For all that the sabermetric community has given baseball, one thing it has taken away is the concept of a batting champion. The devaluation of batting average, and the emphasis on power, has made the yearly batting average leader — once one of the game’s top honors — somewhat irrelevant as the focus has turned to other statistics.

In the National League, where the batting title has been won by the likes of Tony Gwynn, Stan Musial and Rogers Hornsby, the honor may fall this season to Pittsburgh’s Josh Harrison, a utility player known more for versatility than prowess with a bat.

Given his anonymity, and his modest .317 average, it would have to be considered a low point in the title’s prominence.

Harrison, an All-Star in his first full season, has come out of nowhere to be in a two-man race for the batting title with Colorado’s Justin Morneau, whom he trailed by three points going into Wednesday’s games. Should his .317 average through Tuesday wind up as the league’s top mark, it would be just the third time since 1876 that the National League has been led with an average below .320.

As Gwynn tends to be the answer to any question involving NL batting titles, it should not be surprising that he even holds the record for lowest average to lead the league, .313 in 1988.

Despite hitting 68 points above the league average, Harrison has found himself having to defend his talent in the midst of a breakout season.

“It comes off as effort, but for me, it’s natural,” Harrison said earlier this season. “I could steal a base and people say, ‘Oh, man, that’s good hustle.’ And somebody else steals a base and it’s, ‘Man, he’s fast.’ I’m just like anybody who has skills.”

The problem, however, is not with Harrison but with the rest of the league. The NL as a whole is batting .249 this season, its worst showing since 1989. Only seven qualified batters are hitting higher than .300.

Things are not much better in the American League, where the league average is .254 and only eight batters are hitting .300 or better. But in that league, Harrison’s average would place him only sixth, and he would be trailing the league leader, Houston’s Jose Altuve, by 25 points.

In the past, such a low average leading the league might have caused a controversy. But batting average now mostly takes a back seat to modern statistics that produce a broader picture of a player’s ability.

Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera briefly breathed life into the statistic during his triple crown run in 2012, but the emphasis on such old-fashioned stats caused a bit of a civil war among baseball fans, many of whom thought Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout was the superior player. Cabrera led the league in traditional statistics, but Trout had a significant lead in wins above replacement. During that same season, the NL helped to devalue the batting title when a rule change was made to avoid having San Francisco’s Melky Cabrera win the award in a season in which he received a suspension for use of performance-enhancing drugs. Suddenly a simple award based on nothing more than hits divided by at-bats became something that could be manipulated.

For Harrison, there are no asterisks or controversy. He has spent time at third base, left field, right field, second base and shortstop. He has hit 13 home runs, stolen 17 bases, put together an adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage that is 39 percent better than the league average and at 26 seems as if he could be a quality player for years to come.

But the days of prestige for the batting title are waning, and barring another triple crown contender or a player making a run at .400, it is hard to see it making much of a comeback.