page_title: List of Major League Baseball batting champions
section_title: American League
hierarchical_section_title: List of Major League Baseball batting champions / American League
caption_attribution_description: Ichiro Suzuki
context_page_description: In baseball, batting average is a measure of a batter's success rate in achieving a hit during an at bat. In Major League Baseball, it is calculated by dividing a player's hits by his at bats. In MLB, a player in each league wins the "batting title" each season for having the highest batting average that year. The American League winner is known as the "Rod Carew American League Batting Champion", while the National League leader is designated the "Tony Gwynn National League Batting Champion". Under current rules, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances per team game to qualify for the batting title. However, if a player's lead in AVG is sufficiently large that enough hitless at bats can be added to reach this requirement and the player still would have the highest batting average, he wins the title. Tony Gwynn, for example, had 159 hits in 451 ABs in 1996 but only 498 PAs. Gwynn's batting average would have dropped to .349 with four hitless ABs added to reach the 502 PA requirement, but this would still have been higher than the next-highest eligible player, so he was awarded the 1996 NL batting title.
caption: Ichiro Suzuki won AL batting titles in 2001 and 2004.
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