The best story left on the September board has nothing to do with a pennant race: Yordan Alvarez is chasing a Triple Crown, and the reporting this morning frames his offensive season as one that stands alone even if the third leg never lands. That is the right way to put it. The Triple Crown is a trophy you win by accident, three separate races that happen to end in the same place, and almost nobody ever gets all three doors to line up.
I don't have his full ledger in front of me yet, so I'm not going to pretend to quote you an average or a home run count I can't verify. What I can tell you is what the chase is worth historically, and that part I know cold. Miguel Cabrera took the last one in 2012. Before Cabrera, you had to reach all the way back to Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, and the National League has not produced a Triple Crown winner since Joe Medwick in 1937. Eighty nine years. Entire franchises have been born, moved, and renamed in that gap.
Checked the almanac on the shape of it, too: the reason it is so rare is that the three categories pull against each other. Home runs and RBI want a violent swing. Batting average wants a patient one. The hitters who have done it were freaks of the sport, Williams and Hornsby twice apiece, Mantle, Frank Robinson, Gehrig. That is the room Alvarez is knocking on.
And he has always been this. The unanimous American League Rookie of the Year in 2019. A walk-off three-run homer against Seattle in Game 1 of the 2022 division series that ended an eighteen inning ballgame's worth of tension in one swing, and then the three-run shot in Game 6 of that World Series that effectively put a title in Houston's hands. He does not get small in big moments. That is the tell on him.
What comes next is simple and brutal. Two weeks of at-bats, and the batting average leg is the one that usually breaks first, because one cold weekend moves a batting average more than it moves anything else. The MVP conversation is likely his either way, which is the quiet part: the Triple Crown would be the garnish on a season that already argues for itself. I'll be watching the average column, every day, until the last out.