Major League Baseball will not interfere with San Francisco Giants slugger Melky Cabrera and his high possibility of winning the NL Batting Title as he serves his 50-game suspension for testing positive for PEDs.
Cabrera owns a .346 batting average, seven points higher than Pittsburgh's Andrew McCutchen on 501 plate appearances on the year. That's one fewer than the required amount, but under section 10.22(a) of the Official Baseball Rules, he would be eligible to win the batting title with an extra at-bat added to his average as long as it remained higher than any other qualified batter.
Giants catcher Buster Posey is currently third in the race with a .333 average.
Commisioner Bud Selig was rather nonchalant about it, considering that MLB has no say in the matter, as it is based upon stats instead of votes:
"We'll see how it all plays out," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Wednesday after taping an episode of "CenterStage" for the YES Network. "We generally don't interfere in that process. We'll take a look at it at the end of the year."
One thing MLB could during the offseason is change the requirements so something like this doesn't happen again. The league won't be able to change the outcome this year, at least not at this point in the season, but would likely want to avoid this fiasco in the future.
Cabrera finished the regular season with a .390 OBP along with 11 home runs and 60 RBIs. He was also the All-Star Game MVP.
For more on Cabrera and the rest of the San Francisco Giants, make sure that you check out McCovey Chronicles.
