Joe Mauer went 3 for 5 Monday night, raising his batting average to .380. He now projects out to 522 at bats for the season, giving him 164 remaining at bats. To hit .400 in 522 at bats, he’ll need 209 hits (.4004), or another 73 hits. So Joe needs to hit .445 the rest of the way. With 44 games remaining, that’s nearly 17 hits every ten games. It’s a tall order. The odds of him reaching .400 are between about 1 in 2250 to 1 in 2550, long but not impossible.
Update: Mauer is hitting .517 during his 14 game hit streak.
The last thing I’d want to do is take any attention away from my favorite active player, but what do you suppose the odds are of Pujols passing H-Ram for the NL batting title (and thus having a shot at the triple crown)? Obviously there are multiple moving parts there (Mauer’s only competing against a number, not another player), so I don’t suppose you can just come up with this kind of “1 in X” analysis.
Anyway, I tried to figure out in my blog today roughly what would need to happen to bring that about, but as an English major and a lawyer, I have two significant handicaps in this arena, and I may well have totally screwed up the math I DID attempt. 🙂
@Bill: I can work something up this afternoon.