With Shohei Ohtani 5 points behind Triple Crown in batting average, the Padres sit with league leader Luis Arraez

If Shohei Ohtani wants to win his first NL Triple Crown since 1937, it looks like he won’t get any help from the San Diego Padres. As expected.

Ohtani entered Saturday with two of the three stats required for the rare feat. His 54 home runs lead the NL, 15 ahead of runner-up Marcell Ozuna. His 130 RBI is 19 ahead of Willy Adames. That left Ohtani’s .309 batting average five points less than Padres infielder Luis Arraez’s .314.

That set up two games for Ohtani to hunt down Arraez, with both players attacking the offensive havens of Coors Field and Chase Field. However, when the Padres released their roster on Saturday, Arraez was nowhere to be found.

Some of the Padres’ starters still played, like Manny Machado and Jurickson Profar, but Arraez, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill all got the day off.

To be fair to the Padres, they have a reason to rest some starters. With a win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday, they secured the first wild card spot in the Netherlands, meaning they have nothing left to play for this weekend.

However, it will be interesting to see if Arraez plays again should Ohtani continue one of the hottest streaks in MLB history. Using a player to protect his batting average wouldn’t be a popular move, but Padres fans probably wouldn’t mind preventing a player from an opposing team from achieving even more glory.

If Arraez sits in the final two games, Ohtani could win the Triple Crown with the following batting lines: 6-for-8, 6-for-9, 6-for-10, 6-for-11. A 5-on-7 win would tie the game. The thing is, Ohtani seems quite capable of doing that right now.

Since his three-homer, two-steal game on September 19 that secured the first 50-50 season in MLB history, Ohtani has hit .706/.737/1.412 with six homers, six doubles, 14 runs, 20 RBI and eight stolen bases reached. That’s an OPS of 2.149.

Ohtani has a total of 48 bases in those eight games. If stolen bases were counted as total bases, he would tie Willie Mays for the most bases in such a span in MLB history.

However, the Triple Crown is just a stretch goal for Ohtani at this point. His season this year will go down as one of the best offensive seasons in MLB history, starting with his unprecedented combination of home runs and steals, which is currently 54-57.

The Dodgers clinched the NL West with a win over the Padres on Thursday and posted the best record in MLB on Saturday after the Philadelphia Phillies lost 6-3 to the Washington Nationals. Ohtani will begin his NLDS playoff career on October 5th.