck, posting a .249 in that category after entering the year at .330 for his career.
But he's going to get pitches to hit like never before.
The walks made sense in Washington from 2020-22, with little to no lineup protection around Soto. But once Fernando Tatis Jr. is eligible to return in late April, the Padres will probably go with a top four of Tatis, Soto, Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts.
Best of luck to opposing pitchers trying to navigate that field of landmines.
NL No. 4: Luis Arraez, Miami Marlins
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .316 / .314
In MLB history, only two players have won both an AL and NL batting title, and both have asterisks attached.
Ed Delahanty was the NL champ in 1899 and the AL champ in 1902, but there's some dispute about that 1902 crown. And then there's DJ LeMahieu, who was the NL batting champ in 2016 and the AL champ during the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign.
But after winning the AL crown with the Twins in 2022, perhaps Luis Arraez can join that exclusive club via another crown with the Marlins in 2023.
Last year certainly wasn't out of the ordinary for Arraez. He hit .334 as a rookie in 2019 and .321 in 2020, but barely played in half of either season—92 games in the former; 32 in the latter. Last year, he was an everyday staple for the Twins, and will forever be remembered as the reason Aaron Judge fell short of a triple crown.
Of course, Arraez and Judge really could not be different hitters. Heck, Arraez might not hit 62 home runs in his entire MLB career, let alone in a single season. The new Marlin is a singles hitter to his core, slapping 133 one-baggers last year, and using the entire field to do so.
He's one of the best in the business at getting to first base, and there's little reason to believe the change in home stadium will impact that.
NL No. 3: Trea Turner, Philadelphia Phillies
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .298 / .302
If Trea Turner's performance in the World Baseball Classic—9-for-23 with five home runs—is any indication of what's to come in Philadelphia, then we are egregiously underselling his potential at No. 3 on this list.
Turner led the majors with a .328 batting average in 2021, one year removed from a .335 average during the truncated 2020 campaign. And though he started a bit slow and then sputtered to the finish line last season, there was a 100-game stretch from mid-May through late-August in which he batted .327 and was on pace for 219 hits.
Home or away. Facing a lefty or a righty. April, June or September. It doesn't make a difference. Turner was a bit below-average against both sliders and cutters last season, though he has been an above-average hitter against each of the six major pitch types over the course of his career.
Turner is about as consistent as it gets, and is easily one of the best pure hitters in the game today.
We marvel at his slides on the basepaths, but everything that Turner does is smoother than silk, including his approach at the plate. As much as we've all questioned how effective he'll be at the end of his 11-year contract with the Phillies, it's conceivable he'll still be darn good a decade from now.
NL No. 2: Jeff McNeil, New York Mets
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .326 / .307
We can't possibly not include the reigning NL batting champ, right?
It'd be one thing if Jeff McNeil's 2022 campaign came out of nowhere, but that's clearly not the case.
Prior to a disappointing 2021 season with a .251 average, McNeil hit .311 in 2020, .318 in 2019 and .329 as a rookie in 2018. Had he made enough plate appearances to qualify—he was nowhere close, playing in just 63 games, but still—he would have also won the batting title in 2018.
Simply put, few hitters have been more reliable over the past half-decade. McNeil doesn't strike out much (11.9 percent career K rate) and does a fantastic job of hitting 'em where they ain't, boasting a BABIP north of .330 in four of the past five seasons.
Like so many others on this list, McNeil uses the entire field indiscriminately, and doesn't much care what type of pitch he's facing. Cutters are the only pitch against which he wasn't above-average last year. He was also one of five qualified hitters to go back up the middle on at least 40 percent of balls put in play.
It has really just been a question of where the Mets can get his bat into the field. The utility man made at least 16 starts at each of second base, third base, left field and right field during his All-Star season in 2019, and still had double-digit appearances at second, left and right this past season.
But regardless of the number next to his name in the scorebook, he's going to be a staple in the starting lineup for the foreseeable future after inking a four-year, $50 million deal in January.
NL No. 1: Freddie Freeman, Los Angeles Dodgers
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Batting Average (2022 / Career): .325 / .298
After 12 seasons in Atlanta, Freddie Freeman had no trouble adjusting to his new home with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Though he has never won a batting title, MLB should eventually give him one as a lifetime achievement award. Among qualified hitters, Freeman has the best batting average in the majors since the beginning of 2020 (.317), and he is tied with Jose Altuve for the best batting average among the 133 players with at least 2,500 plate appearances dating back to 2016.
Two years removed from being the first runner-up to Juan Soto for the NL batting crown, Freeman (.325) just barely finished behind NL batting champ Jeff McNeil (.326) in 2022.
Freeman's high point in 2022 was the week leading up to the All-Star break, during which time he went 16-for-24 (.667) with eight extra-base hits.
But even if you wanted to remove that surge, he still hit .311 and only once in 159 games played had a streak of more than two consecutive hitless games. (Sadly for him, though, that three-game 0-for streak came in October while McNeil got hits in six of his final 13 at-bats to leapfrog Freeman for the title.)
Perhaps this is the year he finally gets the elusive crown, though. At any rate, there's certainly no pitching around Freeman in that loaded Dodgers lineup.
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