NEW YORK (AP) — Luis Arraez held off Shohei Ohtani's bid to win the National League Triple Crown and became the first player since the 1800s to earn batting titles with three teams.
Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. won his first American League batting championship, finishing with a major league-best .332 average.
Arraez went 1 for 3 on Sunday and posted a .314 average for San Diego, the lowest for an NL batting champion since Tony Gwynn's record-low .313 in 1988. After striking out and flying out in his first two at-bats, Arraez doubled in the sixth inning to reach 200 hits for the second straight season. He was pulled for a defensive replacement in the bottom half.
Arraez won the 2022 AL title at .316 for Minnesota and the 2023 NL title at .354 for Miami, which traded him to the Padres in May. He became the first NL player with 200 hits in consecutive seasons since Juan Pierre in 2003 and '04.
“This one was hard. I couldn’t sleep last night,” Arraez said, adding the pressure contributed to him striking out leading off — just his 29th strikeout this season and third since Aug. 10.
“I’m not perfect. I say to myself, you've got to do something,” Arraez recalled. "That’s never happened! But I’m not perfect."
Dan Brouthers won five batting titles with four teams from 1882-92.
Ohtani went 1 for 4 with an eighth-inning single and finished second in the National League at .310. In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he led the NL with 54 homers and 130 RBIs. He also got his 59th stolen base Sunday to cap a remarkable campaign in which he became the first major leaguer with 50 homers and 50 steals in one season. The two-way star did not pitch this year following elbow surgery in September 2023.
“I didn’t think about the Triple Crown or how close I was to it today,” Ohtani said through a translator. “Today, I was focused on having quality at-bats.”
Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals was the last NL Triple Crown winner in 1937. The most recent player to achieve the feat in either league was Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera in 2012, which ended a 45-year drought.
Atlanta slugger Marcell Ozuna finished third in the NL in batting at .302.
Witt, who took his first day off all season Saturday, went 1 for 4 in the Royals' finale to finish at .332. Toronto's Vladimir Guerrero was second at .323 and the New York Yankees' Aaron Judge third at .322.
“It’s special and it’s an honor,” Witt said. “It’s something that wasn’t even a goal. You never think as a kid it would ever happen and now it happened.”
Judge had 58 homers to lead the major leagues for the second time after hitting an AL-record 62 in 2022. His 144 RBIs were the most in the majors since Philadelphia's Ryan Howard had 146 in 2008.
Seven batters are hitting .300 or higher, which would be the fewest since a record low six in 1968. There were 55 in 1999 during the Steroids Era.
Boston outfielder Jarren Duran led the major leagues with 48 doubles and tied Arizona's Corbin Carroll for the lead with 14 triples, the first time a player had a share in both categories since Lou Brock in 1968.
Among pitchers, this was just the fifth non-shortened season without a 20-game winner after 1871, 2006, 2009 and 2017.
Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale topped the major leagues with 18 wins each. Hampered by injuries, the Braves left-hander totaled 17 wins over the previous five seasons.
Sale led the NL in ERA at 2.38, and Skubal’s 2.39 mark led the AL.
Sale topped the NL with 235 strikeouts and Skubal led the AL with 228. Sale became the first pitcher to win an NL pitching Triple Crown since the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw in 2011.
Skubal became the first AL pitching Triple Crown winner since Cleveland's Shane Bieber during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and the first in a full season since Justin Verlander in 2011.
“When you see special seasons like this, the hardest thing to do for all of us, is to put it in proper context while you’re watching it,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’re going to look at Tarik’s year much differently five years from now, 10 years from now."
There have been a record-low 28 complete games, down from 35 last year and 29 in 2020. The 16 shutouts were down from 23 last season and matched 2022 as the fewest in a non-shortened season since 1874.
Washington stole 223 bases, the most since the 1993 Montreal Expos swiped 228.
The Chicago White Sox finished 41-121, breaking the post-1900 record for losses that had been held by the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120 during the franchise's first season. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders hold the overall major league mark at 20-134.
