If you had to guess, who do you think leads Major League Baseball in batting average right now? Luis Arraez? Freddie Freeman? Incorrect. Believe it or not, the dude pacing the majors in batting average is actually an unheralded Miami Marlins infielder who took an unconventional path to the pros, was never a top prospect, and came into 2026 with a career batting average of .260! Yep, as the season’s unofficially halfway point looms, Otto Lopez – a guy most casuals have never even heard of – leads MLB in batting average and hits by a significant margin, marking the culmination of an incredible journey. Born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the baseball-crazy Dominican Republic, Lopez was exposed to the game from basically Day 1: as a youngster playing on the streets of his hometown, Lopez and his pals didn’t even have a ball, but that didn’t stop them. Instead, they played with bottle caps or balls of tape serving as the pelota. It wasn’t until Lopez’s family moved to Montreal, Can...