Mid-day Update: Ask and You Shall Receive

Often. If you ask the right guys, I guess.

I posed the question of this morning's something to the esteemed David Pinto in a comment at his blog, and this afternoon he took the time to answer it. His approach to the question is more simple sabermetrically than my own attempt (he just took their career averages, no messing with BABIP and stuff) and infinitely more complicated mathematically (he actually understands math)...and is, I'm sure, much, much better overall. Here's where he comes out:

Summing all the individual probabilities results in an overall probablility of .3259 for Albert finishing ahead of Ramirez in the batting race. That doesn’t mean he wins the batting title. Pablo Sandoval is still in the mix, and Bruan and Helton are more than capable of putting on a push of their own. One in three aren’t bad odds, however.

One in three! I mean, figure that if Pujols passes Hanley, there's about a 50/50 chance that Pablo or Braun or Helton end up ahead of Pujols: .163. Then, more realistically than I was this morning, say there's a 40% chance that he ends up ahead in both HR and RBI. .065. The number looks awfully tiny, but that would mean (if my guesses were at all accurate, which they're not, but I figure they're good enough to give us an idea) there's about a 6-7% chance that Albert Pujols will be the first Triple Crown winner in 43 seasons (73 in the NL).

Pretty cool, huh? I mean, I'll confess, I didn't want to guess at the odds this morning because I didn't want to embarrass myself (like I'm about to), but I was thinking something like 1 in 200, 1 in 500, etc. Eh. But 1 in 14 or so? That's something I can get kind of pumped up about.