Curious qualifications in batting race

Fewer than 20 games to go in the 2014 season and only a few playoff spots and seeds remain to be determined but a few individual races are still more or less up for grabs.

Heading into Sunday's doubleheader action, Hanley Ramirez currently leads the league in batting at .346, a healthy lead over teammate Matt Carpenter (.335). Outside of Vancouver's Michael Brantley, third in the batting race hitting .330, the rest of the top five consists of San Francisco Experience batters: Brandon Belt (.326) and Joe Mauer (.325).

Ramirez is putting together a serious candidacy for the Kevin Mitchell Award as the league's most valuable batter. In addition to leading the batting race, he also enjoys a commanding lead in the RBI race with 158 to 126 for Livingston's Paul Goldschmidt. Though he's in the top 10 in home runs with 34, Ramirez has a steep hill to climb to catch Goldschmidt, who has a league-leading 45 homers, to truly threaten for the league's first-ever Triple Crown.

Sardine City rookie Christian Yelich has a few points on Ramirez and could very well be a stronger challenger than other Experience batters for the batting crown -- but he lacks enough plate appearances to qualify.

The 2014 first-rounder earned an All-Star selection and had been in contention for the batting race all season. He's currently hitting .352 but has been riding the pine for the past month.

Yelich started 87 games primarily in a platoon, going just 1-for-30 against lefties while batting a scintillating .380 versus right-handers. His last start was Aug. 12 versus Hoboken and he's since been relegated to primarily a pinch-hitting or pinch-running role.

Under Major League Baseball rules, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances in each of his team's games to qualify for a batting title. Yelich heads into Sunday's games with 420 plate appearances, short of the 446 plate appearances he'd need in Sardine City's 144 games. For the season, a player would need a minimum 502 plate appearances in 162 games.

With just 18 games remaining for the Straphangers, Yelich would need to average more than 4 plate appearances per game to reach the 82 necessary to qualify. Otherwise, only Carpenter seems close enough to Ramirez to give him a serious run.