J.D. Martinez went 0 for 5 on Saturday, hurting his chances for achieving a triple crown season. I have taken some criticism for the way I calculate the probability of his winning the triple crown, since I don’t account for dependencies of the probabilities. I personally believe that there are enough estimates in the calculation that it should only be treated as a conservative approximation. I did, however, rewrite the RBI simulator to include home runs, which will take away one dependency. One other difference is when I’m using a model to predict the probability of winning the home run race, I’m using career rates for Martinez and Khris Davis. In the simulator, I’m just using 2018 data.

The conservative estimate gives Martinez a probability of .195 of winning the batting title, a probability of .218 of at least tying for the HR title (Davis now leads by two), and a .947 probability of at least tying for the RBI title. That works out to a probability of 0.04 of winning the triple crown.

The simulation of at least tying for the HR and RBI titles is .283. Multiply that by the above probability of winning the batting title, and the result is 0.055. So the chance of Martinez gaining a triple crown is now somewhere between four and six percent.