AP Sports Writers Pat Graham and Larry Lage, and AP freelance writers Rick Farlow and Jack Thompson contributed to this report.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. (7) waves off teammates to catch a pop fly hit by Atlanta Braves' Matt Olson in the first inning of a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)
Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani swings at a pitch from Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Ryan Feltner in the first inning of a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
San Diego Padres' Luis Arraez (4) gets a hug in the dugout from teammate Xander Bogaerts, right, after hitting a double against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the sixth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Darryl Webb)
San Diego Padres' Luis Arraez celebrates after his double against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the sixth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Darryl Webb)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tzeela Gez was on her way to the hospital to bring new life into this world when hers was suddenly cut short.
As her husband drove their car through the winding roads of the occupied West Bank late Wednesday, a Palestinian attacker shot at them. Within hours, Gez, nine months pregnant, was dead. Doctors barely saved the life of the baby, who is in serious but stable condition.
Israel says it is trying to prevent such attacks by waging a monthslong crackdown on West Bank militants that intensified earlier this year. But the escalating offensive, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians over 19 months, displaced tens of thousands and caused widespread destruction, has ultimately not snuffed out attacks.
And the latest bloodshed is only likely to fuel a cycle of violence that has persisted for decades between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel has pledged to find the attacker, who fled the scene, and the military chief of staff, who visited the area Thursday, told troops that the broader operation would continue alongside the manhunt.
"We will use all the tools at our disposal and reach the murderers in order to hold them accountable,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, according to a statement from the military, which said it had sealed Palestinian villages in the area of the attack and set up checkpoints.
The shooting, especially because the victim was a pregnant mother with three other children, has the potential to ignite vigilante violence against Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers. They regularly storm Palestinian towns and villages, burning and damaging property, in response to such attacks. Marauding settlers are rarely held to account for their actions and Palestinians are left to pick up the pieces of the destruction with little recourse to compensation or assistance from Israeli authorities.
Gez, 37, and her husband Hananel, were residents of Bruchin, a settlement of some 2,900 in the northern West Bank. She worked as a therapist and on her Facebook page, shared developments in her professional life as well as her thoughts on the war in Gaza, the fallen Israeli soldiers and the hostages still held by Hamas. Meital Ben Yosef, head of the settlement's local council, told Israeli Army radio that Gez was “all mother. A mother in her essence.”
“A couple of parents were driving to the happiest moment that a parent can experience and the wife is killed on the way. It’s a horrific incident,” she said.
Photos of the car released by the military showed a bullet hole on the passenger side of the windshield and a streak of blood on a back door. Soldiers searched the rugged brush on the sides of the road following the attack, according to video released by the Israeli military.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, praised the attack as “heroic” in a video statement Wednesday but stopped short of saying the militant group was behind it.
On Thursday, military checkpoints slowed down traffic on roads in the vicinity of the attack, and many Palestinian motorists were at a standstill as they tried to make their journeys, according to video shared on social media.
The attack sparked outrage and calls for revenge.
“Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” wrote the Israeli finance minister and a settler firebrand, Bezalel Smotrich, in a post on X, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
The violence in the West Bank escalated when the war in Gaza erupted with Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. Israel has staged frequent raids in the territory, especially but not limited to its north, using ground and air power in violence that has killed many militants but also other Palestinians, some of them throwing rocks to protest the incursions as well as others not involved in confrontations.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said its forces killed five militants in a raid that appeared unrelated to Gez's killing. Hamas mourned the men as “resistance heroes” but stopped short of claiming them as its fighters.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, all territories the Palestinians seek for a future independent state. Around 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in about 130 settlements scattered across the West Bank.
Much of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Israel views the West Bank as its biblical heartland and believes the fate of the settlements should be determined in peace negotiations, which have been moribund for some 15 years.
Israel says much of the Palestinian militancy in the West Bank is fueled by Iran and views the fighting there as part of its ongoing multifront wars to secure its borders and prevent a second Oct. 7-style attack.
Associated Press writers Jalal Bwaitel in Ramallah, West Bank, and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Mourners react next to the body of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, during her funeral at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Mourners react during the funeral of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Mourners carry the body of Tzeela Gez, 37, an Israeli who was on her way to have her baby delivered when she was shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank, during her funeral at Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli settlers look towards their neighboring village the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, outside of the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Young Israeli settlers sit outside of the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, outside of the settlement, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Israeli soldiers search a Palestinian village next to the West Bank settlement of Bruchin, the morning after a Palestinian gunman killed Tzeela Gez, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
