Baseball Reference bans Melky.

Melky Cabrera, in self imposed statistical purgatory because of his suspension for using testosterone, has had his black ink removed from his personal stats page on baseball-reference.com.  The 2012 list of batting leaders has also been purged: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2012-batting-leaders.shtml

Buster Posey is listed with the highest batting average (BA): .336, ten points lower than Melky.  No, it's not because Melky had one too few plate appearances (PA).  Joey Votto is listed at the bottom of the top ten with his .337 BA and with **:

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.

Apparently Votto would be tenth if the extra PA were added to his at bats (AB).  However, if the one extra AB that Melky needed to qualify were added his BA would still be .346.  Melky is not even listed among the BA leaders, not even with a triple asterisk.

Baseball Reference is my favorite baseball website but I am very disappointed that it has purged Melky.

Saturday, September 22, 2012
Will Melky still get black ink?

And did anybody think to check with players most likely to benefit and finish with the highest batting average (BA) in the MBL National Conference?  How hollow will that distinction be if we all know that another player had a higher BA but decided to ask people to not accept that?  What the heck?

Has our ability to think rationally really diminished that much?