Given his loss of time to injury, just how many Plate Appearances does Trout need to "lead" in various categories like OBP?
Here's the rule:
A ** by the stat's value indicates the player had fewer than the required number of at bats or plate appearances for the BA, OBP, SLG or OPS title that year. In order to rank the player, the necessary number of hitless at bats were added to the player's season total. The value printed here is their actual value and not the value used to rank them, therefore some numbers may appear out of order.
For batting rate stats, generally a minimum of 3.1 Plate Appearances/G, 1.0 IP/G, 0.67 Gm and Chances/Team Game (fielding), 0.2 SB att/Team Game (catchers), and 0.1 SB att/Team Game (baserunners only since 1951), and 0.1 decision/G for single-season leaderboards generally needed for rate statistics.
So, 3.1 PA's per team game = 3.1 X 162 = 502.2 PA's required.
Now, what happens if he falls short at say only 500 PA's? My understanding is they substitute a zero for ever PA needed to get to the magic number, so they would give him 0 hits in 2.2 ABs to get his final "average" for consideration for batting title, OBP title, etc. So he doesn't really HAVE to have 502.2 PA's, but how ever many he falls short will be considered outs in his calculations.
Let's look at where Trout is:
He currently has 288 PA's, so he needs 214.2 to get to the minimum 502.2.
The Angels currently have 52 games left to play.
So, Trout needs 214.2 / 52 games = 4.112 average Plate Appearances per game for the rest of the year to reach the magic number.
He got 5 last night, but averaging more than 4 seems like a real stretch. It's going to be close for sure. But if he maintains a massive lead in these categories, he would easily be the official league "leader" in OBP, SLG, OPS, etc. even if he falls just short in PA's. Batting title will be a tough one, and it all depends on Altuve cooling off IMO. Trout will need a 10-20 point lead in BA to end up winning the title if he falls just short of the required PAs.